The United Nations, notorious for endless deliberations, is trying a technological quick fix. Its Global Compact Office, which promotes corporate responsibility, has embraced a once marginal social technology—the wiki—in the hope that it will help staff in 80 countries share information and reach consensus with less deliberation and more speed. The office has done this by enlisting the public in its review of progress reports from more than 2, 000 companies—an effort to make sure each is complying with established social and environmental guidelines. It’ s debatable whether encouraging public input is a good way to increase efficiency, but the move is the latest example of a quickly growing trend. Wiki software—easy-to-use programs that let anyone with Internet access create, remove and edit content on a Web page—first gained popularity thanks to Wikipedia, the user-generated encyclopedia that has come to be praised as one of the Web’ s greatest resources. Now the technology is increasingly spreading outside the world of bizarre tech people and into the mainstream, being adopted by workplaces, corporations and even governments. In what’ s been called the “wiki workplace, “ a growing number of organizations have begun shifting from traditional hierarchical structures to self-organized and collaborative networks, using wiki software—a basket of technologies that include wikis, blogs and other tools—to foster innovation across organizational and geographic boundaries. Executives say the new tools make it easier for teams to collaborate and share information, and to get projects up and running on the fly. “ Collaborative software has become a very important part of how businesses will invent and innovate, “ says Ken Bisconti, IBM’ s vice president of messaging and collaboration software. That the United Nations is embracing wikis is an indication that organizations are beginning to get over their fear that this technology could introduce chaos into their operations. As Wikipedia has demonstrated, Web sites that are open to the public are vulnerable to deliberate injury, bias, inconsistency and other problems. But most corporate wikis are closed to the public, limiting access to employees inside the company firewall. These quasi-closed systems, say technology experts, impose accountability simply by keeping a record of every change and who made it. IBM has used internal wikis since 2005, with an eye to selling the concept to its clients. One of its first applications was a wiki that employees could use to collaborate on writing a blogging manifesto: a set of policies for appropriate use of blogs in and out of the office. Thousands of employees contributed and edited that manifesto, which after receiving corporate approval—became the company’ s official policy.

Why was the parrot regarded as unique?There was once a man in South America who had a parrot, a pet bird that could imitate human speech. The parrot was unique. There was no bird like him in the whole world. He could learn to say any word except one. He could not say the name of his native town, Ketunnel. The man did everything he could to teach the parrot to say “ Ketunnel“ , but he never succeeded. At first he was very gentle with the bird. But gradually, he lost his temper. “ You stupid bird. Why can ’ t you learn to say that one word? Say ’ Ketunnel’ , or I will kill you. “ But the parrot would not say it. Many times the man screamed, “ Say ’ Ketunnel’ , or I’ll kill you. “ But the bird would never repeat the name. Finally, the man gave up. He picked up the parrot and threw him into the chicken house. “You are even more stupid than the chickens. “ In the chicken house, there were four old chickens, waiting to be killed for Sunday’ s dinner. The next morning, when he went to the chicken house, the man opened the door. He was shocked by what he saw. He could not believe his eyes and ears. On the floor lay three dead chickens. The parrot was screaming at the fourth, “ Say’ Ketunnel’ , or I’ll kill you. “ It looks like human being. It looks different from other birds. It could learn to say most of words. It could not imitate human speech.

Pay and productivity, it is generally assumed, should be related. But the relationship seems to weaken 【C1】______people get older. Mental ability declines with age. That is the same for the brainy and the dim—and not【C2】______for humans: it is measurable even for fruit flies. 【C3】______minds that keep lively will suffer less than the lazy. In general, the more education you have, the more productive your old 【C4】______will be. Some 【C5】______decline faster than others. According to most studies, people’ s numerical and reasoning abilities are at their best in their 20 s and early 30 s. 【C6】______abilities—those that depend on knowledge—may improve with age. For most workers, decreased abilities will 【C7】______to lower productivity: only a minority will find know-how and knowledge outweighs their failing powers. Even those employees who remain highly productive will be likely to shine only in a narrow 【C8】______. Academics notice this. It is less clear that employers do. Studies of supervisors-ratings show no clear correlation 【C9】______age and perceived productivity. When other employees-views are【C10】______into account though, the picture changes: these ratings suggest that workers in their 30s are the 【C11】______productive and hardworking, with scores falling thereafter. That is 【C12】______up by studies of work samples, which find lower productivity among the oldest employees. A study for America’ s Department of Labor showed job performance peaking at 35, and【C13】______declining. It varied by industry: the fall was slower in footwear, but faster in furniture. Intellectual occupations are harder to measure, but the picture is the same. Academics seem to publish 【C14】______as they age. Painters, musicians and writers show the same tendency. Their output peaks in their 30s and 40s. The only【C15】______is female writers, who are most productive in their 50s.

