My father never wanted his children to know what he did for a living．Dad worked in Plant C．Lying beside lake Erie, it saw him in at sunrise and out at nightfall．Sometimes my mother would take my siblings （兄弟姐妹） and me to the public beach in our hometown of Ashtabula． she'd gather us round and point to the smokestacks, coughing clouds into the sky．
"Wave to daddy!" she'd shout. Four little hands would shoot into the air．I never knew what Dad did in Plant C, but during 34 years of hard work, he had surgery （手术） on his shoulder and hand．At 48, he had his first heart attack．He retired in 1993, right after the last kid graduated from college．But the damage was done．A few years later, the next heart attack killed him．
I saw my dad in Plant C only once, when I took dinner to him．That night, I looked at my father, covered in sweat and coal, and for the first time I knew why he was so often angry for no reason．
Recently my father' s friend, Toby Workman, walked me there．I knew my father never wanted me to see it．At every station, he described the job and the danger．It was like listening to a foreign language．I walked past many DANGER signs．Toby put his hand on my shoulder．"look," he said, "you need to understand something．Your dad was a maintenance mechanic．He worked the most dangerous job．If something broke, he fixed it．"
A few days later, my daughter graduated from college．I gave her the hard hat Toby handed to me as I left, and this notes: " Whenever you feel something difficult, put this on, look in the mirror, and remember your roots．"How many siblings does the author most probably have? ____．
A．Three siblings B．Two siblings C．One sibling D: Four siblingsWhich of the following is TRUE of the facts about the author's father? ____
A．He didn't suffer a heart attack until he retired．
B．He worked in Plant C for 48 years in all．
C．He was hardly angry in his daily life．
D．He did physical work in Plant C. When Toby Workman described the author' s father' s job, the author ____．
| A．felt familiar with the job | B．didn’t quite understand |
| C．wanted to learn a foreign language | D．decided to do the same work |
The author gave her daughter the hat, hoping that her daughter could ____．
| A．remember her grandfather | B．overcome all difficulties by wearing it |
| C．get encouraged by her grandfather | D．follow her grandfather' s work |
High-quality customer service is preached (宣扬) by many, but actually keeping customers happy is easier said than done.
Shoppers seldom complain to the manager or owner of a retail store, but instead will warn their friends, relatives, co-workers, strangers—and anyone who will listen.
Store managers are often the last to hear complaints, and often find out only when their regular customers decide to frequent their competitors, according to a study jointly conducted by Verde Group and Wharton School.
“Storytelling hurts retailers and entertains consumers,” said Paula Courtney, President of the Verde Group. “The store loses the customer, but the shopper must also find a replacement.”
On average, every unhappy customer will complain to at least four others, and will no longer visit the specific store. For every dissatisfied customer, a store will lose up to three more due to negative review. The resulting “snowball effect” can be disastrous to retailers.
According to the research, shoppers who purchased clothing experienced the most problems. Ranked second and third were grocery and electronics customers.
The most common complaints include filled parking lots, cluttered (塞满了的) shelves, overloaded racks, out-of-stock items, long check-out lines, and rude salespeople.
During peak shopping hours, some retailers solved parking problems by getting moonlighting (业余兼职的) local police to work as parking attendants(服务员). Some hired flag wavers to direct customers to empty parking spaces. This guidance rid the need for customers to circle the parking lot endlessly, and avoided conflict between those eyeing the same parking space.
Retailers can relieve the headaches by redesigning store layouts(布局), pre-stocking sales items, hiring speedy and experienced cashiers, and having sales representatives on hand to answer questions.
Most importantly, salespeople should be diplomatic(外交手腕的) and polite with angry customers.
“Retailers who’re responsive and friendly are more likely to smooth over issues than those who aren’t so friendly,” said Professor Stephen Hoch. “Maybe something as simple as a greeter at the store entrance would help.”
Customers can also improve future shopping experiences by filing complaints to the retailer, instead of complaining to the rest of the world. Retailers are hard-pressed to improve when they have no idea what is wrong.Why are store managers often the last to hear complaints?
| A．Most customers won’t take the trouble to complain even if they have had unhappy experiences. |
| B．Customers would rather tell their unhappy experiences to people around them. |
| C．Few customers believe the service will be improved. |
| D．It’s difficult for customers to get in touch with store managers. |
What does Paula Courtney imply by saying “…the shopper must also find a replacement” (Para. 4)
| A．New customers must replace old ones. |
| B．It is not likely the shopper can find the same products in other stores. |
| C．Most stores provide the same kind of service. |
| D．Not complaining to the manager causes the shopper some trouble too. |
Shop owners often hire moonlighting police as parking attendants so that shoppers________.
