I started my travel business 6 years ago. I didn’t have a _______ budget, so I simply told everyone I was familiar with my business. _______, I had got very few clients.
Late one evening I received a call from a woman _______ about a cruise she had booked. I didn’t _______ her voice so I asked her where she lived. She replied, “Montana.” I told her that I didn’t have any clients in Montana and that she must have been _______. “Sir, I have your _______ written down right here on my piece of paper,_______ I must have booked it with you. Could you recheck it, please?” she _______ responded. _______, she had my website but I wasn’t her travel agent.
I ________ her name, phone number and sailing information and told her I would call the cruise line and see ________ I could find out. She greatly ________ my offer to help. The next day I called to tell her that I found out that one agency did have her ________ and gave her its number. The woman was very ________ with the solution. We also talked for a few minutes about her ________ and I gave her some tips while on board. She thanked me again and I told her it would be my ________ to help her any time in the future. After a few days, I completely ________ about the encounter.
Several months later, much to my ________, I got a call from the lady’s sister from Montana, who wanted to get married on a cruise ship. That’s just the beginning of the story. My little ________ to the lady in Montana brought 30 brand new clients! Time will only tell how many new clients will come my way, ________ one simple offer.
1.A. marketing B. travelling C. housing D. training
2.A. Unusually B. Unbelievably C. Unfortunately D. Unreasonably
3.A. commenting B. complaining C. debating D. asking
4.A. understand B. remember C. tolerate D. recognize
5.A. mistaken B. misunderstood C. forgotten D. amused
6.A. number B. name C. website D. address
7.A. for B. but C. so D. though
8.A. excitedly B. politely C. curiously D. coldly
9.A. Therefore B. Besides C. Instead D. Indeed
10.A. checked out B. put down C. sorted out D. turned down
11.A. what B. how C. when D. where
12.A. rejected B. accepted C. appreciated D. weighed
13.A. application B. booking C. password D. signature
14.A. embarrassed B. annoyed C. confused D. satisfied
15.A. family B. cruise C. career D. agency
16.A. pleasure B. credit C. shame D. reward
17.A. thought B. worried C. cared D. forgot
18.A. sadness B. astonishment C. relief D. disappointment
19.A. rudeness B. generosity C. kindness D. sympathy
20.A. in terms of B. on account of C. in honor of D. on behalf of
You are one of the most familiar faces in class, not because you are funny or have great note-taking abilities but because you ask the most number of questions. 1. It is important to have a good way to ask questions. Here are a few tips for improving your questioning skills:
Be clear about what you want to know.
Be clear about what you want to know and frame your question accordingly.2. If you beat around the bush, your teachers won’t be entirely sure what it is that you haven’t understood, or need an explanation for.
3.
If you are uncertain about a particular subject, make it clear when it is being discussed. If you put your question in context (语境), you can be sure of it. Because questions often open up new avenues within a subject, doing this would benefit the whole class.
Don’t hesitate to talk to your teacher after class.
4. Therefore, if you feel uncomfortable about asking a question in front of your classmates, wait till the class is over. This will probably put you more at ease.
Write down your questions.
5. They may appear when you’re studying, reading or taking notes. Note them down on a piece of paper so that you won’t forget to ask them later. This can also make sure that you don’t have any unanswered questions when the exam approaches.
A. Don’t ask more questions once a time.
B. Questions may appear at any time.
C. Being curious is not a bad quality.
D. You may think it is good to ask no questions.
E. Ask questions related to the context.
F. A question needs to be easy to be understood and to the point.
G. One-to-one interactions (互动) are always much better than one-to-many.
Recently some articles claim the word “selfie” as one of the most annoying words. But I’d like to offer that maybe it isn’t not so bad.
The “selfie” is used to describe the self taken photo, often from a smart phone. Women and men alike adorn their Instagram, Facebook and Twitter accounts with these pictures, sometimes with puckered lips or large smiles. In fact, the selfie has become so widely known that over 31 million photos on Instagram are captioned with the selfie.
