快速阅读练习

FAST READING 练习1 Part II Reading Comprehension (Skimming and Scanning) (15 minutes) Directions: In this part, you will have 15 minutes to go over the passage quickly and answer the questions on Answer Sheet 1. For questions 1-4, mark Y (for YES) if the statement agrees with the information given in the passage; N (for NO) if statement contradicts the information given in the passage; NG (for NOT GIVEN) if the information is not given in the passage. For questions 5-10, complete the sentences with the information given in the passage. Seven Steps to a More Fulfilling Job Many people today find themselves in unfulfilling work situations. In fact, one in four workers is dissatisfied with their current job, according to the recent “Plans for 2004” survey. Their career path may be financially rewarding, but it doesn’t meet their emotional, social or creative needs. They’re stuck, unhappy, and have no idea what to do about it, except move to another job. Mary Lyn Miller, veteran career consultant and founder of the Life and Career Clinic, says that when most people are unhappy about their work, their first thought is to get a different job. Instead, Miller suggests looking at the possibility of a different life. Through her book, 8 Myths of Making a Living, as well as workshops, seminars and personal coaching and consulting, she has helped thousands of dissatisfied workers reassess life and work. Like the way of Zen, which includes understanding of oneself as one really is, Miller encourages job seekers and those dissatisfied with work or life to examine their beliefs about work and recognize that “in many cases your beliefs are what brought you to where you are today.” You may have been raised to think that women were best at nurturing and caring and, therefore, should be teachers and nurses. So that’s what you did. Or, perhaps you were brought up to believe that you should do what your father did, so you have taken over the family business, or become a dentist “just like dad.” If this sounds familiar, it’s probably time to look at the new possibilities for your future. Miller developed a 7-step process to help potential job seekers assess their current situation and beliefs, identify their real passion, and start on a journey that allows them to pursue their passion through work. Step 1: Willingness to do something different. Breaking the cycle of doing what you have always done is one of the most difficult tasks for job seekers. Many find it difficult to steer away from a career path or make a change, even if it doesn’t feel right. Miller urges job seekers to open their minds to other possibilities beyond what they are currently doing. Step 2: Commitment to being who you are, not who or what someone wants you to be. Look at the \gifts and talents you have and make a commitment to pursue those things that you love most. If you love the social aspects of your job, but are stuck inside an office or “chained to your desk” most of the time, vow to follow your instinct and investigate alternative careers and work that allow you more time to interact with others. Dawn worked as a manager for a large retail clothing store for several years. Though she had advanced within the company, she felt frustrated and longed to be involved with nature and the outdoors. She decided to go to school nights and weekends to pursue her true passion by earning her master’s degree in forestry. She now works in the biotech forestry division of a major paper company. Step 3: Self-definition Miller suggests that once job seekers know who they are, they need to know how to sell themselves. “In the job market, you are a product. And just like a product, you most know the features and benefits that you have to offer a potential client, or employer.” Examine the skills and knowledge that you have identify how they can apply to your desired occupation. Your qualities will exhibit to employers why they should hire you over other candidates. Step 4: Attain a level of self-honoring. Self-honoring or self-love may seem like an odd step for job hunters, but being able to accept yourself, without judgment, helps eliminate insecurities and will make you more self-assured. By accepting who you are – all your emotions, hopes and dreams, your personality, and your unique way of being – you’ll project more confidence when networking and talking with potential employers. The power of self-honoring can help to break all the falsehoods you were programmed to believe – those that made you feel that you were not good enough, or strong enough, or intelligent enough to do what you truly desire. Step 5: Vision. Miller suggests that job seekers develop a vision that embraces the answer to “What do I really want to do?” one should create a solid statement in a dozen or so sentences that describe in detail how they see their life related to work. For instance, the secretary who longs to be an actress