单选题In recent years, Israeli consumers have grown more demanding as they've become wealthier and more worldly-wise. Foreign travel is a national passion; this summer alone, one in 10 citizens will go abroad. Exposed to higher standards of service elsewhere, Israelis are returning home expecting the same. American firms have also begun arriving in large numbers. Chains such as KFC, McDonald's and Pizza Hut are setting a new standard of customer service, using strict employee training and constant monitoring to ensure the friendliness of frontline staff. Even the American habit of telling departing customers to "Have a nice day" has caught on all over Israel. "Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, ' Let's be nicer' "says Itsik Cohen, director of a consulting firm. "Nothing happens without competition." Privatization, or the threat of it, is a motivation as well. Monopolies (垄断者) that until recently have been free to take their customers for granted now fear what Michael Perry, a marketing professor, calls "the revengeful (报复的) consumer". When the government opened up competition with Bezaq, the phone company, its international branch lost 40% of its market share, even while offering competitive rates. Says Perry, " People wanted revenge for ali the years of bad service." The electric company, whose monopoly may be short-lived, has suddenly stopped requiring users to wait haft a day for a repairman. Now, appointments are scheduled to the half-hour. The graceless EIAI Airlines, which is already at auction (拍卖), has retrained its employees to emphasize service and is boasting about the results in an ad campaign with the slogan, "You can feel the change in the air. "For the first time, praise outnumbers complaints on customer survey sheets.

单选题Most often attitudes are shaped by ______.

单选题When Olga read Rachel Blythe's review, she probably felt ______.

单选题 {{B}}Questions 21—23 are based on a report about obesity. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 21—23.{{/B}}

单选题{{B}}Passage 4{{/B}} The war was the most peaceful period of my life. The window of my bedroom faced southeast. My mother had curtained it, but that had small effect. I always woke up with the first light and, with all the responsibilities of the previous day melted, felt myself rather like the sun, ready to shine and feel joy. Life never seemed so simple and dear and full of possibilities as then. I stuck my feet out under the sheets—I called them Mrs. Left and Mrs. Right—and invented dramatic situations for them in which they discussed the problems of the day. At least Mrs. Right did; she easily showed her feelings, but I didn't have the same control of Mrs. Left, so she mostly contented herself with nodding agreement. They discussed what Mother and I should do during the day, what Santa Claus should give a fellow for Christmas, and what steps should be taken to brighten the home. There was that little matter of the baby, for instance. Mother and I could never agree about that. Ours was the only house in the neighborhood without a new baby, and Mother said we couldn't afford one till Father came back from the war because it cost seventeen and six. That showed how foolish she was. The Geneys up the road had a baby, and everyone knew they couldn't afford seventeen and six. It was probably a cheap baby, and Mother wanted something really good, but I felt she was too hard to please. The Geneys' baby would have done us fine. Having settled my plans for the day, I got up, put a chair under my window, and lifted the frame high enough to stick out my head. The window overlooked the front gardens of the homes behind ours, and beyond these it looked over a deep valley to the tall, red-brick house up the opposite hillside, which were all still shadow, while those on our side of the valley were all lit up, though with long storage shadows that made them seam unfamiliar, stiff and painted. After that I went into Mother's room and climbed into the big bed. She woke and I began to tell her of my schemes. By this time, though I never seem to have noticed it, I was freezing in my nightshirt, but I warmed up as I tallied until the last frost melted. I fell asleep beside her and woke again only when I heard her below in the kitchen, making breakfast.

单选题Finally this theory is widely understood and accepted the world over, i.e. it has a ______; and is therefore a good basis for discussion of an ethical problem. A. particularity B. unilateralism C. commonality D. cosmopolitan

单选题Among humans, the effects of aging vary from one individual to another. The average life ______ for Americans is around 75 years, almost twice what it was in the early 190Os.

单选题Mary was extremely lucky: when her great-uncle died, she______a fortune.

单选题It's disturbing to note how many of crimes we do know about were detected______, not by systematic inspections or other security procedures.

单选题Some anthropologists claim that a few apes have been taught a rudimentary sign languages, but skeptics argue that the apes are only______ their trainers.

