泰祺教育

Section I  Use of English

Directions:

Read the following text. Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C or D on the ANSWER SHEET. (10 points)

How many different kinds of emotions do you feel? You may be   1   to find that it is very hard to specify all of them. Not only   2   hard to describe in words, they are difficult to 3  . As a result, two people rarely   4   all of them. However, there are a number of   5  emotions that most people experience.

When we receive something that we want, or something happens   6   we like, we usually feel joy or happiness. Joy is a positive and powerful emotion,   7   for which we all strive. It is natural to want to be happy, and all of us   8   happiness. As a general   9  , joy occurs when we reach a   10   goal or obtain a desired object.

  11   people often desire different goals and objects, it is   12   that one person may find joy in repairing an automobile,   13   another may find joy in solving a math problem. Of course, we often share   14   goals or interests, and therefore we can experience joy together. This may be in sports, in the arts, in learning, in raising a family, or in   15   being together.

When we have difficulty   16   desired objects or reaching desired goals, we experience  17   emotions such as anger and grief. When little things get in our way, we experience  18   frustrations or tensions. For example, if you are dressing to go out   19   a date, you may feel frustration when a zipper breaks or a button falls off. The more difficulty you have in reaching a goal, the more frustrated you may feel and the angrier you may become. If you really want something to happen, and you feel it   20   happen, but someone or something stops it, you may become quite angry.

Section II  Reading Comprehension

Part A

Directions:

Read the following four texts. Answer the questions after each text by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answers on the ANSWER SHEET. (40 points)

Text 1

Habits are a funny thing. We reach for them mindlessly, setting our brains on auto-pilot and relaxing into the unconscious comfort of familiar routine. "Not choice, but habit rules the unreflecting herd," William Wordsworth said in the 19th century. In the ever-changing 21st century, even the word "habit" carries a negative implication.

So it seems paradoxical to talk about habits in the same context as creativity and innovation. But brain researchers have discovered that when we consciously develop new habits, we create parallel paths, and even entirely new brain cells, that can jump our trains of thought onto new, innovative tracks.

These researchers believe that rather than dismissing ourselves as unchangeable creatures of habit, we can direct our own change by consciously developing new habits. In fact, the more new things we try — the more we step outside our comfort zone — the more inherently creative we become, both in the workplace and in our personal lives.

But don't bother trying to kill off old habits; once those ruts of procedure are worn into the brain, they're there to stay. Instead, the new habits we deliberately press into ourselves create parallel pathways that can bypass those old roads.

"The first thing needed for innovation is a fascination with wonder," says Dawna Markova, author of "The Open Mind" and an executive change consultant for Professional Thinking Partners. "But we are taught instead to 'decide,' just as our president calls himself 'the Decider.' " She adds, however, that "to decide is to kill off all possibilities but one. A good innovational thinker is always exploring the many other possibilities."

All of us work through problems in ways of which we're unaware, she says. Researchers in the late 1960s discovered that humans are born with the capacity to approach challenges in four primary ways: analytically, procedurally, relationally (or collaboratively) and innovatively. At the end of adolescence, however, the brain shuts down half of that capacity, preserving only those modes of thought that have seemed most valuable during the first decade or so of life.

The current emphasis on standardized testing highlights analysis and procedure, meaning that few of us inherently use our innovative and collaborative modes of thought. "This breaks the major rule in the American belief system — that anyone can do anything," explains M. J. Ryan, author of the 2006 book This Year I Will... and Ms. Markova's business partner. "That's a lie that we have perpetuated, and it fosters commonness. Knowing what you're good at and doing even more of it creates excellence." This is where developing new habits comes in.

Text 2

Over the past decade, thousands of patents have been granted for what are called business methods. Amazon.com received one for its "one-click" online payment system. Merrill Lynch got legal protection for an asset allocation strategy. One inventor patented a technique for lifting a box.

Now the nation's top patent court appears completely ready to scale back on business-method patents, which have been controversial ever since they were first authorized 10 years ago. In a move that has intellectual-property lawyers abuzz the U.S. court of Appeals for the federal circuit said it would use a particular case to conduct a broad review of business-method patents. In re Bilski, as the case is known , is "a very big deal", says Dennis D. Crouch of the University of Missouri School of law. It "has the potential to eliminate an entire class of patents."

Curbs on business-method claims would be a dramatic about-face, because it was the federal circuit itself that introduced such patents with its 1998 decision in the so-called state Street Bank case, approving a patent on a way of pooling mutual-fund assets. That ruling produced an explosion in business-method patent filings, initially by emerging internet companies trying to stake out exclusive rights to specific types of online transactions. Later, more established companies raced to add such patents to their files, if only as a defensive move against rivals that might beat them to the punch. In 2005, IBM noted in a court filing that it had been issued more than 300 business-method patents despite the fact that it questioned the legal basis for granting them. Similarly, some Wall Street investment films armed themselves with patents for financial products, even as they took positions in court cases opposing the practice.

The Bilski case involves a claimed patent on a method for escaping from risk in the energy market. The Federal circuit issued an unusual order stating that the case would be heard by all 12 of the court's judges, rather than a typical panel of three, and that one issue it wants to evaluate is whether it should "reconsider" its state street Bank ruling.

