After having worked in the University of Maryland for three years, I got a job offer from another university---Lynn University. I left my letter of offer on my present boss's desk, turned around, and closed the door quietly. I was expecting a call from my boss saying congratulations, which would show her approval of my leaving.
In the afternoon, my boss called me, saying, "Can we meet tomorrow? "That was a good signal. The next day, I met with my boss. She said, 'Nicholas, we want you. What do you want?" I said, "Boss, I deserve a significant pay raise this year due to my outstanding performance. I think I need a 10% pay raise next year as a condition for me to stay here." My boss said, "No problem.''
When I left her office, I called Lynn University and told them that I was going to get a 10% pay raise. They had to give me 10% more than their original pay offer in order for me to accept the job. The new boss told me that he was willing to give me more, but I would feel very bad working at this university with such a high pay. I would win a battle, but I would lose a war. He said, "The problem is that your colleague will earn less than you, so you will feel guilty(内疚)and uncomfortable. But, I can still give you 5% more than the original offer."
I delivered this massage to my present boss, and she told me that she would give me another 5% pay raise if I promised to refuse this new job offer. On top of that, she would strongly support my early promotion（晋升)from assistant professor to associate professor. According to the university policy, you must take at least 6 years to get promoted. That was my third year of employment at this university. After refusing the new job offer, I finally enjoyed both a pay raise and early promotion.In paragraph 2, what does Nicholas mean by "That was a good signal"?
| A．His boss would approve his leaving the University of Maryland. |
| B．He would leave his present job and work for Lynn University. |
| C．His boss would talk with him about a possible pay offer. |
| D．His friends would congratulate him on getting a new job offer. |
Why did the new boss agree to another 5% raise when Nicholas asked for 10% the next day?
| A．He did not have the right to make such a big pay offer. |
| B．he did not want Nicholas to earn more than he did. |
| C．Nicholas was not experienced enough to get such a raise. |
| D．Nicholas would not feel good for earning too much more than others. |
How much pay raise did the author finally get as a result of refusing the new job offer?
| A．5% | B．10% | C．15% | D．20% |
In the text, the author mainly tells his experience of________.
| A．earning a pay raise |
| B．refusing a job offer |
| C．applying for a new position |
| D．making decisions in the workplace |
A small town in Tasmania, an island off the south coast of mainland Australia, is making itself an environmental role model by becoming the country's first plastic bag-free town.
Since April 28, Coles Bay's population of 175 and its tourist shoppers have been using reusable paper or cloth bags to carry their shopping.
Ben Keamey, a local businessman who supports the bag ban, said it would cut the amount of waste and prevent damage to native wildlife that try to eat the plastic.
"Most businesses here come from the tourism and that's all based on the environment, so people were pretty supportive," he said.
Every year Australians use more than six billion plastic bags. More than half of these come from the supermarket. Since it takes years for the bags to biodegrade（生物递减分解）, tens of millions end up polluting the environment. They kill about 100,000 sea-birds and animals, which mistake bags for food, every year.
Only in the past few months have major Australian supermarkets begun cutting on their use of plastic bags. Environmental groups are pushing for a plastic bag fee like that in Ireland. There, since plastic bags cost 10 pence (about 1 yuan) each, their use has been cut by 90 per cent.
Pollution caused by plastic bags is a big headache for countries all over the world. As early as 1999, Beijing said that only plastic bags of certain thickness could be used. This was to encourage them to be used again and again, since an average of six million plastic bags are used there every there every single day.Which might be the best title for this passage?
| A．Deadly Plastic Bags | B．The End of Plastic Bags |
| C．How to Reuse Plastic Bags | D．The Present Situation of Plastic Bags |
Plastic bags will not be used by the native people of Coles Bay because they ______.
| A．cause the environmental pollution | B．are not easy to be reused |
| C．are not as good as cloth bags | D．are not strong enough |
Which of the following statements is NOT true?
| A．Plastic bags kill many animals in Australia each year. |
| B．Most Australian supermarkets have begun cutting on their use of plastic bags. |
| C．People at Coles Bay think poor environment may affect their tourism. |
| D．You have to pay for the plastic bags if you go shopping in Ireland. |
The example of Coles Bay is to show that ______.
| A．people take serious actions to deal with the plastic bag problem |
| B．people begin to realise the harm of using plastic bags |
| C．Australia is the first country in solving the plastic bag problem |
| D．Australians are aware of the importance of protecting the small town |
Which of the following measures on plastic bags is NOT mentioned in the passage?
| A．To forbid to use them by law. |
| B．to charge fee for plastic bags. |
| C．To make them thick enough to be reuseable. |
| D．To make them environmentally friendly. |
People often hear each others' voices without ever seeing the faces they belong to. "Nowadays we are talking away on the phone without meeting people," says Seung-Jae Moon. And from business conference calls to chat lines, people often imagine they would recognize the speaker if they saw him or her. Seung-Jae Moon, a linguist of Korea found that, under certain conditions, they're actually right.