Let’s think about it. Someone takes about 10 seizes each time they do, and they only end up posting one or two of those. They pick the one that they feel makes them look the best. Isn’t that beautiful? In that one picture, someone has even him or herself confidence.
Self-image is important. In society today, we are so often consumed with what society tells us is perfect. But maybe, with that one selfie, we feel like we fit that bill. We feel handsome, beautiful, confident, smart, happy and content. For that moment, everything bad or terrible that has ever happened to us is erased, because that smile or that pucker is what gives us the determination to love ourselves.
I saw a spoken word poem recently and the young man said: If I ask you what you love the answers will most likely roll off your tongue. You love to read. You love to write. You love birds, music, tattoos… Your mom, your brother, your sister, your daughter, your best friend, your dog. How long do you think you could go on and on before you said “I love myself”？
That statement hit me like a ton of bricks. I’ve struggled with confidence all of my life. I still do. And in no way am I saying that taking a selfie is a gateway to that confidence. However, the selfie does deserve some credit for allowing individuals to express themselves. Pamela Rutledge agrees, stating, “There are many more photographs available now of real people than models.”
1.In the opinion of the writer, selfie ________.
A. is an annoying phenomenon online
B. makes a person become self-centered
C. is just a fashion among teenagers
D. gives a person a sense of confidence
2.According to the writer, we live in a society where ________.
A. being perfect is highly valued
B. people judge others by their appearance
C. confidence is based on one’s self-images
D. beauty almost decides everything really
3.The writer mentioned a poem to stress ________.
A. the power of real love
B. the need to love ourselves
C. the kinds of love we have
D. the endless love we get
4.What Pamela said suggested that ________.
A. selfie gets models to take more photos
B. selfie helps more people look like models
C. selfie provides more photos of real people
D. selfie causes models to be out of work
When her five daughters were young, Helen An always told them that there was strength in unity (团结). To show this, she held up one chopstick, representing one person. Then she easily broke it into two pieces. Next, she tied several chopsticks together, representing a family. She showed the girls it was hard to break the tied chopsticks. This lesson about family unity stayed with the daughters as they grew up.
Helen An and her family own a large restaurant business in California. However, when Helen and her husband Danny left their home in Vietnam in 1975, they didn’t have much money. They moved their family to San Francisco. There they joined Danny’s mother, Diana, who owned a small Italian sandwich shop. Soon afterwards, Helen and Diana changed the sandwich shop into a small Vietnamese restaurant. The five daughters helped in the restaurant when they were young. However, Helen did not want her daughters to always work in the family business because she thought it was too hard.
Eventually the girls all graduated from college and went away to work for themselves, but one by one, the daughters returned to work in the family business. They opened new restaurants in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Even though family members sometimes disagreed with each other, they worked together to make the business successful. Daughter Elizabeth explains, “Our mother taught us that to succeed we must have unity, and to have unity we must have peace. Without the strength of the family, there is no business.”
Their expanding business became a large corporation in 1996, with three generations of Ans working together. Now the Ans’ corporation makes more than $ 20 million each year. Although they began with a small restaurant, they had big dreams, and they worked together. Now they are a big success.
1.Helen tied several chopsticks together to show ________.
A. the strength of family unity B. the difficulty of growing up
C. the advantage of chopsticks D. the best way of giving a lesson
2.We can learn from Paragraph 2 that the An family ________.
A. started a business in 1975
B. left Vietnam without much money
C. bought a restaurant in San Francisco
D. opened a sandwich shop in Los Angeles
3.Which of the following can be the best title for the passage?
A. How to Run a Corporation B. Strength Comes from Peace
C. How to Achieve a Big Dream D. Family Unity Builds Success
More companies and recyclers are taking steps to ensure that old electronic devices such as TVs and computers aren’t sent to poor countries.
The Basel Action Network, a Seattle-based non-profit that largely exposed the overseas discarding (丢弃) of US electronic waste, on Thursday launched a programme to use third-party employees to certify (证实) recyclers who don’t export dangerous electronic waste.