describes a life that allows her to express her love of Shakespeare on stage. A real estate agent, attracted to his current job because her loves fixing up old homes, describes buying properties that need a little tender loving care to make them more saleable. Step 6: Appropriate risk. Some philosophers believe that the way to enlightenment comes through facing obstacles and difficulties. Once people discover their passion, many are too scared to do anything about it. Instead, they do nothing. With this step, job seekers should assess what they are willing to give up, or risk, in pursuit of their dream. For one working mom, that meant taking night classes to learn new computer-aided design skills, while still earning a salary and keeping her day job. For someone else, it may mean quitting his or her job, taking out loan and going back to school full time. You’ll move one step closer to your ideal work life if you identify how much risk you are willing to take and the sacrifices you are willing to make. Step 7: Action. Some teachers of philosophy describe action in this way, “If one wants to get to the top of a mountain, just sitting at the foot thinking about it will not bring one there. It is by making the effort of climbing up the mountain, step by step, that eventually the summit is reached.” All too often, it is the lack of action that ultimately holds people back from attaining their ideals. Creating a plan and taking it one step at a time can lead to new and different job opportunities. Job-hunting tasks gain added meaning as you sense their importance in your quest for a more meaningful work life. The plan can include researching industries and occupations, talking to people who are in your desired area of work, taking classes, or accepting volunteer work in your targeted field. Each of these steps will lead you on a journey to a happier and more rewarding work life. After all, it is the journey, not the destination that is most important. 注意：此部分试题请在答题卡1上作答。 1. According to the recent “Plans for 2004” survey, most people are unhappy with their current jobs. 2. Mary Lyn Miller’s job is to advise people on their life and career. 3. Mary Lyn Miller herself was once quite dissatisfied with her own work. 4. Many people find it difficult to make up their minds whether to change their career path. 5. According to Mary Lyn Miller, people considering changing their careers should commit themselves to the pursuit of ________. 6. In the job market, job seekers need to know how to sell themselves like ________. 7. During an interview with potential employers, self-honoring or self-love may help a job seeker to show ________. 8. Mary Lyn Miller suggests that a job seeker develop a vision that answers the question “________” 9. Many people are too scared to pursue their dreams because they are unwilling to ________. 10. What ultimately holds people back from attaining their ideals is ________. 练习2 Part II Reading Comprehension (Skimming and Scanning) (15 minutes) Directions: In this part, you will have 15 minutes to go over the passage quickly and answer the questions on Answer Sheet 1. For questions 1-7, choose the best answer from the four choices marked [A], [B], [C] and [D]. For questions 8 -10, complete the sentences with the information given in the passage. Seven Ways to Save the World Forget the old idea that conserving energy is a form of self-denial — riding bicycles, dimming the lights, and taking fewer showers. These days conservation is all about efficiency: getting the same — or better — results from just a fraction of the energy. When a slump in business travel forced Ulrich Rǒmer to cut cost costs at his family-owned hotel in Germany, he replaced hundreds of the hotel’s wasteful light bulbs, getting the same light for 80 percent less power. He bought a new water boiler with a digitally controlled pump, and wrapped insulation around the pipes. Spending about € 100,000 on these and other improvements, he slashed his € 90,000 fuel and power bill by € 60,000. As a bonus, the hotel’s lower energy needs have reduced its annual carbon emissions by more than 200 metric tons. “For us, saving energy has been very, very profitable,” he says. “And most importantly, we’re not giving up a single comfort for our guests.” Efficiency is also a great way to lower carbon emissions and help slow global warming. But the best argument for efficiency is its cost — or, more precisely, its profitability. That’s because quickly growing energy demand requires immense investment in new supply, not to mention the drain of rising energy prices. No wonder efficiency has moved to the top of the political agenda. On Jan. 10, the European Union unveiled a plan to cut energy use across the continent by 20 percent by 2020. Last March, China imposed a 20 percent increase in energy efficiency by 2020. Even George W. Bush, the Texas oilman, is expected to talk about energy conversation