Proper arrangement of classroom space is important to encouraging interaction. Most of us have noticed how important physical setting is to efficiency and comfort when we work. Today’ s corporations hire human engineering specialists and spend a great deal of time and money to make sure that the physical environments of buildings are fit to the activities of their inhabitants. Similarly, college classroom space should be designed to encourage the activity of critical thinking. We will move into the twenty-first century, but step into almost any college classroom and you willstep back in time at least a hundred years. Desks are normally in straight rows, so students can clearly see the teacher but not all their classmates. The assumption behind such an arrangement is obvious: everything important comes from the teacher. With a little imagination and effort, unless desks are fixed to the floor, the teacher can correct this situation and create space that encourages interchanges among students. In small or standard sized classes, chairs, desks and tables can be arranged in different ways: circles, U-shapes, or semicircles. The primary goal should be for everyone to be able to see everyone else. Larger classes, particularly those held in lecture halls, unfortunately, allow much less flexibility. Arrangement of the classroom should also make it easy to divide students into small groups for discussion or problem-solving exercises. Small classes with moveable desks and tables present no problem. Even in large lecture halls, it is possible for students to turn around and form groups of four to six. Breaking a class into small groups provides more opportunities for students to interact with each other, think out hard, and see how other students’ thinking processes operate—all these are the most important elements in developing new modes of critical thinking. In courses that regularly use a small group format, students might be asked to stay in the same small groups throughout the course. A colleague of mine allows students to move around during the first two weeks, until they find a group they are comfortable with. He then asks them to stay in the same seat, with the same group, from then on. This not only creates a comfortable setting for interaction but helps him learn students, names and faces.

Read the following text and write an essay to 1) summarize the main points of the text, 2) make clear your own viewpoints, and 3) justify your stand. In your essay, make full use of the information provided in the text. If you use more than three consecutive words from the text, use quotation marks (“ “). You should write 160 -200 words on the ANSWER SHEET. We have all heard the saying, “ You are what you eat. “ Current research suggests that the majority of Americans have bad eating habits, and some of this is determined by our lifestyle, which demands that we eat quickly and inexpensively. What are the commonest foods on the American menu? Hamburgers and French fries, sugar-laden drinks: pies and whipped cream, malts and ice-cream. Apart from an occasional broiled hamburger, all the things on that list are bad for us. And there are certain prophets of doom who predict that all those fat laden fast foods provide us with only one thing—a faster road to the grave. On the other hand, there are those who claim that the basic fast-food meal contains all the nourishment you need. After all, there are meat, milk, salad and bread. And if you have a cheeseburger instead of a hamburger, you are doing yourself an extra favor by adding additional protein. What these good news gossips are overlooking is the usually pulpy bun: the excess of sugar in the maltose or Coke: and overdose of salt that is sprinkled on the hamburger to make palatable. So you decide to stay away from the hamburger joint, and buy your food from the supermarket. Are you any better off? Not if you buy frozen or canned food. The experts tell us that canned and frozen vegetables contain sugar, as well as all sorts of perspectives that are not doing anything to improve your health. According to these people, the only way to be sure your food is good for you is to buy it and cook it fresh. And then, of course, you have to eat it—and that creates another problem. The speed of today’ s world has encouraged many of us to eat far too fast. We do not chew our food enough, and we eat on the run or we jump and start running the minute we finish eating.