| A．can stay longer buying goods in the store |
| B．can park their cars without trouble |
| C．won’t have any worries about safety |
| D．can find their cars easily after shopping |
What contributes most to smoothing over issues with customers?
| A．Manners of the salespeople. |
| B．Hiring of efficient employees. |
| C．Huge supply of goods for sale. |
| D．Design of store layout. |
To achieve better shopping experiences, customers are advised to ________.
| A．put pressure on stores to improve their service |
| B．settle their arguments with stores in a diplomatic way |
| C．voice their dissatisfaction to store managers directly |
| D．shop around and make comparisons between stores |
About five years ago, an American electrical engineer named Scott Brusaw and his wife Julie came up with the idea of putting solar panels (控制板) on the ground rather than the roof. Then they began to develop the Solar Roadway. The Solar Roadway is an intelligent road that provides clean renewable energy using power from the sun while providing safer driving conditions, along with power and data delivery. They predict that the Solar Roadway will pay for itself through the generation of electricity along with other forms of income and that the same money that is being used to build and resurface current roads can be used to build the Solar Roadways.
Each Solar Road Panel measures roughly 4 meters by 4 meters and contains a microprocessor (微处理器) that monitors and controls the panel, while communicating with neighboring panels and the vehicles traveling overhead. The inventors suggest that this provides a communications device every 4 meters on every road which could be used for example to warn drivers of cars which are moving across a centre line and various other speed control problems. The top of the Solar Road panels is made of super-strong glass that would offer vehicles the tractions (抓地力) they need.
According to the inventors, the Solar Roadway creates and carries clean renewable electricity and therefore electric vehicles can be recharged at any conveniently located rest stop, or at any business that has paved Solar Road Panels in their parking lots.
The inventors say their Solar Roadway has many functions and advantages from main roads to driveways, parking lots, bike paths, sidewalks and runways. The Federal Highway Administration has given Brusaw ＄100,000 to develop the invention and Brusaw hopes to build a smart-road parking lot in the coming spring .In the inventors’ opinion, the Solar Roadway .
| A．is too expensive to build at present |
| B．costs no more money than current roads |
| C．can provide as many data as present computers |
| D．will bring them a large sum of money |
The underlined word “they” in Paragraph 2 refers to.
| A．the panels | B．the inventors | C．the researchers | D．the vehicles |
The Solar Roadway includes all the following advantages except .
| A．providing safer driving conditions |
| B．helping drivers communicate with each other while driving |
| C．creating and carrying clean renewable electricity |
| D．warning drivers of various speed control problems |
It can be inferred from the text that .
| A．the Solar Roadway has already been put into use |
| B．＄100,000 is only enough to build a smart-road parking lot |
| C．the Solar Roadway is not available for gas-powered cars |
| D．future electric vehicles can be charged anytime and anywhere |
What can be the best title for the text?
| A．Solar-powered smart road of the future |
| B．The great changes on the roadway |
| C．The influence the Solar Roadway has on people |
| D．The Solar Road—a much faster road |
A person, like a commodity (商品), needs packaging. But going too far is absolutely undesirable. A little exaggeration(夸张), however, does no harm when it shows the person's unique qualities to their advantages. To show personal attractiveness in a casual and natural way, it is important for one to have a clear knowledge of oneself. A skilled packager knows how to add art to nature without any signs of embellishment, so that the person so packaged is not a commodity but a human being, lively and lovely.
A young person, especially a female, shining with beauty and full of life, has all the favor granted. Youth, however, comes and goes in a flash. Packaging for the middle-aged is primarily to hide the marks made by years. If you still enjoy life enough to keep self-confidence and work at pioneering work, you are unique in your natural qualities, and your attractiveness and grace will remain. Elderly people are beautiful if their river of life has been, through plains, mountains and jungles, running its course as it should. You have really lived your life, which now arrives at a self - satisfied stage of quietness and calmness with no interest in fame or wealth. There is no need to make use of hair dyeing. The snow-capped mountain itself is a beautiful scene of fairyland. Let your looks change from young to old in step with the natural ageing process so as to keep in harmony with nature, for harmony itself is beauty, while the other way round will only end in unpleasantness. To be in the company of the elderly is like reading a thick book of good edition, which attracts one so much that one is unwilling to part with it. As long as one finds where one stands, one knows how to package oneself, just as a commodity sets up its brand by the right packaging.The underlined word in the first paragraph is closest to the word ______ in meaning.
| A．decoration | B．clarification |
| C．movement | D．recognition |
It can be concluded from the text that ______.
| A．people should be packaged at all ages |
| B．people should be packaged in a special way |
| C．elderly people also care about packaging |
| D．proper packaging makes people attractive |
For the middle-aged, attractiveness ______ .
| A．hardly exists | B．is the strongest |
| C．comes from the inside | D．comes from the appearance |
According to the author, if you want to keep in harmony with nature, you should ______.
| A．dye your hair | B．make up at a young age |
| C．follow the ageing process | D．give up fame and wealth |
The underlined sentence means that elderly people ______.
| A．are usually packaged like a finely-made book |
| B．experience a lot and have rich knowledge of life |
| C．do a lot of traveling and can give you much information |
| D．enjoy reading thick books about beautiful nature and fairyland |
A small piece of fish each day may keep the heart doctor away. That’s the finding of a study of Dutch men in which deaths from heart disease were more than 50 percent lower among those who consumed at least an ounce of salt water fish per day compared to those who never ate fish.
