New technology links the world as never before. Our planet has shrunk. It’s now a “global village” where countries are only seconds away by fax or phone or satellite link. And, of course, our ability to benefit from this high-tech communications equipment is greatly increased by foreign language skills.
Deeply involved with this new technology is a kind of modern businesspeople who have a growing respect for the economic value of doing business abroad. In modern markets, success overseas often helps support domestic business efforts.
Overseas assignments (指派) are becoming increasingly important to advancement within executive (行政) ranks. The executive stationed in another country no longer need fear being “out of sight and out of mind.” He or she can be sure that the overseas effort is central to the company’s plan for success, and that promotions often follow or accompany an assignment abroad. If an employee can succeed in a difficult assignment overseas, superiors will have greater confidence in his or her ability to manage back in the United States where cross-cultural considerations and foreign language issues are becoming more and more common.
Thanks to a variety of relatively inexpensive communications devices (装置) with business applications, even small businesses in the United States are able to get into international markets.
English is still the international language of business. But there is an ever-growing need for people who can speak another language. A second language isn’t generally required to get a job in business, but having language skills gives a candidate the edge when other qualifications appear to be equal.
The employee posted abroad who speaks the country’s language has an opportunity to fast-forward certain negotiations, and can have the cultural insight (洞察力) to know when it is better to move more slowly. The employee at the home office who can communicate well with foreign customers over the telephone or by fax machine is an obvious asset (有价值的人或物) to the firm. With the increased use of high-tech communications equipment, businesspeople ________.
| A．are eager to work overseas |
| B．have to get familiar with modern technology |
| C．are gaining more economic benefits from domestic operations |
| D．are attaching more importance to their overseas business |
In this passage, “out of sight and out of mind” (Line 3, Para. 3) probably means ________.
| A．leaving all care and worry behind |
| B．being unable to think properly for lack of insight |
| C．being totally out of touch with business at home |
| D．missing opportunities for promotion when abroad |
According to the passage, what is an important consideration of international corporations in employing people today?
| A．Ability to speak the customer’s language. |
| B．Connections with businesses overseas. |
| C．Technical know-how. |
| D．Business experience. |
The advantage of employees having foreign language skills is that they can ________.
| A．fast-forward their proposals to headquarters |
| B．better control the whole negotiation process |
| C．easily make friends with businesspeople abroad |
| D．easily find new approaches to meet market needs |
Walter Wetzel had met Ryan Lamantia nearly eight years ago in a hospital waiting room. Both were very sick—Ryan with brain cancer, Walter with leukemia. Walter, then 9，began making silly faces at the little boy sitting across from him.
Soon after, Ryan, who was 3 at the time, made his way into Walter's room and chatted about going home to change into his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles costume and ride his Big Wheel to his cousin Catlyn's house.
Though they saw each other only a handful of times after that, Walter never forgot Ryan. “He inspired me to survive my cancer，” said Walter, now 17，a football player and snowboarder. “Seeing him happy all the time made me happy. How could I be upset if he had it so much worse than me?”
For the past few years, Walter, who lived with his family in Elgin, wondered what had happened to his little friend. Without so much as a last name, Walter asked the hospital staff to track down a number or address, but privacy laws prohibited the staff from giving out information.
"As I was going to bed one night, it popped in my head：6Google it. Google what you know，"said Walter's mother, Erzsi Gemzsi. She typed in "Ryan Lake in the Hills brain tumor”. Much to her surprise a link to a Facebook page for Ryan came up. Finally, they had found him. But when she clicked her mouse, the news was devastating.
Ryan had died on Sept. 8，2005. He was 6.
When she picked up Walter from school the next day, she broke it to him. “It hit me pretty hard，” Walter said. “ I was crying for a week straight. ”
The Facebook page was for the Ryan Lamantia Foundation, a nonprofit foundation that Ryan's family formed after his death. The organization raises money for pediatric (小儿科的）brain tumor research.
Walter logged on right away and left this message：
"I have wanted nothing more than to talk to (Ryan's) parents and tell them ( their) son is my hero. My trips to（the hospital)were always dreadful, until the day I(met) Ryan. ”
Ryan's mom's eyes filled with tears as she read Walter's post. She said，“It made us so proud. ”What made a deep impression on Walter Wetzel?
| A．Ryan's way to communicate with others. |
| B．Ryan's love for his costume and Big Wheel. |
| C．Ryan's panic when suffering from brain cancer. |
| D．Ryan's happiness though suffering from brain cancer. |
What can be learned from the passage?
| A．Ryan was working for a foundation. |
| B．Walter was recovering from his leukemia. |
| C．Walter and Ryan often wrote to each other after they left the hospital. |
| D．After Ryan left the hospital, he was in good health. |
The underlined word "prohibited" in Paragraph 4 is the closest to "__________" in meaning.
| A．banned |
| B．permitted |
| C．advised |
| D．published |
How did Walter manage to know Ryan's information?
| A．One of his friends came to tell him. |
| B．Ryan's mother telephoned Walter and told him. |
| C．His mother googled Ryan's information and found it. |
| D．The Ryan Lamantia Foundation contacted him and told him. |
They were sitting together on a dull afternoon when Hannah hurried in with a telegram. Mrs March read and dropped it with her hands shaking. Jo picked up the telegram and read it in a frightened voice：Mrs March, your husband is very ill. Come at once. S. Hale, Blank Hospital, Washington.