[*]PART OF A TELEPHONE INTERVIEW Keet: Dr. Thomas? This is Keet Bradley from the daily news. I’ d like to ask you some questions about the new official standard weight that you purchased. Thomas: I’ d be happy to help you. What would you like to know? Keet: First of all, how is the standard weight used? Thomas: Well, the people in our department use it to check the scales all over the country. The department of weights and measures is a government agency. It’ s our responsibility to see that all the scales measure a kilogram accurately so this is the way we use to adjust the scales. Keet: How did you check the scales before? Thomas: We have an old standard weight that we used to use. It had to be replaced because it was imprecise. You see it was made of poor quality metal that was too porous. It absorbed too much moisture. Keet : Oh. So when the weather was humid it weighed more and when it was dry it weighed less. Thomas: Exactly. And that variation can affect the standards of the whole country. So our department had the new weight made out of higher quality metal. Keet: How much does it cost? Thomas: About 45 , 000 dollars. Keet: 45, 000 dollars? For a one kilogram weight? That’ s more expensive than gold. Is it really worth that much? Thomas: I’ m sure it is. Industries depend on our government agency to monitor the accuracy of scales so that when they buy and sell their products there is one standard. Think of the drug industry, for example, those companies rely on high accuracy scales to manufacture and package medicine.

What is the topic of this passage?The Library of Congress, the largest library in the United States, contains about eighteen million books. Harvard University has the largest academic library with more than nine million volumes. The largest public library is the Chicago Public Library with nearly six million volumes, followed by the New York Public Library with 5. 5 million. Consequently, finding a book in any of these libraries must be like finding a needle in a haystack! Librarians use a special system to make the job of finding books easier. To keep the books in order, librarians give a number to each book in the library, and books are arranged on the shelves according to these numbers. In order to find the number of a book, you must look in the card catalogue. The card catalogue is a special file of cards with information about the books in the library. Each book has three cards in the card catalogue: a title card, an author card, and a subject card. These cards are arranged in the card catalogue in alphabetical order. If you know the title of the book you are looking for, look for the title card. If you only know the author look for the author card. If you are looking for a book about a particular subject, look for the subject card. When you find the card of the book you want, copy the number of the book. Then you can find the book easily. The largest library in the United States. A special system for numbering books. Finding books in a library. Finding a needle in a haystack.

A white kid sells a bag of cocaine at his suburban high school. A Latino kid does the same in his inner-city neighborhood. Both get caught. Both are first-time offenders. The white kid walks into juvenile court with his parents, his priest, a good lawyer and medical coverage. The Latino kid walks into court with his mom, no legal resources and no insurance. The judge lets the white kid go with his family: he’s placed in a private treatment program. The minority kid has no such option. He’ s detained. There, in a nutshell, is what happens more and more often in the juvenile-court system. Minority youths arrested on violent felony charges in California are more than twice as likely as their white counterparts to be transferred out of the juvenile-justice system and tried as adults, according to a study released last week by the Justice Policy Institute, a research center in San Francisco. Once they are in adult courts, young black offenders are 18 times more likely to be jailed and Hispanics seven times more likely than are young white offenders. “Discrimination against kids of color accumulates at every stage of the justice system and skyrockets when juveniles are, tried as adults, “ says Dan Macal-lair, a co-author of the new study. “California has a double standard: throw kids of color behind bars, but rehabilitate white kids who commit comparable crimes. “ Even as juvenile crime has declined from its peak in the early 1990s, headline grabbing violence by minors has intensified a get-tough attitude. Over the past six years, 43 states have passed laws that make it easier to try juveniles as adults. In Texas and Connecticut in 1996, the latest year for which figures are available, all the juveniles in jails were minorities. Vincent Schiraldi, the Justice Policy Institute’s director, concedes that “some kids need to be tried as adults. But most can be rehabilitated. “ Instead, adult prisons tend to brutalize juveniles. They are eight times more likely to commit suicide and five times more likely to be sexually abused than offenders held in juvenile detention. “ Once they get out, they tend to commit more crimes and more violent crimes, “ says Jenni Gainsborough, a spokeswoman for the Sentencing Project, a reform group in Washington. The system, in essence, is training career criminals. And it’ s doing its worst work among minorities.

[*]It’ s 8 o’ clock on Tuesday, May 1 st. Here is the news: Between the hours of 7: 00 and 8: 00 P. M. last night, five thieves broke into the country house of Lord and Lady Chest-field on an island. They entered by a window at the rear of the house and surprised the owners who were watching television in the drawing room. After disconnecting the telephone and tying up Lord and Lady Chest-field, the thieves escaped with 16 precious paintings. The market value of such art works have been estimated at somewhere around 4 million pounds. Lord and Lady Chest-field were not seriously harmed but have been treated for shock in the hospital. Early this morning a woman with a Scottish accent telephoned the Times in London to say that the Chest-field Organization for Freedom had claimed the responsibility for the theft. This is the third time this year that this organization has claimed the responsibility for an act of this kind. The organization defends all the farmers on the island. The farmers were forced to leave their lands when Lord Chest-field, their landlord , refused to renew their traditional lease last year in order to extend the reservation area for birds.

