Silence Please If there is one group of workers across the Western world who will be glad that Christmas is over, that group is shop workers. It is not that they like to complain. They realize that they are going to be rushed off their feet at Christmas. They know that their employers need happy customers to make their profits that pay their wages. But there is one thing about working in a shop over Christmas that is too bad to tolerate. That thing is music. These days, all shops and many offices have what is known as “Piped music“ or “muzak“ playing for all the hours that they are open. Muzak has an odd history. During the 1940s, music was played to cows as part of a scientific experiment. It was found that cows which listened to simple, happy music produced more milk. Perhaps workers and customers who listened to simple, happy music would be more productive and spend more money. In fact, nobody knows what effect playing muzak in shops has on profits. It is simply something that everybody does. But we are learning more about the effect of constantly repeated hearings of songs on the people who have to hear them all the time. Research shows that repeated hearings of complex pieces of music bring greater enjoyment before becoming tiresome. And that point come much sooner with simple songs. “That’s especially the case with tunes that are already familiar. Once that tipping point3 is reached, repeated listening become unpleasant, says Professor John Sloboda of UK’s Keele University’s music psychology group. “And the less control you have over what you hear, the less you like it. That’s why police forces in the US often try and resolve hostage situations by playing pop songs over and over again at high volume. Eventually, it becomes too much for the criminals to stand and they give up. The problem gets particularly bad at Christmas, when the muzak consists entirely of the same few festive tunes played over and over again. What makes it worse for the shop workers is that they already know these runes. They get bored very quickly. Then they get irritated. Then they get angry. Shop workers in Austria recently threatened to go on strike for the right to silence. “Shop workers can’t escape the Christmas muzak. They feel as if they are terrorized all day. Especially ’Jingle Bells’. It arouses aggressive feelings,“ said Gottfried Rieser, of the Austrian shop worker’s union. It is not just shop workers who complain. A survey this year by UK recruitment website Retailchoice. com found that Christmas is not only the most testing time for shop workers, but that almost half had complaints from customers about muzak. And the British Royal National Institute for the Deaf estimates that some stores play Jingle Bells 300 times each year. “That’s acoustic torture, says Nigel Rodgers of Pipedown. A group against muzak. “It’s not loud but the repetitive nature causes psychological stress. “ The group wants the government to legislate against unwanted music in stores, hospitals, airports, swimming pools and other public places, claiming it raises the blood pressure and depresses the immune system. Perhaps groups like Pipedown don’t really have much to complain about. After all, surely the real point is that people have money to spend. Why complain about a bit of music?

Anxiety about financial matter lessened somewhat when, in 1910, the United States accepted responsibility for Liberia’s survival. descended faded diminished highlighted

The Victorian speaker was noted for his manual gestures. expressive physical exaggerated dubious

There is a trend towards equal opportunities for men and women. tide tendency target trail

She was grateful to him for being so good to her. helpful hateful delightful thankful

A will is a document written to ensure that the wishes of the deceased are realized. fulfilled affiliated advocated received

The poet William Carlos Williams was a New Jersey physician. doctor professor physicist resident

The steadily rising cost of labor on the waterfront has greatly increased the cost of shipping cargo by water. continuously quickly excessively exceptionally

We will set off after he finishes packing. set out set back set up set down

The cars traveled 200 miles a day. came covered gone walked

The most prominent characteristics of handwriting are undoubtedly letter formation and slant. presumably in many cases surely without bias

How the Body Keeps the Same Temperature The temperature of your body should be always just the same, no matter whether the weather is trot or cold. That is why the doctor uses his thermometer when you are sick. When you are well,your temperature is ninety-eight and six tenths degrees. If he finds it【51】than that,it is a sure sign that something is wrong. The body keeps the same temperature all the time,because it balances (平衡) the heat it produces and【52】off. It is always burning up food and producing heat. It can produce heat faster when it needs to or give off heat faster when it becomes too warm. Let’s see【53】this happens. The heat of your body is given off chiefly through the skin. When you are【54】,your skin is tight and shows “goose flesh“. When you get chilly (寒冷的),you must dance around to keep warm or【55】you will shiver (颤抖).【56】your muscles begin to work,burn up fuel,and produce more heat. It is not【57】to shiver,so you usually prefer warming up by exercise, or put【58】more clothes to keep heat in. When you are warm,the skin is loose and soft. It is so supplied【59】blood that heat is given off rapidly. If you get too hot,you begin to sweat,and【60】body heat is used in evaporating (蒸发) the moisture (潮湿) from your skin. You wear less clothing, too, in warm【61】or in a warm room,so that warmth can be given off freely. You feel you don’t【62】 exercising because your body is warm【63】,and the extra heat produced by exercise makes you uncomfortable. You can see from this why you【64】differently in different kinds of weather. In summer,when it is warm,you feel tired and lazy. You do not care to work or play,but enjoy lying and doing nothing. When you get out of doors in winter,the cold air makes you feel【65】. You want to run and play.

