We lived in a technological society where most goods are mass-produced by unskilled labor. Because of this, most people think that craft(手艺) no longer exists.
One of the ways these people wrongly support their view is by pointing to 100-year-old homes which are still solid, and arguing that it is the craftsmanship that is responsible for their durability(持久性). “Homes in those days were well-built,” they say. No doubt these homes were well-built, but what these people have done is mix up the quality of material used in the house with the quality of the craftsmanship.
Homes today could be built to last just as long as those old homes if people were willing or able to pay the price. For example, more people can no longer afford solid oak stairways, although they were once fairly common in older homes. Nor can they afford the high labor cost of employing a carpenter to build the stairway. Yet if someone can pay the high cost, there are still plenty of carpenters around able to make those stairways. And not only would these carpenters know how to build them, they would probably do a better job than carpenters of old.
One thing the modern carpenter has which enables him to do a better job is much more advanced tools. Such tools as laser beams and power planes help them lay out a house better and make more precision cuts on the wood. Also, it is not uncommon any more to find carpenters with college degrees and carpenters with a solid knowledge of mathematics, which would enable them to deal with more difficult house designs.
The problems of modern quality, then, really boils down to the problem of material, for the modern carpenter is just as able to produce craftsmanship as the carpenter of fifty years ago, but only if given proper material.
1． Compared to the carpenters in the past, modern carpenters are _______.
| A．more successful | B．more learned |
| C．more imaginative | D．more hardworking |
2． What does the underlined word “they” (paragraph 2) refer to?
carpenters who are fond of oak stairways.
carpenters who have college degrees.
people who think highly of carpenters of old.
people who think that modern material is of low quality.
3． What does the third paragraph mainly discuss?
People in the past preferred to use oak to build stairways.
It is now expensive to employ a carpenter.
Modern houses last as long as the old one.
Good carpenters still exist in modern times.
4． What would be the best title for the text?
Is Craft Dead?
Craft, Back to life?
History of craftsmanship
Carpenters Today and Yesterday
I once had my Chinese MBA students brainstorming on “two-hour business plans”. I separated them into six groups and gave them an example: a restaurant chain. The more original their idea, the better, I said. Finally, five of the six groups presented plans for restaurant chains. The sixth proposed a catering(餐饮) service. Though I admitted the time limit had been difficult, I expressed my disappointment.
My students were middle managers, financial analysts and financiers from state-owned enterprises and global companies. They were not without talent or opinions, but they had been shaped by an educational system that rarely stressed or rewarded critical thinking or inventiveness. The scene I just described came in different forms during my two years’ teaching at the school. Papers were often copied from the Web and the Harvard Business Review. Case study debates were written up and just memorized. Students frequently said that copying is a superior business strategy, better than inventing and creating.
In China, every product you can imagine has been made and sold. But so few well-developed marketing and management minds have been raised that it will be a long time before most people in the world can name a Chinese brand.
With this problem in mind, partnerships with institutions like Yale and MIT have been established. And then there’s the “thousand-talent scheme”: this new government program is intended to improve technological modernization by attracting top foreign-trained scientists to the mainland with big money. But there are worries about China’s research environment. It's hardly known for producing independent thinking and openness, and even big salary offers may not be attractive enough to overcome this.
At last, for China, becoming a major world creator is not just about setting up partnerships with top Western universities. Nor is it about gathering a group of well-educated people and telling them to think creatively. It’s about establishing a rich learning environment for young minds. It’s not that simple.Why does the author feel disappointed at his students?
| A．Because there is one group presenting a catering service. |
| B．Because the six groups made projects for restaurant chains. |
| C．Because all the students copied a case for the difficult topic. |
| D．Because the students’ ideas were lacking in creativeness. |
Which of the following scenes is NOT considered as lack of creation?
| A．Papers were often downloaded from the Internet. |
| B．Students often said that copying is a preferable business strategy. |
| C．Students combine knowledge and critical thoughts to solve a problem. |
| D．Case study debates were written up as well as recited. |
The underlined word “scheme” in the forth paragraph means__________.
| A．timetable | B．theme | C．project | D．policy |
We can infer from the passage that ___________.
| A．China can make and sell any product all over the world |
| B．high pay may not solve the problem of China’s research environment |
| C．cooperation with institutions has been set up to make a Chinese brand |
| D．the new government program are aimed at encouraging imagination |
Which is the best title of the passage?
| A．Look for a New Way of Learning | B．Reward Creative Thinking |
| C．How to Become a Creator | D．Establish a technical Environment |
Can you believe your eyes? A recent experiment suggests that the answer to that question may depend on your age.