The Federal Circuit's action comes in the wake of a series of recent decisions by the supreme Court that has narrowed the scope of protections for patent holders. Last April, for example the justices signaled that too many patents were being upheld for "inventions" that are obvious. The judges on the Federal circuit are "reacting to the anti-patent future at the Supreme Court", says Harold C. Wegner, a patent attorney and professor at George Washington University Law School.

Text 3

Divorce doesn't necessarily make adults happy. But toughing it out in an unhappy marriage until it turns around just might, a new study says. The research identified happy and unhappy spouses, culled（選出） from a national database. Of the unhappy partners who divorced, about half were happy five years later. But unhappy spouses who stuck it out often did better. About two-thirds were happy five years later.

Study results contradict what seems to be common sense, says David Blankenhorn of the Institute for American Values, a think tank on the family. "In popular discussion, in scholarly literature, the assumption has always been that when a marriage is unhappy, if you get a divorce, it is likely you will be happier than if you stayed married," Blankenhorn says. "This is the first time this has been tested empirically, and there is no evidence to support this assumption." The study  looked  at  data  on  5,232  married  adults  from  the  National  Survey  of  Families  and Households. It included 645 who were unhappy. The adults in the national sample were analyzed through  13 measures of psychological well being. Within the  five years,  167 of the unhappy were divorced or separated and 478 stayed married.

On average, divorce didn't reduce symptoms of depression, raise self-esteem or increase a sense of mastery compared to those who stayed married, the report says. Results were controlled for race, age, gender and income.  Staying married  did not tend to trap unhappy  spouses in violent relationships.

What helped the unhappy marrieds turn things around? To supplement the formal study data, the research team asked professional firms to recruit focus groups totaling 55 adults who were "marriage survivors." All had moved from unhappy to happy marriages. These 55 once-discontented marrieds felt their unions got better via one of three routes, the report says:

Marital endurance. "With time, job situations improved, children got older or better, or chronic ongoing problems got put into new perspective." Partners did not work on their marriages.

Marital work. Spouses actively worked "to solve problems, change behavior or improve communication."

Personal change. Partners found "alternative ways to improve their own happiness and build a good and happy life despite a mediocre marriage." In effect, the unhappy partner changed.

Those who worked on their marriages rarely turned to counselors. When they did, they went to faith-based ones committed to marriage. Men, particularly, were "very suspicious of anyone who wanted money to solve personal problems." Those who stayed married also generally disapproved of divorce. They cited concerns about children, religious beliefs and a fear that divorce would bring its own set of problems.

Text 4

Two years ago, Rupert Murdoch’s daughter, Elisabeth, spoke of the “unsettling dearth of integrity across so many of our institutions”. Integrity had collapsed, she argued, because of a collective acceptance that the only “sorting mechanism” in society should be profit and the market. But “it’s us, human beings, we the people who create the society we want, not profit.”

Driving her point home, she continued: “It’s increasingly apparent that the absence of purpose, of a moral language within government, media or business could become one of the most dangerous goals for capitalism and freedom.” This same absence of moral purpose was wounding companies such as News International, shield thought, making it more likely that it would lose its way as it had with widespread illegal telephone hacking.

As the hacking trial concludes ---- finding guilty one ex-editor of the News of the World, Andy Coulson, for conspiring to hack phones, and finding his predecessor, Rebekah Brooks, innocent of the same charge ---- the wider issue of dearth of integrity still standstill, Journalists are known to have hacked the phones of up to 5,500 people. This is hacking on an industrial scale, as was acknowledged by Glenn Mulcaire, the man hired by the News of the World in 2001 to be the point person for phone hacking. Others await trial. This long story still unfolds.

In many respects, the dearth of moral purpose frames not only the fact of such widespread phone hacking but the terms on which the trial took place. One of the astonishing revelations was how little Rebekah Brooks knew of what went on in her newsroom, how little she thought to ask and the fact that she never inquired how the stories arrived. The core of her successful defence was that she knew nothing.

In today’s world, title has become normal that well-paid executives should not be accountable for what happens in the organizations that they run perhaps we should not be so surprised. For a generation, the collective doctrine has been that the sorting mechanism of society should be profit. The words that have mattered are efficiency, flexibility, shareholder value, business–friendly, wealth generation, sales, impact and, in newspapers, circulation. Words degraded to the margin have been justice fairness, tolerance, proportionality and accountability.

The purpose of editing the News of the World was not to promote reader understanding, to be fair in what was written or to betray any common humanity. It was to ruin lives in the quest for circulation and impact. Ms Brooks may or may not have had suspicions about how her journalists got their stories, but she asked no questions, gave no instructions ---- nor received traceable, recorded answers.

Part B

Directions:

Read the following text and answer the questions by choosing the most suitable subheading from the list A—G for each numbered paragraph (41—45). There are two extra subheadings which you do not need to use. Mark your answers on the ANSWER SHEET . (10 points)

  A. Follow on Lines

  B. Whisper: Keep It to Yourself 

  C. Word of Guidance: Stick to It

  D. Code of Success: Freed and Targeted

  E. Efficient Work to Promote Efficient Workers

  F. Done: Simplicity Means Everything

  G. Efficiency Comes from Control 

    Every decade has its defining self-help business book. In the 1940s it was How to Win Friends and Influence People, in the 1990s The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People. These days we’re worried about something much simpler: Getting Things Done.