Moon decided to see just how close those mental pictures match up with reality and if there was any relation to how people speak rather than what they are saying. He recorded 16 Koreans, half men and half women, reading the same passage, and took a full-body photo and head shot of each speaker. Then he played the tapes for 361 Koreans and 173 Americans who did not speak Korean and asked his subjects to match up voice and picture. The Korean participants viewing full-body photos were quite perceptive. A majority linked 6 of the 8 women to the correct voice and did so for 5 of the 8 men. With the Korean group shown only faces, accuracy plummeted, but more than 20 percent of the subjects selected the same incorrect picture. The Americans showed no accuracy in matching the foreign voices to photos, but they too were consistent in their errors. That disconnection reveals conflicting ideas of physical and vocal beauty. Moon asked people to pick a favorite face and voice. Seventy percent of the Koreans picked one voice, but there was no agreement on a face. Americans didn' t agree on either count. And over 65 percent of both Koreans and Americans did not match their favorite face with their favorite voice.
Moon hopes to use software to break voices into components like pitch and hoarseness to narrow down which elements trigger certain mental pictures. "If we can map which characteristics of the voice triggers what kind of linage, and it doesn't matter whether that image is the right or wrong one of the actual speaker, then we can create an image through voice,' he says. That capacity could help to create computer-synthesized voices tailored to conjure up specific associations — audio books for children that inspire motherly visages, or warning alerts that bring to mind a stern police officer.People often think that they would ______ the speaker when they saw the speaker.
| A．understand | B．recognize | C．like | D．surprise |
Moon decided to do the experiment to ______.
| A．see how close mental pictures match up with reality |
| B．how people speak |
| C．see if there was any relation to how people speak rather than what they are saying |
| D．both A and C |
He asked ______ Korean women to speak and recorded their voices.
| A．12 | B．16 | C．8 | D．10 |
______ were more perceptive in recognizing full-body photos.
| A．The Koreans | B．The American women |
| C．The Korean women | D．The Americans |
______ percent of Koreans and Americans matched their favorite face with their favorite voice.
| A．Less than 65 | B．Less than 35 | C．Over 65 | D．About 20 |
As a teenager in 1972, Bill Gates boasted that he would be a millionaire by the time he was 20. While he did not quite achieve that goal, only 15 years later, he was a millionaire. And by 1992, as head of the Microsoft company, he became the richest man in America with assets（资产）of nearly US $ 6.3 billion.
Born in Seattle, Washington on 28, October, 1956, Gates was named William Henry after his father and grandfather. From the beginning, he was an extremely energetic and intelligent child. He had read the entire world book encyclopedia（百科全书）by the age of nine. His favorite subjects at school were science and math and his favorite pastime was "thinking".
Gates first started to play with computers at the age of 13. Before long he became an expert at working the school's computer. After his graduation from secondary school, Gates was accepted by the three top universities in the USA-Princeton, Harvard and Yale. He chose Harvard and began classes there the next autunm, majoring maths. But he was still obsessed（占据心里）with computers and spent as much time in the computer laboratories as he did in the lecture halls.
By 1975, Gates and a partner, Paul Allen, had developed a software program called BASIC. This was not the first program ever created, but its inventors were the first to decide that people who wanted to use it should pay for it.
BASIC was a success because until it came along, there had been no efficient way of getting computers to carry out instructions. Although he had not completed his degree, Gates left university and went to work full time for the new company he had formed called Microsoft.
His next project was the software program that made him famous and very rich. It was called DOS, short for Disk Operating System, and it was purchased by IBM in 1980. Today it is the operating system used in more than 14 million personal computers around the world.
