Alibaba started taking the lead in China, simply enough, by connecting big Chinese manufacturers(制造商)with big buyers across the world. Its business-to-business site, Alibaba.com allowed business to buy almost everything. Alibaba’s advantage wasn’t hard to identify: size. Alibaba is just big, even by Chinese standards. Its marketplaces attract 231 million active buyers, 8 million sellers, 11.3 billion orders a year—and Alibaba is just the middleman. It encourages people to use its markets—not charging small sellers a percentage of the sale.
If you want a quick look into the influence of Alibaba on daily Chinese life, take my experience. I moved to Beijing almost a year ago and quickly got tired of visiting small stores across the crowded, polluted city of 20 million people in search of new electronics, bathroom furnishings, and anything else my wife wanted. “You’re looking for what exactly? Why not try it? ” my Chinese teacher asked me one day. With that, my wonderful new relationship with Alibaba began.
Alibaba’s original business-to-business model now is secondary to consumer buying. Chinese retail(零售)buying makes up 80% of Alibaba’s profit, and leading that group is Taobao, with 800 million items for sale and the most unbelievable selection of things you’ll ever find. TMall.com is Alibaba’s other big site, where you can find brand name goods from Nike and Unilever near the lowest prices.
What I have a hard time explaining to friends and family back in the U.S. is how China has gone beyond traditional shopping—big-box retailers especially —in favor of online purchases on Taobao and a few other sites. In smaller towns than Beijing, where big retailers have not yet traveled, shopping online is shopping, and shopping is Taobao.
I have a list of some of my recent purchases on Taobao for a sense of how extensive the marketplace is. Almost everything arrived a day or two after ordering with free shipping. I’m not even a big buyer, because I need friends to help me search the Chinese-language site. When I was searching my purchase history on my Chinese teacher’s iPad, which helps me buy goods, I looked through with great difficulty about 10 of her purchases for every one of mine.Alibaba’s advantage mainly lies in ___________.
| A.its big size |
| B.its business-to-business service |
| C.its not charging small sellers |
| D.its low price |
What can we learn from the underlined sentence in the passage?
| A.Alibaba is of middle size among all the online sites |
| B.Alibaba will continue to develop. |
| C.Alibaba stands out as the best online site. |
| D.Alibaba acts as a bridge between the buyers and sellers. |
【改编】We can infer from the passage____
| A.The author’s Chinese teacher is also an online purchase lover. |
| B.Taobao has no apparent advantage compared with other similar online sites. |
| C.Alibaba’s business-to-business service earns much more money than retail now. |
| D.TMall.com provides more profit than Taobao. |
【改编】The passage mainly talks about_____
| A.Alibaba has a great influence on people’s daily purchase in China. |
| B.The influence of shopping online goes beyond traditional shopping. |
| C.Shopping online is TaoBao.. |
| D.How the author purchases online in China. |
(2013·辽宁,B)
Going green seems to be a fad(时尚) for a lot of people these days. Whether that is good or bad, we can't really say, but for the two of us, going green is not a fad but a lifestyle.
On April 22, 2011, we decided to go green every single day for an entire year. This meant doing 365 different green things, and it also meant challenging ourselves to go green beyond the easy things. Rather than recycle and reduce our energy, we had to think of 365 different green things to do and this was no easy task.
With the idea of going green every single day for a year, Our Green Year started. My wife and I decided to educate people about how they could go green in their lives and hoped we could show people all the green things that could be done to help the environment. We wanted to push the message that every little bit helps.
Over the course of Our Green Year, we completely changed our lifestyles. We now shop at organic(有机的) stores. We consume less meat, choosing green food. We have greatly reduced our buying we don't need. We have given away half of what we owned through websites. Our home is kept clean by vinegar and lemon juice, with no chemical cleaners. We make our own butter, enjoying the smell of homemade fresh bread. In our home office anyone caught doing something ungreen might be punished.
Our minds have been changed by Our Green Year. We are grateful for the chance to have been able to go green and educate others. We believe that we do have the power to change things and help our planet.What might be the best title for the passage?
| A.Going Green |
| B.Protecting the Planet |
| C.Keeping OpenMinded |
| D.Celebrating Our Green Year |
It was difficult for the couple to live a green life for the whole year because ________.
| A.they were expected to follow the green fad |
| B.they didn't know how to educate other people |
| C.they were unwilling to reduce their energy |
| D.they needed to perform unusual green tasks |
What did the couple do over the course of Our Green Year?
| A.They tried to get out of their ungreen habits. |
| B.They ignored others' ungreen behavior. |
| C.They chose better chemical cleaners. |
| D.They sold their homemade food. |
What can we infer from the last paragraph?
| A.The government will give support to the green project. |
| B.The couple may continue their project in the future. |
| C.Some people disagree with the couple's green ideas. |
| D.Our Green Year is becoming a national campaign. |
China is a land of bicycles. At least it was back in 1992 when I traveled the country. Back then everyone seemed to be riding a bicycle. Millions of them, all black. Cars were rare. Yet since my arrival in Beijing last year, I've found the opposite is true. There are millions of cars. However, people still use their bicycles to get around. For many, it's the easiest and cheapest way to travel today. Bicycles also come in different colors—silver, green, red, blue, yellow, whatever you want.