in his State of the Union speech this week. The good news is that the world is full of proven, cheap ways to save energy. Here are the seven that could have the biggest impact: Insulate Space heating and cooling eats up 36 percent of all the world’s energy. There’s virtually no limit to how much of that can be saved, as prototype “zero-energy homes” in Switzerland and Germany have shown. There’s been a surge in new ways of keeping heat in and cold out (or vice versa). The most advanced insulation follows the law of increasing returns: if you add enough, you can scale down or even eliminate heating and air-conditioning equipment, lowering costs even before you start saving on utility bills. Studies have shown that green workplaces (ones that don’t constantly need to have the heat or air-conditioner running) have higher worker productivity and lower sick rates. Change Bulbs Lighting eats up 20 percent of the world’s electricity, or the equivalent of roughly 600,000 tons of coal a day. Forty percent of that powers old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs — a 19th-century technology that wastes most of the power it consumes on unwanted heat. Compact fluorescent lamps, or CFLs, not only use 75 to 80 percent less electricity than incandescent bulbs to generate the same amount of light, but they also last 10 times longer. Phasing old bulbs out by 2030 would save the output of 650 power plants and avoid the release of 700 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year. Comfort Zone Water boilers, space heaters and air conditioners have been notoriously inefficient. The heat pump has altered that equation. It removes heat from the air outside or the ground below and uses it to supply heat to a building or its water supply. In the summer, the system can be reversed to cool building as well. Most new residential buildings in Sweden are already heated with ground-source heat pumps. Such systems consume almost no conventional fuel at all. Several countries have used subsidies to jump-start the market, including Japan, where almost 1 million heat pumps have been installed in the past two years to heat water for showers and hot tubs. Remake Factories From steel mills to paper factories, industry eats up about a third of the world’s energy. The opportunities to save are vast. In Ludwigshafen, German chemicals giant BASF runs an interconnected complex of more than 200 chemical factories, where heat produced by one chemical process is used to power the next. At the Ludwigshafen site alone, such recycling of heat and energy saves the company € 200 million a year and almost half its CO2 emissions. Now BASF is doing the same for new plants in China. “Optimizing (优化) energy efficiency is a decisive competitive advantage, ” says BASF CEO Jǔrgen Hambrecht. Green Driving A quarter of the world’s energy — including two thirds of the annual production of oil — is used for transportation. Some savings come free of charge: you can boost fuel efficiency by 6 percent simply by keeping your car’s tires properly inflated (充气). Gasoline-electric hybrid (混合型) models like the Toyota Prius improve mileage by a further 20 percent over conventional models. A Better Fridge More than half of all residential power goes into running household appliances，producing a fifth of the world’s carbon emissions. And that’s true even though manufacturers have already hiked the efficiency of refrigerators and other white goods by as much as 70 percent since the 1980s. According to an International Energy Agency study, if consumers chose those models that would save them the most money over the life of the appliance, they’d cut global residential power consumption and their utility bills by 43 percent. Flexible Payment Who says you have to pay for all your conservation investment？“Energy service contractors” will pay for retrofitting (翻折改造) in return for a share of the client’s annual utility-bill savings. In Beijing, Shenwu Thermal Energy Technology Co. specializes in retrofitting China’s steel furnaces. Shenwu puts up the initial investment to install a heat exchanger that preheats the air going into the furnace，slashing the client’s fuel costs . Shenwu pockets a cut of those savings, so both Shenwu and the client profit. 　　 