How long does an interview usually last according to the speaker?To be successful in a job interview, you should demonstrate certain personal and professional qualities. You need to create a good image in the limited time available, usually from 30 to 45 minutes. You must make a positive impression which the interviewer will remember while he interviews other candidates. The following are some qualities you should especially pay attention to during an interview. First of all, you should be properly dressed. The right clothes worn at the right time can win the respect of the interviewer and his confidence in your judgement. It may not be true that clothes make a man. But the first and often last impression of you is determined by the clothes you wear. Secondly, you should pay close attention to your manner of speaking. Since speech is a reflection of personality, you should reflect confidence by speaking in a clear voice, loud enough to be heard, without being aggressive or overpowering. You should be prepared to talk knowledgeably about the requirements of the position you are applying for. Finally, to be really impressive, you must convey a sense of self-confidence and enthusiasm for work. If you display these characteristics with just a little luck, you’ll certainly succeed in the typical personnel interview. At least 45 minutes. From 30 to 45 minutes. Less than 30 minutes. More than 45 minutes.

“Deadpool“ , which so far has taken more than $ 500m in cinemas worldwide, is an atypical blockbuster, a foul-mouthed anti-hero film with a mature“ R“ audience rating. But in one important respect it is typical of many of Hollywood’ s most successful movies: it does not rely on a world-famous star to sell it. 【K1】______What happened? Ms Lawrence is by the reckoning of some the biggest star in Hollywood’ s firmament: Mr Smith held that unofficial title for years. Have film stars lost some of their lustre? Overall, the cinema business’ s health seems as rude as ever. 【K2】______The industry has held up well against increased competition from streaming services that give people plenty of option stars with the biggest global profiles, such as Tom Cruise and Leonardo DiCaprio, are instantly recognizable in lucrative overseas markets. 【K3】______ Such productions are more likely to make stars than to be made by them. “You really don’t want to have a movie star“ in certain big franchises, says a senior studio executive: the films will be hits either way, so why pay more? An analysis by The Economist of two decades of box-office results in America and Canada does not refute Ms Lawrence’ s status as one of the biggest box-office draws. 【K4】______ Hollywood executives still want to believe in stars’ power to get bums on seats, so they will bet again on a headliner even after a few flops. Academic studies in recent decades have generally failed to find any conclusive evidence to support studio bosses’ faith in stars, pulling power. 【K5】______ It helps to have a damsel in distress, but it does not really which damsel. [A] But much of the industiy’ s recent success, at home and abroad, comes from the rise of the big special-effects event film: franchises like“ Fast and Furious“ , “ Avengers“ , “The Hunger Games“ , “Jurassic Park“ , James Bond and“Star Wars“. [B]In contrast, two recent“star vehicle“films struggled to attract audiences despite heavy promotion and high-profile openings on Christmas Day in America. “Joy“ , with Jennifer Lawrence, and “Concussion“ , with Will Smith, both failed to earn back their production budgets at the domestic box office and also fared poorly overseas. [C]The 2015 film, “ Terminator: Genisys“, a flop in America with $ 90m in takings on a $ 155m production budget, was a blockbuster overseas, earning $ 351m, including $ 113m in China. But at least 14 films with more than $ 500m each led in worldwide box-office takings last year. [D]Our own analysis suggests only that a few of them do add a bit to box-office receipts. And they reckon that as long as the stars look good and can act, they make scant difference, with at best a very few exceptions. [E] Revenue from the American box office grew by 6. 3% in 2015 , to a record high of $ 11 billion. Thanks to droves of new film-goers in China, where the market grew by 49% last year, global revenues increased by 4% to $ 38 billion. [F] But it is hard statistically to disentangle her singular appeal from the massive success of the franchise films she has been in. By the same token, she should perhaps not be blamed for the poor performance of “Joy“—without Jennifer Lawrence in it, it would have been a flop, a total flop. [G] Jennifer Lawrence was not “Jennifer Lawrence, biggest female movie star in the world“ until she made the first “Hunger Games“film.

