I have this old clock that belonged to my mom. My dad gave it to me years ago after mom passed away.
I have mixed feelings about keeping the clock. I love it because it was my mom’s, but it also holds some bad memories.
You see, it chimes (打钟报时). It counts out the hour and rings once on the half hour. Or at least it used to. Now you never know what number it will ring.
When my mother was at home dying from cancer, she asked for the clock to be unplugged (拔去插头等). Hearing the hours count down really angered and frightened her.
Mom passed away. I decided I wanted to get the clock fixed so I could remember the good hours we had with her.
I took it to a local clock shop the other day.
“I know this has no particular value as a clock, but it was my mom’s and I need to get it fixed,” I said to the shop owner.
I went on to describe the problem.
“We get a lot of these in,” he told me. “Here’s what I do. We remove the clock works (机件) and replace it with a battery -operated movement (机芯) that chimes electronically,” he told me.
“You can’t fix this?” “No, we don’t have the time nor the parts.”
I thanked him and went home. I called a few other places and was told the same thing.
“How incredibly sad,” I told the last one disappointedly.
We copy the original instead of creating something new. We duplicate (复制); we don’t originate (发明). How incredibly sad that we have become a society that replaces craftsmanship (手艺) with convenience and easy fixes.
Sadly, this is also our attitude toward life itself.
Each of us is an original, one of a kind. But we find it so much easier to copy another’s style than to develop our own.
We are wannabes (崇拜别人的人) rather than “hey-world-look-at-me”s.
We fail to see the real value in who we are, so we spend our lives trying to be someone else.
The author decided to get the clock fixed because it ______.
| A．was a really old and valuable clock |
| B．left the author with mixed feelings |
| C．was the only thing that his mother had left him |
| D．brought him memories of being with his mother |
What did the clock shop owners tell the author?
| A．It would cost a lot to repair the clock. |
| B．They could only make the clock electronic. |
| C．The parts that the clock needed were electronic. |
| D．They had never repaired a clock like this before. |
The purpose of the article is to criticize ______.
| A．the irresponsible clock shop owners |
| B．people who do not value things with a history |
| C．people who do not have a creative attitude toward life |
| D．people’s ignorance (无知) of traditional craftsmanship |
Holiday Inns and McDonald’s. both saw unmatched growth in the 1960s. Their growth opened another direct business operation—franchising.
These operations have the same general pattern. The franchisor, the parent company, first establishes a successful retail business. As it expands, it sees a profit potential in offering others the right to open similar business under its name. The parent company’s methods and means of identification with consumers are included in this right. The parent company supplies skill, and may build and rent stores to franchisees. For these advantages the franchisee pays the franchisor a considerable fee. However, some of the advantages and disadvantages are different.
By extending a “proven” marketing method, a parent can profit in several ways. First, the franchisee’s purchase price gives the parent an immediate return on the plan. Then the sale of supplies to the franchisee provides a continuing source of profits. As new businesses are added and the company’s reputation spreads, the values of the franchise increases and sales of franchises become easier. The snowballing effect can be dramatic. Such growth, too, bring into play the economies of scale. Regional or national advertising that might be financially impossible for a franchisor with 20 franchises could be profitable for one with 40.
The parent, then, finds immediate gains from the opportunity to expand markets on the basis of reputation alone, without having to put up capital or take the risk of owning retail stores. Added to this advantage is a less obvious but material one, Skilled, responsible retail managers are rare. People who invest their capital in franchises, though, probably come closer to the ideal than do paid managers. In fact, the franchisee is an independent store operator working for the franchisor, but without an independent’s freedom to drop supplies at will. Of course the factory’s costs of selling supplies are less. But also certainly the franchisee buying goods that have had broad consumer acceptance will not casually change supplies, even when the contract permits. If the hamburger is not what the customer expected, they may not return. Having paid for the goodwill, the franchisee won’t thoughtlessly destroy it. Franchising refers to a business operation in which a successful parent company .
| A．sells name-brand goods to a private investor |
| B．rents proven ideas and techniques for investment |
| C．sells the right, the guidance to a business under its name |
| D．takes no advertising responsibility for individual investors |
. The advantages of franchising to the parent company are all the following EXCEPT.