The Dutch research is one of three human studies that give strong scientific support to the long held belief that eating fish can provide health benefits, particularly to the heart.
Heart disease is the number-one killer in the United States, with more than 550,000 deaths occurring from heart attacks each year. But researchers previously have noticed that the incidence (发生率) of heart disease is lower in cultures that consume more fish than Americans do. There are fewer heart disease deaths, for example, among the Eskimos of Greenland, who consume about 14 ounces of fish a day, and among the Japanese, whose daily fish consumption averages more than 3 ounces.
For 20 years, the Dutch study followed 852 middle-aged men, 20 percent of whom ate no fish.
At the start of the study, average fish consumption was about two-thirds of an ounce each day, with more men eating lean fish than fatty fish.
During the next two decades, 78 of the men died from heart disease. The fewest deaths were among the group who regularly ate fish, even at levels far lower than those of the Japanese or Eskimos. This relationship was true regardless of other factors such as age, high blood pressure, or blood cholesterol（胆固醇）levels. The passage is mainly about _________.
| A．the high incidence of heart disease in some countries |
| B．the changes in people’s diet |
| C．the effect of fish eating on people’s health |
| D．the daily fish consumption of people in different cultures |
We can infer from the passage that there are fewer heart disease deaths ________.
| A．in the countries with high consumption of fish |
| B．in highly-developed countries |
| C．in countries of the yellow-skin race |
| D．in the countries with good production of fish |
The phrase “this relationship” in paragraph 6 refers to the connection between ______ and the incidence of heart disease.
| A．the amount of fish eaten | B．regular fish-eating |
| C．the kind of fish eaten | D．people of different areas |
“If you talk to the plants, they will grow faster and the effect is even better if you’re a woman.” Researchers at Royal Horticultural Society carried out an experiment to find that the voice of a woman gardener makes plants grow faster.
The experiment lasted a month and by the end of the study scientists managed to discover that tomato plants grew up two inches taller when women gardeners talked to them instead of male.
Sarah Darwin was the one making the plants registered the best growth. Her voice was the most “inspiring” for plants than those of nine other gardeners when reading a passage from The Origin of Species. The great-great-granddaughter of the famous botanist(植物学家) Charles Darwin found that her plant grew about two inches taller than the plant of the best male gardener.
Colin Crosbie, Garden Superintendent at RHS, said that the finding cannot yet be explained. He assumes that women have a greater range of pitch（音高） and tone（音调） which might have a certain effect on the sound waves that reach the plant. “Sound waves are an environmental effect just like rain or light ,”said Mr Grosbie.
The study began in April at RHS Garden Wisley in Survey. Scientists started with open auditions(听力) for the people who were asked to record passages from John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer's Night Dream and Darwin's The Origin of Species.
Afterwards researchers selected a number of different voices and played them to 10 tomato plants during a period of a month. Each plant had headphones（耳机） connected to it. Through the headphones the sound waves could hit the plants. It was discovered that plants that “listened” to female voices on average grew taller by an inch in comparison to plants that heard male voices.
Miss Darwin said, “I think it is an honor to have a voice that can make tomatoes grow, and especially fitting because for a number of years I have been studying wild tomatoes from the Galapagos Island at the Natural History Museum in London.”What does the passage talk about?
| A．Plants enjoy men’s voices than women’s. |
| B．A botanical experiment in a museum. |
| C．Voice’s influence on plant growing. |
| D．Strange phenomenon（现象） at Royal Horticultural Society. |
What does the underlined sentence in paragraph 4 mean?
| A．Plants need sound as well as rain and light. |
| B．Sound is basic for the plant to grow. |
| C．Sound has a good effect as rain or light does. |
| D．Plants can’t live without sound, rain or light. |
Sarah Darwin is most likely a (an)_____.
| A．botanist | B．gardener |
| C．astronomer | D．environmentalist |
What can we learn from the passage?
| A．The experiment ended in May. |
| B．Scientist can explain the findings clearly. |
| C．Plants enjoy listening to the passages from masterpieces. |
| D．The findings are of great importance to human beings. |