The girls moved close to their mother. All their happiness vanished in a moment.
“I shall go at once，” said Mrs March. “Oh, my children！” For several minutes, there was only the sound of crying, and then Hannah hurried away to get away to get things ready for the long journey.
"Where's Laurie? " Mrs March asked. "Here，" said the boy. "Oh, let me do something! " "Send a telegram back，" said Mrs March. “The next train goes early in the morning. Now, I must write a note to Aunt March. ”
Jo knew that the money for the journey must be borrowed from Aunt March, and she wanted to do something to help her father. Laurie went off to take the note to Aunt March and to send the telegram. Jo got some things from the shops.
“Father will need good food and wine to help him get better, and there won't be much at the hospital，" said Mrs March. "Beth, go and ask Mr Laurence for a couple of bottles of wine. ，，
Laurie came back with a letter and money from Aunt March, but Jo did not return. It was in the late afternoon that Jo came back and gave her mother some money.
“That's to help make Father comfortable and bring him home，99 she said.
“Twenty-five dollars!” said Mrs March. “My dear, where did you get it?” Jo took off her hat. "My dear, there was no need for this，" said Mrs March. "Don't cry, Beth，" said Jo. “I'll soon have curly hair again. ”
After their mother went away, they all helped Hannah with housework. News of their father came, telling them he was slowly getting better. The underlined word “vanished” in Paragraph 2 probably means __________.
| A．burst |
| B．disappeared |
| C．jumped |
| D．rushed |
What can be inferred from the passage?
| A．Mrs March was not rich. |
| B．Hannah was younger than Jo and Laurie. |
| C．The children didn't care about their father. |
| D．Mrs March left for the hospital immediately. |
How did Jo get the money?
| A．By asking her friends for help. |
| B．By helping others work. |
| C．By selling her nice hair. |
| D．By breaking her pig bank. |
It can be learned from the passage that Mrs March's children were __________.
| A．selfish |
| B．kind |
| C．helpful |
| D．delighted |
It is difficult for doctors to help a person with a hurt brain. Without enough blood, the brain lives only three to five minutes. Sometimes the hurt brain gets better by itself. More often the doctors can't fix the hurt brain. Sometimes they are afraid to try something to help. It is dangerous to work on the brain. The doctor might make the person worse if he works on the brain.
Dr. Robert J. White, a famous professor and doctor, thinks he knows a way to help. He thinks doctors should try to make the brain become very cold. If it is very cold, the brain can live without blood for 30 minutes. This gives the doctors a longer time to do something for the brain.
Dr. White tried his idea on 13 monkeys. First he taught them to do different jobs. Then he opera-ted on them. He made the monkeys' blood go through a machine. The machine cooled the blood. Then the machine sent the blood back to the monkeys' brains. When the brain temperature was 10 degrees. Dr. White stopped the blood to the brain. After 30 minutes he turned the blood back on. He warmed the blood again. After their operations, the monkeys were like they were before. They were healthy and busy. Each one could still do the jobs the doctor had taught them.
Dr. White's idea works well on the monkeys. Are there other problems with human beings? Dr. White thinks doctors will use his idea on human beings. He thinks it will help people who have heart problems, too. A person doesn't have to die when his heart stops? doctors can start it again. The problem comes when the brain is without blood for three to five minutes—the person has a living body, but a dead brain. Maybe in the future, doctors will try Dr. White's idea. When the person's heart stops, the doctors will quickly try to cool the brain. They will have 30 minutes to start the heart again. Maybe there will be no problem with the brain. People probably die when __________.
| A．their brain dies |
| B．their heart stops |
| C．they stop breathing |
| D．their brain becomes very hot |
Dr. White thinks his idea about cooling the brain will work because __________.
| A．he has tried it on people |
| B．he has tried it on monkeys |
| C．he has tried it on heart problems |
| D．he has tried it on himself |
Which of the following is not true?
| A．Doctors can begin the heart again in five minutes. |
| B．Doctors can begin the heart again after 30 minutes. |
| C．Doctors can change patients' hearts. |
| D．Doctors can change a person's face. |
According to the writer，__________.
| A．it is not difficult to repair the brain damage |
| B．it is worse to make a mistake on the brain than any other part of the body |
| C．brain is not an important part in one's body |
| D．brain doesn't need blood |
Want a glance of the future of health care? Take a look at the way the various networks of people about patient care are being connected to one another, and how this new connectivity (连通性)is being used to deliver medicine to the patient—no matter where he or she may be.
