When you are at odds with someone close to you,the One-Minute Drill can show you how to express your feelings effectively-and how to listen more skillfully.All it requires is two individuals who are committed to improving their relationship.
Set aside at least ten minutes,and then sit facing each other.Decide who will be the Talker and who will be the Lastener.It makes no difference,because later you will change roles.
How to perform the One-Minute Drill
For approximately 30 seconds,the Talker can say anything he or she wants.Your job will be to express your thoughts and feelings.You can discuss problems you’ve had a hard time talking about.Remember to limit yourself to about 30 seconds.When the Talker finishes,the Listener will summarize what the Talker just said,as well as how the Talker was feeling inside,as accurately as possible.
The Talker now gives the Listener a grade between 0 and 100 percent to indicate how accurate the summary was.If the rat
ing is 95 percent or more,you can change roles;the new Talker can continue with the same topic or move on to something entirely new.
However,if the grade is below 95 percent,the Talker should point out what the Listener missed or got wrong,and repeat the process until the overall rating is 95 percent or more.Then you can change roles and repeat the exercise for as long as you both like.
How it works
Thirty seconds of emotionally charged information is sufficiently challenging for anyone.Express your feelings in strong,clear,direct language,but as your partner will be listening attentively,you won’t need to shout,exaggerate or put your partner down.
The Listener should sit and listen respectfully without interrupting.Look into your partner’s eyes,but avoid using negative body language. If you like,take a few notes.
So the Talker might say:“When I come home from work, I feel tired and I need some quiet time.But you tell me I’m supposed to spend time with the kids.This makes me feel frustrated.I work hard and I’m exhausted at the end of the day.I feel like I deserve a little time to relax,not listen to more demands.”
In response,the Listener might summarize like this:“You just told me that you feel exhausted when you come home at night because you’ve been working hard all day.When l tell you l want you to spend time with the kids,you feel frustrated and ticked off because you’re tired and you need time to relax.You see me as very demanding,and you’re probably feeling like I don’t appreciate you.”
The first time you attempt the One-Minute Drill,you may get a low score.Don’t worry,because you’ll get up to speed quickly.Once you’ve tried this exercise a few times,you’ll find that you can nearly always get ratings of 95 percent or better on the first or second try.Who is the One-Minute Drill intended for?
| A.Those who are preparing for the interview in order to make a good first impression. |
| B.Those who have difficulty communicating with their colleagues or family members. |
| C.Those who have troubled relationships with their friends or family members and try to improve them. |
| D.Those who are to act some roles in a certain play for the first time in their life. |
Which of the following is NOT true?
| A.The Talker should talk about his/her thoughts and feelings in a brief way. |
| B.The Listener should listen carefully,respectfully and later summarize accurately. |
| C.After the Talker finishes talking,the Listener is to give him/her a grade. |
| D.In the One-Minute Drill,the Talker and the Listener change roles in the process. |
From the example given in“How it works”,we can guess that the talk might be between .
| A.father and son | B.mother and daughter |
| C.sister and brother | D.husband and wife |
What does the underlined part“ticked off”probably mean in this reading?
| A.very angry | B.burst into tears |
| C.marked with a symbol | D.fast asleep |
You are watching a film in which two men are having a fight. They hit one another hard. At the start they only fight with their fists. But soon they begin hitting one another over the heads with chairs. And so it goes on until one of the men crashes (撞击) through a window and falls thirty feet to the ground below. He is dead!Of course he isn't really dead. With any luck he isn't even hurt. Why? Because the men who fall out of high windows or jump from fast moving trains, who crash cars or even catch fire, are professionals (专业人士). They do this for a living. These men are called stuntmen. That is to say, they perform tricks. There are two sides to their work. They actually do most of the things you see on the screen. For example, they fall from a high building. However, they do not fall on to hard ground but on to empty cardboard boxes covered with a mattress (床垫). Again, when they hit one another with chairs, the chairs are made of soft wood and when they crash through windows, the glass is made of sugar! But although their work depends on trick of this sort, it also requires a high degree of skill and training. Often a stuntman' s success depends on careful timing. For example, when he is "blown up" in a battle scene, he has to jump out of the way of the explosion just at the right moment.
Naturally stuntmen are well paid for their work, but they lead dangerous lives. They often get seriously injured, and sometimes killed. A Norwegian stuntman, for example, skied over the edge of a cliff a thousand feet high. His parachute (降落伞) failed to open, and he was killed. In spite of all the risks, this is no longer a profession for men only. Men no longer dress up as women when actresses have to perform some dangerous action, for nowadays there are stunt girls too!
