If you're in charge of a project, the key to success is getting everyone to want to help you. As a director, I point, I suggest, I gently push the actors in the direction I want them to go.
In the 1986 movie Nothing in Common, Jackie Gleason's character, Max Basner, gets fired (or unemployed) from his job as a clothing salesman. The scene, shot (拍) on a boat, shows Max's despair(绝望) about being out of work. I was looking for some gesture that would allow Max to show his feelings.
Jackie had far more experience at everything than I did, and at first I was frightened. What could I possibly tell “The Great One” about acting? Out of fear I decided to direct by suggestion, and I sat down with Gleason to talk about the scene. “So Max is sad, right?” I said.
Gleason nodded.
“And he’s probably still carrying his pens with his name on them ---the ones he used to hand out to his customers, right?”
Gleason nodded.
“ So what would you want to do with the pens after you were fired?” He was silent for a moment. “Why don’t I throw them overboard (or all over the boat)?” I stood up and turned toward the crew. “Hey, everybody, Jackie has a wonderful idea. Let’s shoot it.”
After filming the scene, Gleason called me over and said with a smile, “Garry, what kind of wonderful idea am I going to have tomorrow?” You and your team can discover the answers to problems together. When there are no prizes or gold stars for who gets the solution (or the way to work out a problem) first, you'll all benefit (or get something of use or value) when everything turns out right.The author tells us that to succeed in a project you are in charge of, you should __.
| A．make everyone work for you |
| B．get everyone willing to help you |
| C．let people know you have the final say |
| D．keep sending out orders to them |
It can be inferred(推断) that ______________.
| A．Jackie Gleason is the director of the film Nothing in common |
| B．Jackie Gleason is very angry when he is fired from his job |
| C．Max, a character in a film, is in very low spirits(情绪) when he loses his job |
| D．Jackie Gleason is the writer of the film Nothing in common |
The Great One” in paragraph 3 refers to ___________.
| A．Gleason | B．the director himself |
| C．Max | D．Max's boss |
Why did Gleason call the director over and smile at him? That’s because Gleason ___
| A．thought his wonderful idea was accepted by the latter(后者) |
| B．succeeded in hitting upon (or think of) a wonderful idea |
| C．was certain about his work the next day |
| D．appreciated the latter's way of directing films |
The best title for the passage is ____________.
| A．Directing a Film | B．The Key to Success |
| C．A Wonderful Experience | D．Working with Film Stars |
As long as I can remember, I've always loved to draw. But my interest in drawing wasn't encouraged very much. Growing up in the 1950s, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, boys were supposed to be athletic. Certain peer pressures encouraged little fingers to learn how to hold footballs rather than crayons.
My early love for drawing developed into a love for telling stories through pictures. Stories began as fragments (片段) of pictures in my mind. I created a story by posing questions to myself. I called it the “what if” and “what then” approach. For example, for my book The Polar Express, I started out by thinking “What if a boy gets on that train? Where does he go？”
From the time I come up with the idea, write and illustrate the book, and deliver it to the printer, it takes about seven months. First, I begin thinking of the idea. Then I imagine the pictures and the story. A good picture book should have events that are visually arresting. I first consider scenes that are exciting to look at and then my challenge is to weave a story around those pictures. The next step is putting the illustrations and story down on paper.
When you first look at my illustrations, you see ordinary, everyday things. But if you look closer, things might not seem quite so simple. When I'm writing a book, I always try to create something strange or puzzling in each picture. By using artistic strategies, I can give the drawing a kind of mysterious quality.
All of my books are picture books, so they are generally thought of as books for children. But when I make them, I think of the books as being for everybody — for people of all ages. When I was a kid, I had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up, but now I'm really glad I became an artist and a storyteller.Why does the author mention The Polar Express?
| A．To tell us an interesting story. |
| B．To introduce his famous work. |
| C．To make up a sentence with “what if”． |
| D．To show us how he designed his book. |
The underlined word “arresting” in Paragraph 3 probably means ________.
| A．frightening | B．interesting |
| C．satisfying | D．worrying |
Which of the following is TRUE about the author?
| A．He did well when he was at school. |
| B．He only wrote something for children. |
| C．He tried his best to meet the readers' taste. |
| D．He regretted not working hard at drawing. |
What would be the best title for this passage?
| A．Telling Stories by Drawing |
| B．“What if” and “What Then” |
| C．How to Tell Interesting Stories |
| D．Working as a Famous Storyteller |
Thirteen vehicles lined up last March to race across the Mojave Desert, seeking a million in prize money. To win, they had to finish the 142mile race in less than 10 hours. Teams and watchers knew there might be no winner at all, because these vehicles were missing a key part — drivers.
DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, organized the race as part of a push to develop robotic vehicles for future battlefields. But the Grand Challenge, as it was called, just proved how difficult it is to get a car to speed across an unfamiliar desert without human guidance. One had its brake lock up in the starting area. Another began by throwing itself onto a wall. Another got tied up by bushes near the road after 1.9 miles.
One turned upside down. One took off in entirely the wrong direction and had to be disabled by remote control. One went a little more than a mile and rushed into a fence; another managed to go for six miles but stuck on a rock. The “winner”， if there was any, reached 7.8 miles before it ran into a long narrow hole, and the front wheels caught on fire.
“You get a lot of respect for natural abilities of the living things，” says Reinhold Behringe, who helped design two of the carsize vehicles for a company called SciAutonics.“Even ants can do all these tasks effortlessly. It's very hard for us to put these abilities into our machines.”
The robotic vehicles, though with necessary modern equipment such as advanced computers and GPS guidance, had trouble figuring out fast enough the blocks ahead that a twoyearold human recognizes immediately. Sure, that very young child, who has just only learned to walk, may not think to wipe apple juice off her face, but she already knows that when there's a cookie in the kitchen she has to climb up the table, and that when she gets to the cookie it will taste good. She is more advanced, even months old, than any machine humans have designed.
Watchers doubted if any of the vehicles could finish the race because ________.
| A．they did not have any human guidance |
| B．the road was not familiar to the drivers |
| C．the distance was too long for the vehicles |
| D．the prize money was unattractive to the drivers |
From the passage we know “robotic vehicles” are a kind of machines that________.
| A．can do effortlessly whatever tasks living things can |
| B．can take part in a race across 142miles with a time limit |
| C．can show off their ability to turn themselves upside down |
| D．can move from place to place without being driven by human beings |
In the last paragraph, the author implies that there is a long way to go ________.
| A．for a robotic vehicle to finish a 142mile race without any difficulties |
| B．for a little child who has just learned to walk to reach the cookie on the table |
| C．for a robotic vehicle to deal with a simple problem that a little child can solve |
| D．for a little child to understand the importance of wiping apple juice off his/her face |
Fourteenyearold Richie Hawley had spent five years studying violin at the Community School of Performing Arts in Los Angeles when he took part in a violin contest. Ninetytwo young people were invited to the contest and Hawley came out first.
The contest could have been the perfect setup for fear, worrying about mistakes, and trying to impress the judges. But Hawley said he did pretty well at staying calm. “I couldn't be thinking about how many mistakes I'd make — it would distract me from playing.” he says. “I don't even remember trying to impress people while I played. It's almost as if they weren't there. I just wanted to make music.”
Hawley is a winner. But he didn't become a winner by concentrating on winning. He did it by concentrating on playing well.
“The important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part，” said the founder of the modern Olympics, Pierre de Coubertin. “The important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.”
A characteristic of high performers is their intense, pleasurable concentration on work, rather than on their competitors or future glory or money, says Dr. Charles Garfield, who has studied 1,500 achievers in business, science, sports, arts, and professions. “They are interested in winning, but they're most interested in selfdevelopment, testing their limits.”
One of the most surprising things about top performers is how many losses they've had — and how much they've learned from each. “Not one of the 1,500 I studied defined losing as failing，” Garfield says. “They kept calling their losses ‘setback’．”
A healthy attitude towards setbacks is essential to winning, experts agree.
“The worst thing you can do if you've had a setback is to let yourself get stuck in a prolonged depression. You should analyze carefully what went wrong, identify specific things you did right and give yourself credit for them.” Garfield believes that most people don't give themselves enough praise. He even suggests keeping a diary of all the positive things you've done on the way to a goal.What is common among high performers is that they tend to give priority to ________.
| A．glory | B．Wealth |
| C．pleasure | D．Work |
According to the passage, successful people concentrate on _______.
| A．challenging their own limits | B．learning from others |
| C．defeating their opponents | D．avoiding setbacks |
The passage tells us that “praise” in times of trouble ________.
| A．helps people deal with their disappointment |
| B．makes people forget their setbacks |
| C．makes people regret about their past |
| D．helps people realize their goals |
People are being lured (引诱) onto Facebook with the promise of a fun, free service without realizing they’re paying for it by giving up large amounts of personal information. Facebook then attempts to make money by selling their data to advertisers that want to send targeted messages.
Most Facebook users don’t realize this is happening. Even if they know what the company is up to, they still have no idea what they’re paying for Facebook because people don’t really know what their personal data is worth.