Online doctors offering advice based on normal symptoms (症状)are the most obvious example. Increasingly, however, remote diagnosis (远程诊断)will be based on real physiological data (生理数据)from the actual patient. A group from the University of Kentucky has shown that by using personal data assistance plus a mobile phone, it is perfectly practical to send a patient's important signs over the telephone. With this kind of equipment, the cry asking whether there was a doctor in the house could well be a thing of the past.
Other medical technology groups are working on applying telemedicine to countryside care. And at least one team wants to use telemedicine as a tool for disaster need—especially after earthquakes. On the whole, the trend is towards providing global access to medical data and experts' opinions.
But there is one problem. Bandwidth (宽带)is the limiting factor for sending complex medical pictures around the world —CT photos being one of the biggest bandwidth users. Communication satellites may be able to deal with the short-term needs during disasters such as earthquakes or wars. But medicine is looking towards both the second-generation Internet and third-generation mobile phones for the future of remote medical service.
Doctors have met to discuss computer-based tools for medical diagnosis, training and telemedicine. With the falling price of broadband communications, the new technologies should start a new time when telemedicine and the sharing of medical information, experts, opinions and diagnosis are common. The writer mainly talks about _____ .
| A．the use of telemedicine |
| B．the online doctors |
| C．medical care and treatment |
| D．communication improvement |
The basis of remote diagnosis will be _____ .
| A．personal data assistance |
| B．some words of a patient |
| C．real physiological information |
| D．medical pictures from the Internet |
Which of the following statements is true according to the text?
| A．Patients don't need doctors in hospitals any more. |
| B．It is impossible to send a patient's signs over the telephone. |
| C．Many teams use telemedicine dealing with disasters now. |
| D．Broadband communications will become cheaper in the future. |
The "problem" in the fourth paragraph refers to the fact that _____ .
| A．bandwidth isn't big enough to send complex medical pictures |
| B．the second-generation of Internet has not become popular yet |
| C．communication satellites can only deal with short-term needs |
| D．there is not enough equipment for spreading the medical care |
When Gretch en Baxter gets home from work as a New York City book editor, she checks her cellphone at the door. "I think we are attached to these devices (装置)in a way that is not always positive, " says Baxter, who'd rather focus at home on her husband and 12-year-old daughter. "It's there but we get crazy sometimes and we don't know where it should stop. "
Americans are connected at unprecedented (前所未有的)levels—93% now use cellphones or wireless devices; one-third of those are "smartphones" that allow users to surf the Internet and check e-mails, among other things. The benefits are obvious： checking messages on the road, staying in touch with friends and family, efficiently using time once spent waiting around.
The downside： Often, we're effectively disconnecting from those in the same room.
That's why, despite all the technology that makes communicating easier than ever, 2010 was the Year We Stopped Talking to One Another. From texting at dinner to posting on Facebook at work or checking e-mails while on a date, the connectivity revolution is creating a lot of divided attention. Many analysts say it's time to step back and reassess.
"What we're going to see in the future is new opportunities for people to be connected like never before, " says Scott Campbell, assistant professor of communication studies at the University of Michigan, who studies the social implications (暗示)of using mobile devices. "It can be a good thing. But I also see the traditional social structure is getting somewhat torn apart. "
Sherry Turkic, director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self in Cambridge, Mass, wants to remind people that technology can be turned off. "Our human purpose is to really have connections with people," she says. "We have to reclaim (收回)it. It's not going to happen naturally." According to the first paragraph, Gretchen Baxter thinks _____ .
| A．cellphones are not always helpful |
| B．we benefit a lot from the invention of cellphones |
| C．using cellphones too much may be bad for health |
| D．cellphones play an important role in her life |
Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?
| A．People communicate more now than in the past. |
| B．Using mobile devices can focus people's attention quickly. |
| C．93% of Americans often use cellphones to surf the Internet. |
| D．The use of mobile devices has a negative effect on the traditional social structure. |
What is Sherry Turkle’s attitude towards using mobile devices?
| A．Positive. |
| B．Negative. |
| C．Confused. |
| D．Uncertain. |
The main purpose of the passage is to tell readers that _____ .
| A．something must be done for people to get a real connection with others |
| B．cellphones may be replaced by new devices |
| C．cellphones should be turned off on some occasions |
| D．people should have more connections with others |