51. Stuntmen are those who ______.
A. often dress up as women
B. prefer to lead dangerous
lives
C. often perform seemingly (表面上) dangerous actions
D. often fight each other for their lives
52. Stuntmen earn their living by ______.
A. playing their dirty tricks B. selling their special skills
C. jumping out of high windows D. jumping from fast moving trains
53. When a stuntman falls from a high building, ______.
A. he needs little protection
B. he will be covered with a mattress
C. his life is endangered
D. his safety is generally all right
54. Which of the following is the main factor (因素) of a successful performance?
A. Strength. B. Exactness. C. Speed. D. Power.
55. What can be inferred from the author' s example of the Norwegian stuntman?
A. Sometimes an accident can occur to a stuntman.
B. The percentage of serious accidents is high.
C. Parachutes must be of good quality.
D. The cliff is too high.
Ⅳ. 阅读理解(共20小题,每题1分,满分20分)
When my first wartime Christmas came, I was in basic training in New Jersey and not sure if I could make it home for the holidays. Only on the afternoon of December 23 was the list of men who would have three-day holidays posted. I was one of the lucky soldiers. It was Christmas eve when I arrived home, and a light snow had fallen. Mother opened the front door. I could see beyond her, into the corner of the living room where the tree had always stood. There were lights, all colors, and ornaments (装饰物) shining against the green of a pine. “Where did it come from?” I asked.
“I asked the Gates boy to cut it,” my mother said. “I wouldn’t have had one just for myself, such a rush!He just brought it in this afternoon…” The pine reached to the proper height, almost to the ceiling, and the tree top crystal star was in its place. A few green branches reached about a little awkwardly at the side, I thought, and there was a bit of bare trunk showing in the middle. But the tree filled the room with warm light and the whole house with the pleasant smell of Christmas. “It’s not like the one you used to find,” my mother went on. “Yours were always in good shape. I suppose the Gates boy didn’t know where to look for a good one. But I couldn’t be fussy (挑剔的).”
“Don’t worry,” I
told her. “It’s perfect.” It wasn’t, of course, but at the moment I realized something for the first time: all Christmas trees are perfect.
46. From the passage, we can infer that ______.
A. the writer spent his first Christmas during the war
B. soldiers did not all go home for Christmas during the war
C. all the soldiers had three-day holidays
D. the writer could not go home for Christmas
47. When the writer got home, ______.
A. it was December 23th
B. it was snowing heavily
C. he found a Christmas tree in the living room
D. the Gates boy was cutting a Christmas tree for his mother
48. From this passage,we can conclude that ______.
A. the writer used to cut very beautiful Christmas trees
B. his mother didn’t like perfect trees
C. his mother didn’t want to have a tree
D. the writer wouldn’t have a tree cut by someone else
49. “All Christmas trees are perfect”,because they can remind you of ______.
A. the wartime B. the green of a pine
C. the pleasant smell D. the sweet home
50. The best title for this passage would be “______”.
A. How to Choose a Christmas Tree
B. How Soldiers Spent Christmas
C. The Perfect Christmas Tree
D. The Christmas Without a Tree
You’re in a department store and you see a couple of attractive young women looking at a sweater. You listen to their conversation:
“I can’t believe
it —a Lorenzo Bertolla! They are almost impossible to find. Isn’t it beautiful? And it’s a lot cheaper than the one Sara bought in Rome.”
They leave and you go ove
r to see this incredible sweater.It's nice and the price is right.You've never heard of Lorenzo Bertolla, but those girls looked really stylish.They must know.So, you buy it.You never realize that those young women are employees of an adverti
sing agency.They are actually paid to go from store to store, talking loudly about Lorenzo BertoHa clothes.
Every day we notice what people are weari
ng, driving and eating.If the person looks cool, the product seems cool, too.This is the secret of undercover(暗中影响的) marketing.Companies from Ford to Nike are starting to use it.
Undercover marketing is important because it reaches people that don't pay attention to traditional advertising.This is particularly true of the MTV generation----consumers between the age of 18 and 34.It is a golden group.They have a lot of money to spend, but they don't trust ads.
So advertising agencies hire young actors to "perform" in bars an
d other places where young adults go.Some people might call this practice deceptive, but marketing executive Jonathan Ressler calls it creative."Look at traditional advertising.Its effectiveness is decreasing."
