As societies develop, their members start to see things not so much according to what they need, but according to what they want. When people have enough money, these wants become demands.
Now, it's important for the managers in a company to understand what their customers want if they are going to develop effective marketing strategies(策略). There are various ways of doing this. One way at supermarkets(超市), for example, is to interview(采访)customers while they're doing their shopping. They can be asked what they prefer to buy and then the results of the research can be studied. This provides information on which to base future marketing strategies. It's also quite normal for top managers from department stores to spend a day or two each month visiting stores and mixing freely with the public, as if they were ordinary customers, to get an idea of how customers act.
Another way to get information from customers is to give them something. For example, some fast food restaurants give away tickets in magazines or on the street that permit customers to get part of their meal for nothing. As well as being a good way of attracting customers into the restaurants to spend their money, it also allows the managers to get a feel for where to attract customers and which age-groups to attract.
Another strategy used at some well-known parks such as Disneyland is for top managers to spend at least one day in their work, touring the park dressed as Mickey Mouse or something like that. This provides them with a perfect chance to examine the scene and watch the customers without being noticed. The text is designed for________.
| A．managers |
| B．salesmen |
| C．researchers |
| D．customers |
Which of the following can help managers get useful information?
| A．Visiting customers themselves. |
| B．Giving customers free food on the street. |
| C．Visiting parks as ordinary customers. |
| D．Asking customers questions at supermarkets. |
What does the word “this” underlined in the last sentence refer to?
| A．Visiting Disneyland. |
| B．Wearing attractive clothes. |
| C．Acting Mickey Mouse. |
| D．Dressing up and walking around. |
The main idea of the text is________.
| A．how to do market research |
| B．how to develop marketing strategies |
| C．how to find out customers' social needs |
| D．how to encourage customers to spend more money |
Whether in the workplace or on the football field, effective teamwork can produce amazing results. However, working successfully as a team is not as easy as it may seem. Effective teamwork certainly does not just happen automatically; it takes a great deal of hard work and compromise. There are a number of factors that must be in place to make a good team.
Effective leadership is one of the most important components of good teamwork. The team’s leader should possess the skills to create and preserve a positive working environment and motivate and inspire the team members to take a positive approach to work and be highly committed. An effective team leader will promote a high level of spirit and make them feel supported and valued.
Communication is a vital factor of all interpersonal relationship and especially that of a team. Team members must be able to articulate their feelings, express plans and goals, share ideas and see each other’s opinions.
Conflicts will arise no matter how well a team functions together. The best way to deal with conflicts is to have some organized methods of handling conflicts. Team members should be able to voice their concerns without fear of offending others. Instead of avoiding conflict issues, a hands-on approach that settles them quickly is much better. It is often advised that the team leader sit with the conflicting parties and help work out their differences without taking sides and trying to remain objective if possible.
The team leader must set a good example to create good teamwork. In order to keep team members positive and committed and motivated, the team leader herself / himself needs to show these qualities. The team turns to the leader for support and guidance. So any negative words or behaviors on the leader’s part can be disastrous.+X+K]
Regardless of what type of work you are in, knowing how to effectively work on and with a team is going to be extremely important to your success and that of your team.Effective leadership is important partly because _________.
| A．it helps a leader to develop lots of skills |
| B．it makes a leader feel supported and valued |
| C．it creates a positive working environment |
| D．it depends on interpersonal relationship of a team |
The underlined word “articulate” probably means _________.
| A．hide | B．feel | C．express | D．plan |
When conflicts arise among team members, the team leader should ________.
| A．worry about the team members | B．ignore the team members’ voices |
| C．try to avoid conflict issues | D．work out their differences |
To become a good team leader, you have to __________.
| A．be positive and committed | B．set up a good team |
| C．look for support from the team | D．avoid natural disasters |
Which is the best title for the passage?
| A．Football And Teamwork | B．What Makes Effective Teamwork |
| C．Handle Conflict In A Team | D．Communication And Teamwork |
Most American schools have boys and girls in the same classroom. But a public high school in the small, rural town of Boonsboro, Maryland, offers a special program called the Academy. Top students in the ninth and tenth grades can attend single-sex classes for math, science, English and social studies.
The aim is to help teenagers keep their mind on their work by keeping males and females apart. What they really want to do is take that top group of kids and take them to the very highest level they can achieve there, so that they’re prepared for college.
Students are invited to enter this program after they finish middle school, and placement in the Academy is voluntary. However, they need high marks and test scores and strong teacher recommendations. They also need to be involved in activities.
Almost 350 students have taken part in the Academy. It began as an experiment in 2010.
Michael Bair has been at Boonsboro High for twenty years and directs the Academy. His ninth-grade English class for boys centers on books that he believes boys find interesting. He says that the novels the students are reading now are very manly (男子气概的) novels. These novels deal with the arrogance (傲慢) of man and the pride of man which finally leads to man’s downfall.