| A．an immediate investment return |
| B．the profit from the sale of supplies |
| C．the ownership of additional retail stores |
| D．the possibility of profitable advertising |
The passage mainly tells the reader .
| A．the advantages and disadvantages of franchising |
| B．the benefits of franchising to the franchisor |
| C．the unmatched economic growth in the 1960’s |
| D．some regional and national business operation |
. What will the author probably discuss after the last paragraph?
| A．More advantages of franchising. |
| B．Negative aspects related to franchising. |
| C．The standard of consumer acceptance. |
| D．Risks of investment besides franchising |
We are all interested in equality, but while some people try to protect the school and examination system in the name of equality, others, still in the name of equality, want only to destroy it.
Any society which is interested in equality of opportunity and standards of achievement must regularly test its pupils. The standards may be changed — no examination is perfect — but to have no tests or examination would mean the end of equality and of standards. There are groups of people who oppose this view and who do not believe either in examinations or in any controls in schools or on teachers. This would mean that everything would depend on luck since every pupil would depend on the efficiency the values and the purpose of each teacher.
Without examinations, employers will look for employees from the highly respected schools and from families known to them — a form of favouritism will replace equality at the moment. The bright child from an ill-respected school can show certificates to prove he or she is suitable for a job, while the lack of certificate indicates the unsuitability of a dull child attending a well-respected school. This defense of excellence and opportunity would disappear if examinations were taken away, and the bright child from a poor family would be a prisoner of his or her school’s reputation, unable to compete for employment with the child from the favoured school.
The opponents of the examination system suggest that examinations are an evil force because they show differences between pupils. According to these people, there must be no special, different, academic class. They have even suggested that there should be no form of difference in sport or any other area: all jobs or posts should be filled by unsystematic selection. The selection would be made by people who themselves are probably selected by some computer. The word “favouritism” in paragraph 3 is used to describe the phenomenon that .
| A．bright children also need certificates to get satisfying jobs. |
| B．poor children with certificates are favoured in job markets. |
| C．children from well-respected schools tend to have good jobs. |
| D．children attending ordinary schools achieve great success. |
. What would happen if examinations were taken away according to the author?
| A．Schools for bright children would lose their reputation. |
| B．There would be more opportunities and excellence. |
| C．Children from poor families would be able to change their schools. |
| D．Children’s job opportunity would be affected by their school reputation. |
. The opponents of the examination system will agree that .
| A．jobs should not be assigned by systematic selection |
| B．computers should be selected to take over many jobs. |
| C．special classes are necessary to keep the school standards |
| D．schools with academic subjects should be done away with |
. The passage mainly focuses on .
| A．schools and certificates | B．examination and equality |
| C．opportunity and employment | D．standards and reputation |
Grown-ups know that people and objects are solid. At the movies, we know that if we reach out to touch Tom Cruise, all we will feel is air. But does a baby have this understanding?
To see whether babies know objects are solid, T. Bower designed a method for projecting an optical illusion of a hanging ball. His plan was to first give babies a real ball, one they could reach out and touch, and then to show them the illusion. If they knew that objects are solid and they reached out for the illusion and found empty air, they could be expected to show surprise in their faces and movements. All the 16- to 24-week-old babies tested were surprised when they reached for the illusion and found that the ball was not there.
Grown-ups also have a sense of object permanence, We know that if we put a box in a room and lock the door, the box will still be there when we come back. But does a baby realize that a ball that rolls under a chair does not disappear and go to never-never land?