The so-called e-Steward recyclers will also agree not to discard the waste in US landfills and agree to meet other criteria. The certification is intended to provide companies and consumers with some assurance that the waste, which can include toxins (毒素) such as lead and mercury, is disposed of safely.
The Government Accountability Office, in a 2008 report, declared that US electronic waste was often disposed of unsafely in such countries as India. There, workers recycle gold, silver and copper from the waste, often in open-air acid baths.
The Basel Network also says it won assurances from 13 organizations, including Samsung, Bank of America, Wells Far-go, that they’ll use e-Steward recyclers whenever possible. Wells Fargo had already been using recyclers who declared not to export. So far, Basel has certified three recyclers and seven sites.
Before e-stewards, even, companies that wanted to avoid export of electronic waste had to “hope for the best”, when, they handed their waste to recyclers, says Robert Houghton, president of Ohio-based recycler Redemtech. It is an e-Steward that counts major companies among its customers. “Now, they can get some proof,” Houghton says.
Basel’s standards compete with another set launched in January. It was made by industry and backed by the Environmental Protection Agency.
That standard, called R-2, doesn’t ban the export of dangerous electronic waste but requires that it be handled safely. Instead of a ban, the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries says, efforts should be made to help poor countries develop safe recycling.
1.How were most electronic wastes dealt with before?
A. They were thrown into US landfills.
B. They were buried in the desert m die US.
C. They were exported to poor countries.
D. They were reused by families in poor countries.
2.E-Steward recyclers, main job is probably to ________.
A. prevent old devices from open-air acid baths
B. dispose of electronic waste safely
C. collect more electronic waste for profits
D. assure America’s leading rule in the electronic market
3.People in India import electronic waste to ________.
A. get rid of toxins B. learn how to make devices
C. recycle valuable metals D. make cheaper products
4.The passage is mainly about ________.
A. how to deal with old electronic products
B. the development of recycling in the world
C. how to fight against electronic pollution
D. safer treatment of electronic waste
Aunt Karen always had a special place in my heart. When I was growing up, I knew I could count on her to have room for me on her lap and words of love and encouragement when I needed to hear them. When she died five years ago, I was devastated. The whole family was still in shock when her husband, Uncle Ronnie, died a week later. I longed to have a small item of Aunt Karen’s to remember her by, but seeing her children and grandchildren overcome by the grief of this double loss made me shy away from asking.
A few months after Aunt Karen’s death, I was on my way to work when I saw Rescued Treasures, a local second-hand store. I only had a couple of dollars on me and didn’t really intend to buy anything, but I stopped anyway just to look inside. I had been shopping around for a few minutes when a small, black handbag caught my eye. It wasn’t fancy or special. I didn’t really need a handbag and continued to look around the store, but something kept drawing me back to that handbag. Finally, I checked the price tag (标签). It was just one dollar.
The handbag stayed in the back of my car for weeks until I came upon it during a car clean-up. I opened it up. I couldn’t believe it. They hadn’t even cleaned it out. It was still full of junk, old candy wrappers, old receipts (收据) and used paper. Usually the store emptied things inside, so there wouldn’t be any surprises for a new owner.
I threw away some wastes, and sorted through the receipts, when I found one item in the small inside pocket. It was an insurance card with the name “Karen Stair” written on it. I began to cry. My beloved Aunt Karen. This was her handbag.
1.What do we know from the passage?
A. Karen’s husband survived her by five years.
B. Karen’s children refused to give any item to the author.
C. The author was very shy when she was young.
D. Karen had been very kind to the author.
2.The underlined word “devastated” in Paragraph 1 probably means “________”.
A. very worried B. a little lonely
C. extremely sad D. slightly disappointed
3.The author made up her mind to buy the handbag because ________.
A. she just needed to buy a handbag
B. the bag looked strange and was worth the price
C. it happened that she could afford it
D. someone else persuaded her to buy it
4.As soon as the author opened the handbag, she felt very ________.
A. surprised B. excited
C. sick D. nervous