单选题The gift of being able to describe a face accurately is a rare one, as every experienced police officer knows to his cost. As the Lancet put it recently, "When we try to describe faces precisely words fail us, and we resort to identikit (拼脸型图) procedures." Yet, according to one authority on the subject, we can each probably recognize more than 1,000 faces, the majority of which differ in fine details. This, when one comes to think of it, is a tremendous feat. Though, curiously enough, relatively little attention has been devoted to the fundamental problems of how and why we acquire this gift for recognizing and remembering faces. Is it an inborn property of our brains, or an acquired one? As so often happens, the experts tend to differ. Thus, some argue that it is inborn, and that there are "special characteristics about the brain"s ability to distinguish faces". In support of this thesis they note how much better we are at recognizing a face after a single encounter than we are, for example, in recognizing an individual horse. On the other hand, there are those, and they are probably in the majority, who claim that the gift is an acquired one. The arguments in favor of this latter view, it must be confessed, are impressive. It is a habit that is acquired soon after birth. Watch, for instance, how a quite young baby recognizes his mother by sight. Granted that his mother senses help—the sound of her voice, his sense of smell, the distinctive way she handles him. But of all these, sight is predominant. Formed at the very beginning of life, the ability to recognize faces quickly becomes an established habit, and one that is essential for daily living, if not necessary for survival. How essential and valuable it is we probably do not appreciate until we encounter people who have been deprived of the faculty. This unfortunate inability to recognize familiar faces is known to all, but such people can often recognize individuals by their voices, their walking manners or their spectacles (眼镜). With typical human ingenuity many of these unfortunate people overcome their handicap by recognizing other characteristic features.

单选题{{B}}Passage 3{{/B}} After the violent earthquake that shook Los Angeles in 1994, earthquake scientists had good news to report；The damage and death toll could have been much worse. More than 60 people died in this earthquake. By comparison, an earthquake of similar intensity that shook America in 1988 claimed 25,000 victims. Injuries and deaths were relatively less in Los Angeles because the quake occurred at 4:31 a. m. on a holiday, when traffic was light on the city's highways. In addition, changes made to the construction codes in Los Angeles during the last 20 years have strengthened the city's buildings and highways, making them more resistant to quakes. Despite the good news, civil engineers aren't resting on their successes. Pinned to their drawing boards are blueprints for improved quake-resistant buildings. The new designs should offer even greater security to cities where earthquakes often take place. In the past, making structures quake-resistant meant firm yet flexible materials, such as steel and wood, that bend without breaking. Later, people tried to lift a building off its foundation, and insert rubber and steel between the building and its foundation to reduce the impact of ground vibrations. The most recent designs give buildings brains as well as concrete and steel supports, called smart buildings, the structures respond like living organisms to an earthquake's vibrations. When the ground shakes and the building tips forward, the computer would force the building to shift in the opposite direction. The new smart structures could be very expensive to build. However, they would save many lives and would be less likely to be damaged during earthquakes.

单选题Some of the old______ conceived by science fiction writers about the space age are coming true.

单选题According to some psychologists, in developing a model of cognition, we must recognize that perception of the external world does not always remain independent ______ motivation.

单选题The expedition has left for the Andes and there is no ______ when it will return.

单选题It is not often realized that women held a high place in southern European societies in the 10th and 11th centuries. As a wife, the woman was protected by the setting up of a dowry or decimum. Admittedly, the purpose of this was to protect her against the risk of desertion, but in reality its function in the social and family life of the time was much more important. The decimum was the wife's right to receive a tenth of all her husband's property. The wife had the right to withhold consent, in all transactions the husband would make. And more than just a right: the documents show that she enjoyed a real power of decision, equal to that of her husband, in no case do the documents indicate any degree of difference in the legal status of husband and wife. The wife shared in the management of her husband's personal property, but the opposite was not always true. Women seemed perfectly prepared to defend their own inheritance against husbands who tried to exceed their rights, and on occasion they showed a fine fighting spirit. A case in point is that of Maria Vivas, a Catalanwoman of Barcelona. Having agreed with her husband Miro to sell a field she had inherited, for the needs of the household, she insisted on compensation. None being offered, she succeeded in dragging her husband to the scribe to have a contract duly drawn up assigning her a piece of land from Miro's personal inheritance. The unfortunate husband was obliged to agree, as the contract says, "for the sake of peace". Either through the dowry or through being hot-tempered, the Catalan wife knew how to win herself, within the context of the family, a powerful economic position.

单选题She never ______ to read the news but turned at once to the crossword on the last page. A. indulged B. troubled C. exerted D. frustrated

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