If saving energy is so easy and profitable, why isn’t everyone doing it? It has to do with psychology and a lack of information. Most of us tend to look at today’s price tag more than tomorrow’s potential savings. That holds double for the landlord or developer, who won’t actually see a penny of the savings his investment in better insulation or a better heating system might generate. In many people’s minds, conservation is still associated with self-denial. Many environmentalists still push that view. Smart governments can help push the market in the right direction. The EU’s 1994 law on labeling was such a success that it extended the same idea to entire buildings last year. To boost the market value of efficiency, all new buildings are required to have an “energy pass” detailing power and heating consumption. Countries like Japan and Germany have successively tightened building codes, requiring an increase in insulation levels but leaving it up to builders to decide how to meet them. The most powerful incentives, of course, will come from the market itself. Over the past year, sky-high fuel prices have focused minds on efficiency like never before. Ever-increasing pressure to cut costs has finally forced more companies to do some math on their energy use. Will it be enough? With global demand and emissions rising so fast, we may not have any choice but to try. Efficient technology is here now, proven and cheap. Compared with all other options, it’s the biggest, easiest and most profitable bang for the buck. 1. What is said to be the best way to conserve energy nowadays? [A] Raising efficiently. [B] Cutting unnecessary costs. [C] Finding alternative resources [D] Sacrificing some personal comforts. 2. What does the European Union plan to do? [A] Diversify energy supply. [B] Cut energy consumption. [C] Reduce carbon emissions. [D] Raise production efficiency. 3. If you add enough insulation to your house, you may be able to _______. [A] improve your work environment [B] cut your utility bills by half. [C] get rid of air-conditioners [D] enjoy much better health 4. How much of the power consumed by incandescent bulbs is converted into light? [A] A small portion. [B] Some 40 percent [C] Almost half. [D] 75 to 80 percent. 5. Some countries have tired to jump-start the market of heat pumps by_________. [A] upgrading the equipment [B] encouraging investments [C] implementing high-tech [D] providing subsidies 6. German chemicals giant BASF saves € 200 million a year by_________. [A] recycling heat and energy [B] setting up factories in China [C] using the newest technology [D] reducing the CO2 emissions of its plants 7. Global residential power consumption can be cut by 43 percent if________. [A] we increase the insulation of walls and water pipes [B] we choose simpler models of electrical appliances [C] we cut down on the use of refrigerators and other white goods [D] we choose the most efficient models of refrigerators and other white goods 8. Energy service contractors profit by taking a part of clients’__________. 9. Many environmentalists maintain the view that conservation has much to do with___________. 10. The strongest incentive energy conservation will drive from_____________. 练习3 Part Ⅱ Reading Comprehension(Skimming and Scanning)(15 minutes) Directions: In this part, you will have 15 minutes to go over the passage quickly and answer the questions on Answer Sheet 1 For questions 1-7,choose the best answer from the four choices marked A),B),C)and D. For questions 8-10,complete the sentences with the information given in the passage. What will the world be like in fifty years? This week some top scientists, including Nobel Prize winners, gave their vision of how the world will look in 2056, from gas-powered cars to extraordinary health advances, John Ingham reports on what the world’s finest minds believe our futures will be. For those of us lucky enough to live that long, 2056 will be a world of almost perpetual youth, where obesity is a remote memory and robots become our companions. We will be rubbing shoulders with aliens and colonising outer space. Better still, our descendants might at last live in a world at peace with itself. The prediction is that we will have found a source of inexhaustible, safe, green energy, and that science will have killed off religion. If they are right we will have removed two of the main causes of war-our dependence on oil and religious prejudice. Will we really, as today’s scientists’ claim, be able to live for ever or at least cheat the ageing process so that the average person lives to 150? Of course, all these predictions come with a scientific health warning. Harvard professor Steven Pinker says: “This is an invitation to look foolish, as with the predictions of domed cities and nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners that were made 50 year ago.” Living longer Anthony Atala, director of the Wake Forest Institute in North Carolina, believes failing organs will be repaired by injecting cells into the body. They will naturally go straight to the injury and help heal it. A system of injections without needles could also slow the ageing process by using the same process to “tune” cells. Bruce Lahn, professor of human genetics at the University of Chicago, anticipates the ability to produce “unlimited supplies” of transplantable human organs without the need for human donors. These organs would be grown in animals such as pigs. When a patient needed a new organ, such as a kidney, the surgeon would contact a commercial organ producer, give hi