People from many countries were drawn to the United States by the growing cities and industries. drafted transported attracted ordered

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Efficient air service has been made available through modern technology. Affluent Modern Inexpensive Effective

Attention to the Details 1 Attention to detail is something everyone can and should do-especially in a tight job market. Bob Crossley, a human-resources expert notices this in the job applications that come across his desk every day. “It’s amazing how many candidates eliminate themselves,“he says. 2 “Resumes(简历)arrive with stains. Some candidates don’t bother to spell the company’s name correctly. Once I see a mistake, I eliminate the candidate,“Crossley concludes. “if they cannot take care of these details,why should we trust them with a job?“ 3 Can we pay too much attention to details? Absolutely. Perfectionists struggle over little things at the cost of something larger they work toward. “To keep from losing the forest for the trees,“says Charles Garfield, associate professor at the University of California, San Francisco,“we must constantly ask ourselves how the details we’re working on fit into the larger picture. If they don’t,we should drop them and move to something else. “ 4 Garfield compares this process to his work as a computer scientist at NASA. “The Apollo moon launch was slightly off-course 90 percent of the time. “says Garfield. “But a successful landing was still likely because we knew the exact coordinates of our goal. This allowed us to make adjustments as necessary. “Knowing where we want to go helps us judge the importance of every task we undertake. 5 Too often we believe what accounts for others’ success is some special secret or a lucky break (机遇). But rarely is success so mysterious. Again and again,we see that by doing little things within our grasp well, large rewards follow. A) Don’t Be a Perfectionist B) The Benefits of Knowing Where We Want to Go C) Hard Work Plus Good Luck D) The Outcomes of Our Efforts E) The Importance of Attention to Detail F) Constantly Asking Ourselves about Details

A) rarely is success so mysterious B) large rewards follow C) I eliminate the candidate D) we should drop them and move to something else E) judge the importance of every task F) because we knew the exact coordinates of our goal

Faster Effective Reading A higher reading rate, with no loss of comprehension, will help you in other subjects as well as in English, and the general principles apply to any language. Naturally, you will not read every book at the same speed. You would expect to read a newspaper, for example, much more rapidly than a physics or economics textbook—but you can raise your average reading speed over the whole range of materials you wish to cover so that the percentage (百分比) gained will be the same whatever kind of reading you are concerned with. The reading passages which follow are all of an average level of difficulty for your stage of instruction. They are all about five hundred words long. They are about topics of general interest which do not require a great deal of specialized knowledge. Thus they fall between the kind of reading you might find in your textbooks and the much less demanding kind you will find in a newspaper or light novel. If you read this kind of English, with understanding at, say, four hundred words per minute, you might drop to two hundred or two hundred and fifty. Perhaps you would like to know what reading speeds are common among native English speaking university students and how those speeds can be improved. Tests in Minnesota, U. S. A, for example, have shown that students without special training can read English of average difficulty, for example, Tolstoy’s War and Peace in translation, at speeds of between 240 and 250 words per minute with about seventy percent comprehension. Students in Minnesota claim that after twelve half-hour lessons, once a week, the reading speed can be increased, with no loss of comprehension, to around five hundred words per minute.

On Being a Matchmaker The first thing I do when I wake up is to make a mental list of all things I have to do that day. I’m very organized! Then I get up and have my bath. Often my best matchmaking(媒人) ideas come while I’m in the bath. Sometimes I have a really good idea about who might be good with whom. Before I did matchmaking, I was a social worker, but I knew I wanted to do something without bosses telling me what to do and that I am good at dealing with people. Also I had seen too many broken marriages and too many people go downhill because they were so lonely. So I gave up my job, did a bit of research and started the matchmaking business in 1970. Over the last few years we’ve been doing introductions throughout Europe as well as here in Britain. Europeans want to meet British people. For every 100 people who come to us, about 65 will settle down. We keep going until clients (委托人) find someone that they get on very well with. We’re great triers. Of course there are impossible people, those who will never settle... Sometimes I end up giving advice to clients. A few months ago, we had a highly paid scientist with a very nice face, but every woman refused to meet him a second time. It soon became clear that he did not like changing his shirts. So I had to be very honest and frank and told him, “But a woman can’t start to love you if your shirt smells. “ The job is most satisfy ing when I get a call from a couple telling me they have fallen in love.

Can you account for your absence from the class last Thursday? explain examine excuse expand

Customers are well waited on in this big department store. served changed paid treated

According to the article, which of the following most appropriately indicates the nature of the effect repeated hearing of the same tune produces on the hearer?

In hostage situations the US police forces repeatedly play pop songs at high volume in order to

Which of the following statements is true, according to the research findings reported in paragraph 6 ?

It has been proved that listening to simple, happy has a good effect on

The shop workers in the Western world are glad when Christmas is over because they don’t have to