Martin Doherty, a psychologist at the University of Stirling in Scotland, led the team of scientists. In this experiment, Doherty and his team tested the perception(观察力) of some people, using pictures of some orange circles. The researchers showed the same pictures to two groups of people. The first group included 151 children aged 4 to 10, and the second group included 24 adults aged 18 to 25.
The first group of pictures showed two circles alone on a white background. One of the circles was larger than the other, and these people were asked to identify the larger one. Four-year-olds identified the correct circle 79 percent of the time. Adults identified the correct circle 95 percent of the time.
Next, both groups were shown a picture where the orange circles, again of different sizes, were surrounded by gray circles. Here’s where the trick lies in. In some of the pictures, the smaller orange circle was surrounded by even smaller gray circles — making the orange circle appear larger than the other orange circle, which was the real larger one. And the larger orange circle was surrounded by even bigger gray circles — so it appeared to be smaller than the real smaller orange circle.
When young children aged 4 to 6 looked at these tricky pictures, they weren’t fooled — they were still able to find the bigger circle with roughly the same accuracy as before. Older children and adults, on the other hand, did not do as well. Older children often identified the smaller circle as the larger one, and adults got it wrong most of the time.
As children get older, Doherty said, their brains may develop the ability to identify visual context. In other words, they will begin to process the whole picture at once: the tricky gray circles, as well as the orange circle in the middle. As a result, they’re more likely to fall for this kind of visual trick.Doherty and his team of scientists did an experiment to evaluate .
| A．children’s and adults’ eye-sight |
| B．people’s ability to see accurately |
| C．children’s and adults’ brains |
| D．the influence of people’s age |
When asked to find the larger circle, .
| A．children at 6 got it wrong 79 % of the time with no gray ones around |
| B．only adults over 18 got it right 95% of the time with gray ones around |
| C．children at 4 got it right about 79 % of the time with gray ones around |
| D．adults got it right most of the time with gray ones around |
According to the passage, we can know that .
| A．a smaller orange circle appears bigger on a white background |
| B．an orange circle appears bigger than a gray one of the same size |
| C．a circle surrounded by other circles looks bigger than its real size |
| D．a circle surrounded by bigger ones looks smaller than its real size |
Visual context may work when children get older than .
| A．4 | B．6 | C．10 | D．18 |
Why are younger children not fooled?
| A．Because they are smarter than older children and adults. |
| B．Because older people are influenced by their experience. |
| C．Because people’s eyes become weaker as they grow older. |
| D．Because their brain can hardly notice related things together. |
阅读下面短文,并按照题目要求用英语回答问题.
Almost everybody in America will spend a part of his or her life behind a shopping cart（购物手推车）. They will, in a lifetime, push the chrome-plated contraptions many miles. But few will know—or even think to ask—who it was that invented them.
Sylvan N. Goldman invented the shopping cart in 1937. At that time he was in the supermarket business. Every day he would see shoppers lugging（吃力地携带） groceries around in baskets they had to carry.
One day Goldman suddenly had the idea of putting baskets on wheels. The wheeled baskets would make shopping much easier for his customers, and would help to attract more business.
On June 4, 1937, Goldman’s first carts were ready for use in his market. He was terribly excited on the morning of that day as customers began arriving. He couldn’t wait to see them using his invention.
But Goldman was disappointed. Most shoppers gave the carts a long look, but hardly anybody would give them a try.
After a while, Goldman decided to ask customers why they weren’t using his carts. “Don’t you think this arm is strong enough to carry a shopping basket?” one shopper replied.