However, one might ask what exactly is "real" about of young women pretending to be enthusiastic about a sweater? Adverting executives would say it's no less real than an ad.The difference is that you know an ad is trying to persuade you to buy something.You don' t know when a conversation you overhear is just a performance.The two attractive young women were talking so that they could ________.
| A.get the sweater at a lower price | B.be heard by people around |
| C.be admired by other shoppers | D.decide on buying the sweater |
Lorenzo Bertolla is __________.
| A.a very popular male singer | B.an advertising agency |
| C.a clothing company in Rome | D.the brand name of a sweater |
Which of the following can be inferred from the passage?
| A.The two girls are in fact employed by the Lorenzo Bertolla Company. |
| B.The MTV generation tend to be more easily influenced by ads. |
| C.Traditional advertising is becoming less effective because it's too direct. |
| D.Undercover marketing will surely be banned soon by the government. |
Which of the following would be the best title for t
he text?
| A.Two Attractive Shoppers | B.Lorenzo Bertolla Sweaters |
| C.Ways of Advertising | D.Undercover Marketing |
It was once thought that air pollution
affec
ted only the area immediately around large c
ities with factories and/or heavy automobile traffic. Today, we know that although these are the areas with the worst air pollution, the problem is literally worldwide. On several occasions over the past decade, a heavy cloud of air pollution has covered the entire eastern half of the United States and led to health warnings even in rural areas away from any major concentration of manufacturing and automobile traffic. In fact, the very climate of the entire earth may be affected by air pollution. Some scientists feel that the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the air resulting from the burning of fossil fuels(coal and oil) creating a greenhouse effect-holding in heat reflected from the earth and raising the world’s average temperature. If this view is correct and the world’s temperature is raised only a few degrees, much of the polar ice cap will melt and cities such as New York, Boston, Miami, and New Orleans will be under water.
Another view, less widely held, is that increasing particulate matter in the atmosphere is blocking sunlight and lowering the earth’s temperature-a result that would be equally disastrous(灾难的). A drop of just a few degrees could create something close to a new ice age, and would make agriculture difficult or impossible in many of our top farming areas. At present we do riot know for sure that either of these conditions will happen(though one recent government report prepared by experts in the field concluded that the greenhouse effect is very likely). Perhaps, if we very lucky, the two tendencies will offset each other and the world’s temperature will stay about the same as it is now.As pointed out at the beginning of the passage, people used to think that air pollution ______.
| A.caused widespread damage in the countryside |
B.affected the entire eastern half of the United States |
C.al most brought worldwide effect |
| D.existed merely in urban and industrial areas |
As far as the greenhouse effect is concerned, the author _____________.
| A.shares the same view with the scientists |
| B.is uncertain of its occurrence |
| C.rejects it as being ungrounded(无根据的) |
| D.thinks that it will increasingly destroy the world soon |
It can be inferred from the passage that.
| A.raising the world’s temperature a little would not do much harm to life on the earth |
| B.lowering the world’s temperature a little would lead to agricultural disasters |
| C.almost no temperature variations have occurred over the past decade |
| D.the world’s temperature will remain stable forever |
This passage is primarily concerned with.
| A.the greenhouse effect in the world |
| B.the measures to adjust the climate |
| C.the potential effect of air pollution |
| D.the measures to protect the environment |
Net Library Is a library that lends out digital books.It treats a digital like a pap
erback copy.It charges libraries per book per copy and gives publishers a cut of the total income.
From the consumer's point of view, this means that if more than, say, five people want the latest Danielle Steel romance novel, other people who request that book will get a message saying the title can't be found.
It's a model many publishers seem to have embraced.More than 350 gave the company rights to hand out their digital works and McGraw-Hill Corporation and Houghton Mifflin Corporation have put money in the company.The California public libraries and about 1,800 others across the US
are trying out the Net Library service.
Some librarians criticize the New Library model.Stanford University librarian Michael Keller argues that the company is creating an unnatural fear of digital woks; which is contrary to the ideas of the Internet.
Keller and some other librarians argue for the e-book vision set forth by E-Brary.E-Brary is starting a service mat lets us users read books for free.
But it will charge about 25 cents a page when a person tries to print out material or copy and paste it into a different file
or tries to download copy onto a computer.
Christopher Warnock, chief executive of E-Brary, believes most consumers won't want to buy entire books, only the parts that interest them.
"There's not really a lot of good m owning an electronic file and having to store it and manage it.It doesn't make sense." he said.How do publishers get money from the Net Library?
| A.They get money from selling their books to the Net Library. |
| B.They share the money with the Net Library. |
| C.They get money by cutting the cost of the books. |
| D.They get the money from the readers. |
The underlined word "embraced" in the 3rd paragraph means ____.
| A.taken something willingly | B.held something tightly |
| C.disliked something badly | D.tried out something hard |
From the 2nd paragraph we can see consumers .
A.don’t ca re if they are charged money |
| B.enjoy the service of the Net Library |
C.don’t like other peo ple borrowing books |
| D.complain about the limited number of the new books |
What does the last paragraph mean?
| A.Net Library is not a good way for the consumers. |
| B.There is no need for consumers to have a whole book. |
| C.E-Brary is not a good library for the consumers. |
| D.It’s reasonable to charge the consumers money for copying some pages. |