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People from many countries were drawn to the United States by the growing cities and industries. drafted transported attracted ordered
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Anxiety about financial matter lessened somewhat when, in 1910, the United States accepted responsibility for Liberia’s survival. descended faded diminished highlighted
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The Victorian speaker was noted for his manual gestures. expressive physical exaggerated dubious
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After a bitter struggle the rebels were forced to submit. yield dedicate render incline
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There is a trend towards equal opportunities for men and women. tide tendency target trail
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Can you account for your absence from the class last Thursday? explain examine excuse expand
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She was grateful to him for being so good to her. helpful hateful delightful thankful
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A will is a document written to ensure that the wishes of the deceased are realized. fulfilled affiliated advocated received
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The poet William Carlos Williams was a New Jersey physician. doctor professor physicist resident
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The steadily rising cost of labor on the waterfront has greatly increased the cost of shipping cargo by water. continuously quickly excessively exceptionally
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Customers are well waited on in this big department store. served changed paid treated
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We will set off after he finishes packing. set out set back set up set down
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Efficient air service has been made available through modern technology. Affluent Modern Inexpensive Effective
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The cars traveled 200 miles a day. came covered gone walked
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The most prominent characteristics of handwriting are undoubtedly letter formation and slant. presumably in many cases surely without bias
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An Awful Afternoon
Sometimes I feel that being the mother of three small children is like running a large circus(马戏团). One afternoon last week, my three sons were playing peacefully in the backyard, throwing the ball from one to the other. I jumped at the chance to talk to one of my friends on the phone, but before I got to the phone, I could tell that the boys had begun to quarrel with each other over something. I rushed out to make peace, but before I got there, Charles had begun to fight over this. Even David, the oldest boy, who won’t usually fight with anybody over anything, was involved. First, I made them stop fighting, and then I examined Mark’s eye. I decided that it wasn’t going to develop into a black eye, but I felt that they should suffer at least a little for what they had done. “I’m going to speak to your father about these when he comes home tonight,“ I said. “He and I will think of how to punish you. “ Things were pretty quiet after that for about half an hour, and then Charles broke a glass in the kitchensink, and at almost the same moment, Mark fell out of the apple tree. I suppose I will be able to laugh at all these things someday. In the meantime, I just pray to heaven for patience.
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