But Goldman wasn’t beaten yet. He knew his carts would be a great success if only he could persuade people to give them a try. To this end, Goldman hired a group of people to push carts around his market and pretend they were shopping! Seeing this, the real customers gradually began copying the phony（假冒的） customers.
As Goldman had hoped, the carts were soon attracting larger and larger numbers of customers to his market. But not only did more people come—those who came bought more. With larger, easier-to-handle baskets, customers unconsciously bought a greater number of items than before.
Today’s shopping carts are five times larger than Goldman’s original model. Perhaps that’s one reason Americans today spend more than five times as much money on food each year as they did before 1937—before the coming of the shopping cart.The underlined words “chrome-plate contraptions” in Paragraph 1 refer to ______.
（No more than 3 words）What was the purpose of Goldman’s invention? （No more than 10 words）
Why was Goldman disappointed at first? （No more than 10 words）
Why did Goldman hire people to push carts around his market? （No more than 10 words）
What do you think of Goldman? Please give your reasons. （No more than 20 words）
The first time I remember noticing I remember noticing the crossing guard was when he waved to me as I drove my son to school. He1me with a puzzle ---- all because he waved to me like someone does2seeing a close friend. A big,3smile accompanied his wave. For the next few days I tried to4his face to see if I knew him. I didn't. Perhaps he had5me for someone else. By the time I contented myself with the6that he and I were strangers, we were greeting each other warmly every morning like old friends.
Then one day the7was solved. As I8the school he was standing in the middle of the road9his stop sign. I was in live behind four cars.10the kids had reached the safety of the sidewalk, he lowered his sign and let the cars11. To the first he waved and12in just the same way he had done to me over the last few days. The kids already had the window down and were happily waving their reply. The second car got the same13from the crossing guard, and the driver, a stiff-looking（表情刻板的） businessman, gave a brief, almost14wave back. Each following car of kids on their way to school15more heartily.
Every morning I continued to watch the man with16.So far I haven't seen anyone17to wave back. I find it interesting that one person can make such a（n）18to so many people's lives by doing one simple thing like waving and smiling warmly. His19armed the start of my day. With a friendly wave and smiling face he had changed the20of the whole neighbourhood.
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Want to be a happy married couple? Consider having kids．
A new study found that having children boosts happiness．And the more, literally, the merrier．
But unmarried couples shouldn’t expect to find greater happiness through child-raising．The study, published in the Oct．14 online edition of the Journal of Happiness Studies, suggests that having children has little or no effect on boosting happiness among couples who aren’t hitched(和谐)．
The findings contradict previous research that suggested that having more offspring doesn't lead to greater happiness and might even make people less satisfied with their lives．One theory behind the conclusion is that parents don’t receive many rewards in return for the hard work of raising children．
The new study, however, notes that parents say children are one of the most important things in their lives, if not the most important．
The study found that life satisfaction for married people -- women especially -- goes up the more kids they have．Single, separated and co-habiting people, by contrast, report negative experiences．
“One is tempted to advance that children make people rich under the ‘right conditions’ -- a time in life when people feel that they are ready, or at least willing, to enter parenthood,” Dr．Luis Angeles, of the University of Glasgow in Scotland, said in a news release from the journal’s publisher．“This time can come at very different moments for different individuals, but a likely signal of its approach may well be the act of marriage．”he underlined word “offspring” in the fourth paragraph can be replaced by _____．
| A．generation | B．children | C．mothers | D．marriage |
The best title of this passage should be _______．
| A．Children Are the Source of Happiness |
| B．Are You Happy Married Couple? |
| C．Married with Children Paves Way to Happiness |
| D．The Right Conditions of Having Children |
Which of the following can be inferred from the passage?
| A．The more children women have, the happier they are． |
| B．The more children the married women have, the more unsatisfied they become． |
| C．Raising kids can give any person happiness． |
| D．Without marriage, one woman had better not raise kids． |
In the passage, the underlined part ‘right conditions’ refers to _______．
| A．a time when the couple are ready and willing to become parents |
| B．the situation where the family is rich enough to raise a child |
| C．the situation where the couple are very happy |
| D．a time when the couple thinks raising children can boost happiness |