The United Nations, notorious for endless deliberations, is trying a technological quick fix. Its Global Compact Office, which promotes corporate responsibility, has embraced a once marginal social technology—the wiki—in the hope that it will help staff in 80 countries share information and reach consensus with less deliberation and more speed. The office has done this by enlisting the public in its review of progress reports from more than 2, 000 companies—an effort to make sure each is complying with established social and environmental guidelines. It’ s debatable whether encouraging public input is a good way to increase efficiency, but the move is the latest example of a quickly growing trend. Wiki software—easy-to-use programs that let anyone with Internet access create, remove and edit content on a Web page—first gained popularity thanks to Wikipedia, the user-generated encyclopedia that has come to be praised as one of the Web’ s greatest resources. Now the technology is increasingly spreading outside the world of bizarre tech people and into the mainstream, being adopted by workplaces, corporations and even governments. In what’ s been called the “wiki workplace, “ a growing number of organizations have begun shifting from traditional hierarchical structures to self-organized and collaborative networks, using wiki software—a basket of technologies that include wikis, blogs and other tools—to foster innovation across organizational and geographic boundaries. Executives say the new tools make it easier for teams to collaborate and share information, and to get projects up and running on the fly. “ Collaborative software has become a very important part of how businesses will invent and innovate, “ says Ken Bisconti, IBM’ s vice president of messaging and collaboration software. That the United Nations is embracing wikis is an indication that organizations are beginning to get over their fear that this technology could introduce chaos into their operations. As Wikipedia has demonstrated, Web sites that are open to the public are vulnerable to deliberate injury, bias, inconsistency and other problems. But most corporate wikis are closed to the public, limiting access to employees inside the company firewall. These quasi-closed systems, say technology experts, impose accountability simply by keeping a record of every change and who made it. IBM has used internal wikis since 2005, with an eye to selling the concept to its clients. One of its first applications was a wiki that employees could use to collaborate on writing a blogging manifesto: a set of policies for appropriate use of blogs in and out of the office. Thousands of employees contributed and edited that manifesto, which after receiving corporate approval—became the company’ s official policy.

There is a range of factors that affect the demand for private rental accommodation in Astoria. 【T1】In the past, the 20-29 year age group has had the highest rental participation rates. A continued decline over the next decade in the size of this group indicates a long-term easing of demand. Other factors may also have an adverse effect on rental demand, such as falls in the rates of overseas immigration or high unemployment rates, especially among younger age groups. Furthermore, a decline in the participation in full-time employment of those in the 18-24 year age group will also have a negative influence on demand. 【T2】On the other hand, a factor that may reverse these trends will be the ongoing difficulties faced by low to moderate income groups in buying their own homes and the long waiting periods for public housing. In Astoria, landlords play an important role as suppliers of housing in the private rental market. Generally, they fall into one of six categories. Firstly, the absentee landlord is an individual who, rather than making a conscious investment decision, is forced to rent out his or her own home while away for a period of time. The absentee landlord typically holds no more than one property but, as a group, they control approximately 25% of rental properties in Astoria. The survey found that this group represents approximately 37% of landlords. 【T3】Next the equity investor is the type of landlord who holds between two and four properties over many years with the intention of complete ownership to provide income in retirement. This group controls about 25 % of private rental properties. Similarly, the negative gearer owns a number of properties in the same range but only for a medium-term period. The investment is used to reduce overall taxation and the properties generally are sold when equity reaches 40% -50%. This type of investor controls approximately 20% of all private rental properties. 【T4】Another type of landlord is the property speculator who holds at least five properties and is always trying to increase the number. Property speculators generally own properties for a moderate to long period. Furthermore, they generate levels of equity equal to about 50% of the value of their properties. The equity is then reinvested in additional properties. Rental income approximately equals costs. The property manager and the property speculator equally share 25% of private rental properties in Astoria. The former type of landlord also has large numbers of properties but with equity levels three-quarters of the value of the properties. A property manager is typically an incorporated company whose main business is in the property field. The properties are held for long periods and the rental income generated significantly exceeds costs. 【T5】The final category is that of the casual landlord who is typically a person who informally lets a room or shares the house he or she lives in, usually as a means of easing loan cost. Landlords in this group tend to own only the building they live in and are thought to make up the remaining share of the rental market.

What is the passage mainly about?

The application of the wiki technology turns out to be______.

The basic problem of applying wiki technology lies in that______.

Which of the following is NOT the advantage of wiki technology?

Which of the following is TRUE according to the text?