One of those books, for example, is The Call of the Wild by Jack London. This classic story tells of a dog stolen from his home and sold to work as a sled dog in Canada’s Klondike Gold Rush.
Morgan Fleet, a senior at Boonsboro High, likes being in the Academy. She says boys and girls act differently when they are together in a classroom. She believes this difference seems to prevent her from developing herself because she’s more focused on thoughts like “Oh, I wish they would shut up. Oh, what do they think of me?’’ instead of focusing on “What’s the homework? What’s going on in this class? What’s the lesson?”.
There is one activity that girls and boys in the Academy do together. At the end of the day, many of them stay and help tutor students who are having trouble in school.What is the purpose of the Academy program?
| A．To offer a special program in high school. |
| B．To help students concentrate on study. |
| C．To strengthen sex education for teenagers. |
| D．To start learning college courses earlier. |
To enter the Academy program, students are NOT required to _________.
| A．do well in their study | B．be recommended by teachers |
| C．take part in some activities | D．have worked as volunteers |
The Call of the Wild is given as an example to show that male students ___.
| A．should learn more about literature |
| B．should have a sense of protecting the wildlife |
| C．are reading more manly novels |
| D．are interested in stories on animals |
Which is likely to be Morgan Fleet’s opinion?
| A．A girl cares about the boys’ opinions of her. |
| B．Single-sex classes should be stopped. |
| C．Girls are more focused when studying with boys. |
| D．Boys and girls act the same in separate classrooms. |
The passage is intended to _________.
| A．introduce the single-sex class project |
| B．explain the differences between boys and girls |
| C．persuade students to enter the Academy program |
| D．urge students to work hard in their study |
With large and small keyboards everywhere, neither children nor adults need to write much of anything by hand. That’s a big problem. Study after study suggests that handwriting is important for brain development — helping kids get fine motor skills and learn to express and create ideas. Yet the time devoted to teaching penmanship in most schools has shrunk to just one hour a week. Is it time to give up handwriting? Have a look at the link between the brain and penmanship, and you may get the answer.
A test among students in grades 2, 4 and 6 found that they not only wrote faster by hand than by keyboard, but also created more ideas when composing essays with handwriting. And other research shows that the finger movements required to write by hand activate brain areas involved with thought, language, and short-term memory.
A recent Indiana University study had one group of children practice writing letters by hand while a second group just looked at those letters. Then, both groups of kids entered a functional MRI (核磁共振) that scanned their brains as the researchers showed them the same letters. Researchers found that the brain activity in the first group was far more advanced and “adult-like”.
Handwriting also affects other people’s way they think of adults and children. Several studies have shown that the same average essay will score much higher if written with good penmanship and much lower if written out in poor handwriting. These studies have also found that people judge the quality of a person’s ideas based on his or her handwriting. And the consequences are real: On standardized tests with handwritten sections, like the SAT, all essay that is considered hard to recognize gets a big zero.
Studies show that this isn’t only an English-language phenomenon. Chinese and Japanese youths are suffering from “character amnesia”. They can’t remember how to write characters, thanks to computers and text messaging. Some experts fear that Chinese writing and reading are so closely linked in the brain that China’s reading ability as a nation could suffer.According to the passage, it can be learned that ________________.
| A．many researches have been done on handwriting |
| B．essays can’t be composed without handwriting |
| C．all children write faster by keyboard than by hand |
| D．most schools are trying to teach more handwriting |
What does the Indiana University study imply?
| A．Children should practice writing letters |
| B．Handwriting can increase brain activity |
| C．It’s good for children to enter a functional MRI. |
| D．Letters should often be shown to children |
What does the 4th paragraph mainly talk about?
| A．Handwriting affects both adults and children. |
| B．Handwriting helps a person write better essays. |
| C．SAT should be done with good handwriting. |
| D．Good handwriting makes a person seem smarter. |
Which of the following statements is TRUE?
| A．Essays written with keyboards will get lower scores. |
| B．The quality of your ideas depends on your handwriting. |
| C．Chinese and Japanese youths don’t know how to write. |
| D．Less handwriting may affect China’s reading ability. |
The passage tries to tell us that __________________.
| A．keyboards are more popular than handwriting |
| B．we shouldn’t judge people by their handwriting |
| C．handwriting is of great importance |
| D．it’s time to give up using keyboards |
While I was in my 4th month of pregnancy (妊娠期) with my second child, we were preparing for a trip to Louisiana, where Marshall’s family live, to celebrate Jane’s 2nd birthday. Two days before we were to leave, we got the shocking news that I was going to lose the baby. Not knowing when this would happen, we decided to continue with our trip.
Since Marshall’s family lives on a 600-acre cattle farm, you often find that you have a lot of time to yourself to think when you are there. That is precisely what I did not want to do at this time. I told Marshall that I needed to get a good book to get lost in while I was there. I told him I heard the Harry Potter books were good, so he went out and got the first one for me.
During that trip, I totally got lost in the book, which was of great help during a time when I needed a distraction to forget about the sadness. In the book, I noticed the name “Seamus”. I vaguely remembered it was pronounced “Shamus” and I liked the sound of that. I mentioned it to Marshall and he liked it too. Toward the end of the trip, I had just 5 chapters left and I knew I was about to finish the first book, which I was pretty excited about.
Soon after we put Jane down to bed, I had started labor (分娩), so I was unable to read. The labor lasted 5 and 1/2 hours, but Marshall stayed there with me, sitting beside me and reading aloud the last 5 chapters of Harry Potter. I can never fully explain how much that helped me through the experience. And ever since then, Marshall and I both have been fans of the Harry Potter books. We remember how they helped us get through that time of our lives.
We were sad to have lost the baby, but the name Seamus started our journey toward adoption. And we gave this name to our adopted son. Though our Seamus doesn’t have a drop of Irish blood in him, the name fits him perfectly. Why did the writer want a good book during the trip?
| A．Because the trip to Louisiana would take a long time. |
| B．Because she didn’t want to think of losing her baby. |
| C．Because she had nothing else to do except reading. |
| D．Because a good book could help her enjoy her trip. |
According to the story, we can know that the Harry Potter books _________________.
| A．made the family’s trip more exciting |
| B．include five books all together |
| C．have someone called Seamus in them |
| D．can help people deal with their problems |
The writer named her son Seamus because ___________________.
| A．she wanted to keep her trip in memory |
| B．she loved this name very much |
| C．her son doesn’t have Irish blood |
| D．it is a perfect name for a boy |
Which of the following is TRUE about the couple?
| A．They planned their trip after getting the shocking news. |
| B．They thought the cattle farm was too large to do anything on. |
| C．They felt excited when they almost finished the trip. |
| D．They liked reading Harry Porter very much after the trip. |
Which is the best title for the passage?
| A．Funny Stories Of My Family | B．Seamus And Harry Potter |
| C．How We Got To Louisiana | D．How My Son Got His Name |
The government of Norway is planning to build an unusual storage center on an island in the Arctic Ocean. The place would be large enough to hold about two million seeds. The goal is to present all crops known to scientists. The British magazine New Scientist published details of the plan last month. The structure will be designed to protect the world’s food supply against nuclear war, climate change and other possible threats. It will be built in a mountain on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen. The mountain is less than one thousand kilometers from the North Pole, the northernmost position on earth.
An international group called the Global Crop Diversity Trust is working on the project. The director of the group, Cary Fowler, spoke to New Scientist. He said the project would let the world rebuild agriculture if, in his word, “the worst came to the worst”. Norway is expected to start work next year. The project is expected to cost three million dollars. Workers will drill deep in the side of a sandstone mountain. Temperatures in the area never rise above 0ºC. The seeds will be protected behind walls a meter thick and high-security door.
The magazine report says the collection will represent the products of ten thousand years of farming. Most of the seeds at first will come from collections at seed banks in Africa, Asia and Latin America. To last a long time, seeds need to be kept in very low temperatures. Workers will not be present all the time. But they plan to replace the air inside the storage space each winter. Winter temperatures on the island are about eighteen degrees below 0ºC. The cold weather would protect the seeds even if the air could not be replaced.
Mr. Fowler says the proposed structure will be the world’s most reliable gene bank. He says the plant seeds would only be used when all other seeds are gone for some reason. Norway first proposed the idea in the 1980s. But security concerns delayed the plan. At that time, the Soviet Union was meeting in Rome of the Food and Agriculture Organization.The project is meant to ______.
| A．increase the world’s food output in the future |
| B．carry out some scientific experiments on plant genes |
| C．protect crop seeds from dying out in case of possible disasters |
| D．build an exhibition centre of the world’s plant seeds |
Which of the following statements is TRUE according to the above passage?
| A．The government of Norway will perform the project alone. |
| B．Seeds to be collected there were produced ten thousands years ago. |
| C．Spitsbergen is chosen because it is free of the threat unclear war forever. |
| D．Temperature is a major consideration when choosing the storage place. |
We can infer from the text that _______.
| A．People will get newly-developed seeds from the center every year. |
| B．The storage center will greatly promote world agriculture |
| C．Norway had meant to build the storage centre about 30 years before. |
| D．There haven’t been any seed storage centers in the world before. |
What is probably the best title of the passage?
| A．The Best Place to Store Seeds |
| B．Noah’s Ark（诺亚方舟）of Plant Seeds in Plan |
| C．Concerns of World Food Supply |
| D．A New Way to Feed the World |