It's fun watching people biking. They rush quickly through crossroads, move skillfully through traffic, and ride even on sidewalks(人行道). Bicycles allow people the freedom to move about that cars just can't provide.
Eager to be part of this aspect of Chinese culture, I decided to buy a bicycle. Great weather accompanied my great buy. I immediately jumped up on my bicycle seat and started home.
My first ride home was orderly(守秩序的). To be safe, I stayed with a “pack” of bikers while cars on the streets came running swiftly out of nowhere at times. I didn't want to get hit. So I took the ride carefully.
Crossing the streets was the biggest problem. It was a lot like crossing a major highway back in the United States. The streets here were wide, so crossing took time, skill and a little bit of luck.
I finally made it home. The feeling on the bicycle was amazing. The air hitting my face and going through my hair was wonderful. I was sitting on top of the world as I passed by places and people. Biking made me feel alive.According to the author, why are bicycles still popular in China today?
| A.Because they are traditional and safe. |
| B.Because they are convenient and inexpensive. |
| C.Because they are colorful and available. |
| D.Because they are fast and environment friendly. |
The author decided to buy a bicycle because he intended ________.
| A.to ride it for fun |
| B.to use it for transport |
| C.to experience local culture |
| D.to improve his riding skills |
How did the author feel about his street crossing?
| A.It was boring. | B.It was difficult. |
| C.It was lively. | D.It was wonderful. |
Which of the following best describes the author's biking experience?
| A.The author enjoyed showing off his biking skills. |
| B.The author was annoyed by the air while riding. |
| C.The author was praised by the other bikers. |
| D.The author took great pleasure in biking. |
(2013·天津,D)
When asked about happiness, we usually think of something extraordinary, an absolute delight, which seems to get rarer the older we get.
For kids, happiness has a magical quality. Their delight at winning a race or getting a new bike is unreserved(毫不掩饰的).
In the teenage years the concept of happiness changes. Suddenly it's conditional on such things as excitement, love and popularity. I can still recall the excitement of being invited to dance with the most attractive boy at the school party.
In adulthood the things that bring deep joy—love, marriage, birth—also bring responsibility and the risk of loss. For adults, happiness is complicated(复杂的).
My definition of happiness is “the capacity for enjoyment”. The more we can enjoy what we have, the happier we are. It's easy to overlook the pleasure we get from the company of friends, the freedom to live where we please, and even good health.
I experienced my little moments of pleasure yesterday. First I was overjoyed when I shut the last lunchbox and had the house to myself. Then I spent an uninterrupted morning writing, which I love. When the kids and my husband came home, I enjoyed their noise after the quiet of the day.
Psychologists tell us that to be happy we need a mix of enjoyable leisure time and satisfying work. I don't think that my grandmother, who raised 14 children, had much of either. She did have a network of close friends and family, and maybe this is what satisfied her.
We, however, with so many choices and such pressure to succeed in every area, have turned happiness into one more thing we've got to have. We're so selfconscious about our “right” to it that it's making us miserable. So we chase it and equal it with wealth and success, without noticing that the people who have those things aren't necessarily happier.
Happiness isn't about what happens to us—it's about how we see what happens to us. It's the skillful way of finding a positive for every negative. It's not wishing for what we don't have, but enjoying what we do possess.As people grow older, they ________.
| A.feel it harder to experience happiness |
| B.associate their happiness less with others |
| C.will take fewer risks in pursuing happiness |
| D.tend to believe responsibility means happiness |
What can we learn about the author from Paragraph 5 and 6?
| A.She cares little about her own health. |
| B.She enjoys the freedom of traveling. |
| C.She is easily pleased by things in daily life. |
| D.She prefers getting pleasure from housework. |
What can be informed from Paragraph 7?
| A.Psychologists think satisfying work is key to happiness. |
| B.Psychologists' opinion is well proved by Grandma' case. |
| C.Grandma often found time for social gatherings. |
| D.Grandma's happiness came from modest expectations of life. |
People who equal happiness with wealth and success ______.
| A.consider pressure something blocking their way |
| B.stress their right to happiness too much |
| C.are at a loss to make correct choices |
| D.are more likely to be happy |
What can be concluded from the passage?
| A.Happiness lies between the positive and the negative. |
| B.Each man is the master of his own fate. |
| C.Success leads to happiness. |
| D.Happy is he who is content. |
(2013·辽宁,D)
“Indeed,” George Washington wrote in his diary in 1785, “some kind of fly, or bug, had begun to eat the leaves before I left home.” But the father of America was not the father of bug. When Washington wrote that, Englishmen had been referring to insects as bugs for more than a century, and Americans had already created lightningbug(萤火虫). But the English were soon to stop using the bugs in their language, leaving it to the Americans to call a bug a bug in nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The American bug could also be a person, referring to someone who was crazy about a particular activity. Although fan became the usual term, sports fans used to be called racing bugs, baseball bugs, and the like.
Or the bug could be a small machine or object, for example, a bugshaped car. The bug could also be a burglar alarm, from which comes the expression to bug, that is, “to install (安装) an alarm”. Now it means a small piece of equipment that people use for listening secretly to others' conversations. Since the 1840s, to bug has long meant “to cheat”, and since the 1940s it has been annoying.
We also know the bug as a flaw in a computer program or other design. That meaning dates back to the time of Thomas Edison. In 1878 he explained bugs as “little problems and difficulties” that required months of study and labor to overcome in developing a successful product. In 1889 it was recorded that Edison “had been up the two previous nights discovering ‘a bug’ in his invented record player.”We learn from Paragraph 1 that ________.
| A.Americans had difficulty in learning to use the word bug |
| B.George Washington was the first person to call an insect a bug |
| C.the word bug was still popularly used in England in the nineteenth century |
| D.both Englishmen and Americans used the word bug in the eighteenth century |
What does the word “flaw” in the last paragraph probably mean?
| A.Explanation. | B.Finding. |
| C.Origin. | D.Fault. |
The passage is mainly concerned with ________.
| A.the misunderstanding of the word bug |
| B.the development of the word bug |
| C.the public views of the word bug |
| D.the special characteristics of the word bug |
(2013·江苏,C)
If a diver surfaces too quickly, he may suffer the bends. Nitrogen(氮) dissolved (溶解)in his blood is suddenly liberated by the reduction of pressure. The consequence, if the bubbles (气泡)accumulate in a joint, is sharp pain and a bent body—thus the name. If the bubbles form in his lungs or his brain, the consequence can be death.
Other airbreathing animals also suffer this decompression(减压)sickness if they surface too fast: whales, for example. And so, long ago, did ichthy osaurs (鱿). That these ancient sea animals got the bends can be seen from their bones. If bubbles of nitrogen form inside the bone they can cut off its blood supply. This kills the cells in the bone, and consequently weakens it, sometimes to the point of collapse. Fossil(化石)bones that have caved in on themselves are thus a sign that the animal once had the bends.
Bruce Rothschild of the University of Kansas knew all this when he began a study of ichthyosaur bones to find out how widespread the problem was in the past. What he particularly wanted to investigate was how ichthyosaurs adapted to the problem of decompression over the 150 million years. To this end, he and his colleagues traveled the world's naturalhistory museums, looking at hundreds of ichthyosaurs from the Triassic period and from the later Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.
When he started, he assumed that signs of the bends would be rarer in younger fossils, reflecting their gradual evolution of measures to deal with decompression. Instead, he was astonished to discover the opposite. More than 15% of Jurassic and Cretaceous ichthyosayurs had suffered the bends before they died, but not a single Triassic specimen(标本)showed evidence of that sort of injury.
If ichthyosaurs did evolve an antidecompression means, they clearly did so quickly—and, most strangely, they lost it afterwards. But that is not what Dr Rothschild thinks happened. He suspects it was evolution in other animals that caused the change.
Whales that suffer the bends often do so because they have surfaced to escape a predator (捕食动物)such as a large shark. One of the features of Jurassic oceans was an abundance of large sharks and crocodiles, both of which were fond of ichthyosaur lunches. Triassic oceans, by contrast, were mercifully sharkand crocodilefree. In the Triassic, then, ichthyosaurs were top of the food chain. In the Jurassic and Cretaceous, they were prey(猎物)as well as predator—and often had to make a speedy exit as a result.Which of the following is a typical symptom of the bends?
| A.A twisted body. |
| B.A gradual decrease in blood supply. |
| C.A sudden release of nitrogen in blood. |
| D.A drop in blood pressure. |
The purpose of Rothschild's study is to see ________.
| A.how often ichthyosaurs caught the bends |
| B.how ichthyosaurs adapted to decompression |
| C.why ichthyosaurs bent their bodies |
| D.when ichthyosaurs broke their bones |
Rothschild's finding stated in Paragraph 4 ________.
| A.confirmed his assumption |
| B.speeded up his research process |
| C.disagreed with his assumption |
| D.changed his research objectives |
Rothschild might have concluded that ichthyosaurs ________.
| A.failed to evolve an antidecompression means |
| B.gradually developed measures against the bends |
| C.died out because of large sharks and crocodiles |
| D.evolved an antidecompression means but soon lost it |