The biggest problem, however, is that the company keeps changing the rules. Early on, you keep everything private. That was the great thing about facebook--you could create your own little private network. Last year, the company changed its privacy rules so that many things--your city, your photo, your friends' names--were set, by default (默认) to be shared with everyone on the Internet.
According to Facebook’s vice-president Elliot Schrage, the company is simply making changes to improve its service, and if people don’t share information, they have a “less satisfying experience”.
Some critics think this is more about Facebook looking to make more money. Its original business model, which involved selling ads and putting them at the side of the page, totally failed. Who wants to look at ads when they’re online connecting with their friends?
The privacy issue has already landed Facebook in hot water in Washington. In April, Senator(议员) Charles Schumer called on Facebook to change its privacy policy. He also urged the Federal Trade Commission to set guidelines for social-networking sites. “I think the senator rightly communicated that we had not been clear about what the new products were and how people could choose to use them or not to use them,” Schrage admits.
I suspect that whatever Facebook has done so far to invade our privacy is only the beginning, which is why I’m considering deactivating(撤销) my account. Facebook is a handy site, but I’m upset by the idea that my information is in the hands of people I don’t know. That’s too high a price to pay.What do we learn about Facebook from the first paragraph?
| A．It is a website that sends messages to targeted users. |
| B．It makes money by putting on advertisements. |
| C．It provides loads of information to its users. |
| D．It profits by selling its users’ personal data. |
Why does Facebook make changes to its rules according to Elliot Schrage?
| A．To provide better service to its users. |
| B．To follow the Federal guidelines. |
| C．To improve its users’ connectivity. |
| D．To expand its scope of business. |
What does Senator Charles Schumer advocate(倡导)?
| A．Setting guidelines for advertising on websites. |
| B．Banning the sharing of users’ personal information. |
| C．Removing ads from all social-networking sites. |
| D．Formulating (制订) regulations for social-networking sites.. |
Why does the author plan to cancel his Facebook account?
| A．He is dissatisfied with its present service. |
| B．He doesn’t want his personal data abused. |
| C．He finds many of its users untrustworthy. |
| D．He is upset by its frequent rule changes. |
Over the years, Brian Wansink, director of the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University, has studied such things as how far Americans typically drive to buy food, how many times we refill our plates at all-you-can-eat buffets and how we organize our kitchens. In the mid-2000s he famously coined the phrase “mindless eating”(and wrote a book by that name) to focus attention on all the bad dietary decisions we make without really thinking about them.
His new book, Slim by Design: Mindless Eating Solutions for Everyday Life, aims to change the design of restaurants, school lunchrooms, office cafeterias and homes so that the mindless choices we make will be more healthful ones. Some examples:
Keep kitchen counters clear. No visible snack food, no bread, no nuts--not even breakfast cereal. In Wansink’s research, “women who had even one box of breakfast cereal that was visible-anywhere in their kitchen--weighed 21 pounds more than their neighbor who didn’t.”
Trick yourself into drinking less wine. “We tend to focus on the height of what we pour and not the width, so we pour 12 percent less wine into taller wineglasses than we pour into wider wineglasses.” And the shape of the glass is not the only variable that affects how much we drink. Wansink writes: “Because red wine is easier to see than white wine, we pour 9 percent less red wine whenever we pour a glass.”
Wansink said his researchers also found that people ate less at restaurants when sat in well-lighted areas near windows and doors, than in darker areas or in the back. They ate less if they were offered a doggie bag, or to-go box, before they got their meals: apparently the idea of getting a “free” second meal outweighed the impulse(冲动) to clean their plates. Workers who frequently ate at their desks weighed 15.4 pounds less, on average, than those who didn’t. Fruits and vegetables kept on the top shelf of the refrigerator were eaten at higher rates than those on lower shelves.
The point, Wansink says, is to consider findings like those and change your environment or habits. Then you won’t have to think about it: You’ll just eat less.Why did Brian Wansink write Slim by Design: Mindless eating Solutions for Everyday Life?
| A．Because he wanted people to become thin. |
| B．Because he wished to change the design of public places. |
| C．Because he hoped to coin a new phase “mindless eating”. |
| D．Because he intended to help people make more healthful dietary decision. |
According to Wansink, which of the following affects the amount of wine we drink: ________.
| A．the shape of wineglasses |
| B．the color of wineglasses |
| C．the taste of wine |
| D．the quality of wine |
What’s the main idea of the passage?
| A．Changing environment or habits of eating will help you eat less. |
| B．Eating fruits and vegetables is better for your health. |
| C．Keeping your kitchen counter clear of any food will help make you thin. |
| D．Many people eat or drink too much without paying attention to it. |