As chief executive officer（首席行政长官）of Microsoft, Gates is known as a bright man, but one who is not easily satisfied. He is quick to criticize his staff and hates to be questioned about decisions he has made. He was regarded as a loner and unfashionable boring computer nut until his marriage to Microsoft manager Melinda French on New Year's Day 1994. Yet to many people now, Gates, is a person who is, in spite of his great wealth, humble（谦恭）and ordinary. He spends his money carefully. He eats in fast food restaurants and flies economy class. And when praised for Microsoft's great success, he has been heard to say, "All we do is put software in a box and if people see it in the stores and like it, they buy it."When he was a teenager, Bill Gates wanted to be a ______.
| A．teacher | B．doctor | C．businessman | D．professor |
When Gates went to Harvard, he ______.
| A．was only interested in maths |
| B．spent most of his time in computer laboratories |
| C．developed the first computer software program |
| D．divided his time between his maths studies and the computer laboratories |
Before the development of BASIC, ______.
| A．no one was interested in computer software |
| B．software programs were not considered commercial projects |
| C．software programs were very expensive |
| D．no one wanted to pay for computer software |
When the writer says "He was regarded as a loner and unfashionable boring computer nut", he means ______.
| A．Bill was so strong-minded that no one could change his mind |
| B．The only thing that could interest Bill in his life was computer |
| C．Bill was such a boring young man that nobody would like to talk to him |
| D．Bill couldn't work out the boring computer programs |
Most people think that Bill Gates is ______.
| A．a crazy person | B．a person obsessed with making money |
| C．someone who spends money freely | D．a quite common, normal person |
Many people go to school for an education. They learn languages, history, politics, geography, physics, chemistry and mathematics. Others go to school to learn a skill so that they can make a living. School education is very important and useful. Yet, no one can learn everything from school. A teacher, no matter how much he knows, can not teach his students everything they want to know. The teacher’s job is to show his students how to learn. He teaches them how to read and how to think. So, much more is to be learned outside school by the students themselves.
It is always more important to know how to study by oneself than to memorize some facts or a formula(公式). It is actually quite easy to learn a certain fact in history or a formula in mathematics. But it is very difficult to use a formula in working out a math problem. Great scientists before us didn’t get everything from school .Their teachers only showed them the way. Edison did not even finish primary school. But they were all so successful. They invented so many things for mankind. The reason for their success is that they knew how to study. They read books that were not taught at school . They would ask many questions as they read. They did thousands of experiments. They worked hard all their lives, wasting not a single moment. Above all , they knew how to use their brain.To work out a math problem, you need to know __________.
| A．only a certain formula |
| B．how to memorize some facts |
| C．only some facts |
| D．the method to work it out |
Why were many scientists so successful?
| A．They received good education. |
| B．They were very clever. |
| C．They knew how to learn. |
| D．They learned lots of facts and formulas. |
How did great scientists study?
| A．They read a lot of books and asked many questions while reading. |
| B．They did thousands of experiments. |
| C．They always worked hard and never wasted time. |
| D．All of the above. |
One of the best-known American writers of children’s books is Alfred Strong, or Doctor Strong, as he is better known to readers everywhere. Now, an art show called “Doctor Strong From Then to Now” is travelling around the United States. The pictures and drawings show the history of Doctor Strong.
Doctor Strong first became famous almost fifty years ago when his first children’s book was published. Since then, he has written forty-five books that have sold more than one hundred million copies around the world.
Doctor Strong’s books are known for their easy use of words and colorful, hand-drawn pictures. These drawings bring life to his imaginary creatures. The Cat in the Hat, Horton the Elephant, The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, and hundreds of others.
The San Diego Museum, in California, organized the art show. It included about three hundred Doctor Strong’s original(最早的) drawings and some of his writings.
Most of Doctor Strong’s books, although written in a funny way, have serious messages. For example, in Mc Elligot’s Pool, he describes the danger of pollution. He discusses the arms race in The Butter Battle Book, written in 1984.
Doctor Strong is almost eighty-four years old now. He says he never planned to write stories just for children. He says he writes stories that interest people of all ages. He says he uses easy words so that everyone, even a child, can understand. Alfred Strong is a famous _______ in the United States.
| A．doctor | B．artist | C．writer | D．reader |
Doctor Strong first became famous in __________.
| A．his eighties when an art show was travelling around the United States |
| B．his fifties when his drawings and writings were published |
| C．1984 when his book Mc Elligot’s Pool was published |
| D．his thirties when his first book was published |
Doctor Strong’s books are very popular in America because __________.
| A．they are stories about animals such as cats, elephants and so on |
| B．they are written in easy words with colorful pictures |
| C．he organized the art show in California |
| D．they are written in a funny way |
His purpose in writing many such books is __________.
| A．to show his original pictures and drawings |
| B．to organize a special art show of his own |
| C．to make his readers laugh or smile when they read his books |
| D．not only to interest people but also to uncover some serious social problems |