Experiments done by Bower suggest that babies develop a sense of object permanence when they are about 18 weeks old. In his experiments, Bower used a toy train that went behind a screen. When 16-week-old and 22-week-old babies watched the toy train disappear behind the left side of the screen, they looked to the right, expecting it to reappear. If the experimenter took the train off the table and lifted the screen, all the babies seemed surprised not to see the train. This seems to show that all the babies had a sense of object permanence. But the second part of the experiment showed that this was not really the case. The researcher substituted a ball for the train when it went behind the screen. The 22-week-old babies seemed surprised and looked back to the left side for the train. But the 16-week-old babies did not seem to notice the switch. Thus, the 16-week-old babies seem to have a sense of “something permanence,” while the 22-week-old babies had a sense of object permanence related to a particular object. The passage is mainly about .
| A．babies’ understanding of objects | B．effects of experiments on babies |
| C．babies’ sense of sight | D．different tests on babies’ feelings |
In Paragraph 3, “object permanence” means that when out of sight, an object .
| A．still exists | B．keeps its shape | C．still stays solid | D．is beyond reach |
. What did Bower use in his experiments?
| A．A chair. | B．A screen. | C．A film. | D．A box. |
. Which of the following statements is true?
| A．The babies didn’t have a sense of direction. |
| B．The older babies preferred toy trains to balls. |
| C．The younger babies liked looking for missing objects. |
| D．The babies couldn’t tell a ball from its optical illusion. |
We live in a technological society where most goods are mass-produced by unskilled labor. Because of this, most people think that craft 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. “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, most 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 powerplanes help them lay out a house better and make more precision cuts on the wood. Also, it is not uncommon say 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 problem 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. Compared to the carpenters in the past, modern carpenters are .
| A．more successful | B．more learned |
| C．more imaginative | D．more hardworking |
What does the underlined work “they” (paragraph 2) refer to?
| A．Carpenters who are fond of oak stairways. |
| B．Carpenters who have college degrees. |
| C．People who think highly of carpenters of old. |
| D．People who think that modern material is of low quality. |
What does the third paragraph mainly discuss?
| A．People in the past preferred to use oak to build stairways. |
| B．It is now expensive to employ a carpenter. |
| C．Modern houses last as long as the old ones. |
| D．Good carpenters still exist in modern times. |
What would be the best title for the text?
| A．Is Craft Dead? | B．Craft, Back to Life? |
| C．History of Craftsmanship | D．Carpenters Today and Yesterday |
The "Occupy Wall Street" movement gained more support on Wednesday as unions and students joined in. With the protests developing from a group of young people's camping out near the New York Stock Exchange on September 17 to large-scale (大规模的) movements across the country and around the world, people can't help asking: What has led to "Occupy Wall Street?"
Three years after the severe economic crisis, the U.S. economy now is stuck again. Protesters are not satisfied with the present economic situation since unemployment rate is above 9 percent and economic growth has slowed. The housing market is still struggling for a recovery three years after the bubble (泡沫) burst. People are losing their houses even after they have paid a large amount of mortgage(抵押). It is getting difficult for young people to find jobs. People feared that a similar crisis like the one in 2008 may be already on its way.
It is Wall Street that possessed the most riches. It is Wall Street greed that, at least partly, led to the financial crisis in 2008. It was Wall Street's "fat cats" who take taxpayers' aid money as their own big bonus (奖金). With the growing economic crisis around the world, people realize that Wall Street is responsible for it. So they try to target people who created the crisis.
The majority of the protesters are young people under 30. Many of them are unemployed. Some are students with mountains of loans (贷款). Some are hard-working people about to lose their houses even if they have paid a large amount of mortgage. They are complaining that the hard-working middle class is getting poor, yet Wall Street stays wealthy.
William Cohan, author of Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the world, wrote recently that Wall Street not only learned nothing from the 2008 crisis, they are also trying to kill all reforms that might "break this dangerous cycle in which bankers get very rich while the rest of working people suffer from their mistakes." . What is the main idea of the passage?
| A．The cause of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement. |
| B．The demand of the protesters of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement. |
| C．The popularity of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement. |
| D．The development of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement. |
. According to the second paragraph, what set off the “Occupy Wall Street” movement?
| A．The housing market. | B．The bad economic situation. |
| C．The mortgage | D．The high unemployment rate. |
. We can learn from the passage that Wall Street is the symbol of in the USA.
A. civilization B. power C. wealth D. fashionWe can infer that William Cohan .
| A．is the organizer of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement |
| B．lives on Wall Street |
| C．is against the “Occupy Wall Street” movement |
| D．approves of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement |