案例分析题One of the many pleasures of watching Mad Men, a television drama about the advertising industry in the early 1960s, is examining the ways in which office life has changed over the years. One obvious change makes people feel good about themselves: they no longer treat women as second-class citizens. But the other obvious change makes them feel a bit more uneasy: they have lost the art of enjoying themselves at work.The ad-men in those days enjoyed simple pleasures. They puffed away at their desks. They drank throughout the day. They had affairs with their colleagues. They socialised not in order to bond, but in order to get drunk. Nowadays many companies are obsessed with fun. Software firms in Silicon Valley have installed rock-climbing walls in their reception areas and put inflatable animals in their offices. Wal-Mart orders its cashiers to smile at all and sundry. The cult of fun has spread like some disgusting haemorrhagic disease.This cult of fun is driven by three of the most popular management fads of the moment: empowerment, engagement and creativity. Many companies pride themselves on devolving power to front-line workers. But surveys show that only 20% of workers are" fully engaged with their job ". Even fewer are creative. Managers hope that " fun" will magically make workers more engaged and creative. But the problem is that as soon as fun becomes part of a corporate strategy it ceases to be fun and becomes its opposite—at best an empty shell and at worst a tiresome imposition.The most unpleasant thing about the fashion for fun is that it is mixed with a large dose of pressure. Boston Pizza encourages workers to send" golden bananas" to colleagues who are "having fun while being the best". Behind the" fun" there often lurks some crude management thinking: a desire to brand the company as better than its rivals, or a plan to boost productivity through team-building. Twitter even boasts that it has" worked hard to create an environment that spawns productivity and happiness".While imposing fake fun on their employees, companies are battling against the real thing. Many force smokers to huddle outside like furtive criminals. Few allow their employees to drink at lunch time, let alone earlier in the day. A regiment of busybodies— from lawyers to human resources functionaries—is waging war on office romance, particularly between people of different ranks.The merchants of fake fun have met some resistance. When Wal-Mart tried to impose alien rules on its German staff—such as compulsory smiling and a ban on affairs with coworkers—it touched off a guerrilla war that ended only when the supermarket chain announced it was pulling out of Germany in 2006. But such victories are rare. For most wage slaves forced to pretend they are having fun at work, the only relief is to poke fun at their tormentors. Mad Men reminds people of a world they have lost—a world where bosses did not tbink that"fun" was a management tool and where employees could happily quaff Scotch at noon. Cheers to that. In the opening paragraph, the author introduces his topic by ()
A. explaining a phenomenon
B. justifying an assumption
C. posing an argument
D. making a contrast
案例分析题The first time I tried shark-fin soup was at Time Warner’s annual dinner in Hong Kong. Shark-fin soup is a luxury item ($100 bowl in some restaurants)in Hong Kong and Mainland China, its biggest consumers; it’s a dish that embodies east Asia’s intertwined notions of hospitality and keeping (or losing) "face". "It’s like champagne", says Alvin Leung, owner of Bo Innovation, a Cantonese restaurant in Hong Kong. "You don’t open a bottle of Coke to celebrate. It’s a ritual. " Unfortunately, this gesture of hospitality comes with a price tag much bigger than that $ 100 bowl. All told, up to 70 million sharks are killed annually for the trade, despite the fact that 30% of shark species are threatened with extinction. "Sharks have made it through multiple mass extinctions on our planet, " says Matt Rand, director of Pew’s Global Shark Conservation division. "Now many species are going to go the way of the dinosaur—for a bowl of soup. " The shark-fin industry has gained notoriety in recent years not just because of what it’s doing to the global shark population but also because of what’s known as finning—the practice of catching a shark, removing its fins and dumping the animal back into the sea. While a pound of shark fin can go for up to $ 300, most shark meat isn’t particularly valuable, and it takes up freezer space and weight on fishing boats. Today, finning is illegal in the waters of the E. U. , the U. S. and Australia, among others; boats are required to carry a certain ratio of fins to carcasses(尸体) to prevent massive overfishing. But there are loopholes in antifinning laws that are easy to exploit. In the E. U. , for example, ships can land the fins separately from the carcasses, making the job of monitoring the weight ratio nearly impossible. In the U. S. , a boat found carrying nearly 65, 000 lb. ( 30, 000 kg) of illegal shark fins won a court case because it was registered as a cargo vessel, which current U. S. finning. laws do not cover. Sharks populations can’t withstand commercial fishing the way more fertile marine species can. Unlike other fish harvested from the wild, sharks grow slowly. They don’t reach sexual maturity until later in life—the female great white, for example, at 12 to 14 years—and when they do, they have comparatively few offspring at a time, unlike, tunas, which release millions of eggs when they spawn. The shark’s plight is starting to be weighed against the delicacy’s cultural value. The conservation group has lobbied local restaurants that offer the classic nine-course banquet served at Cantonese weddings, of which shark fin is traditionally a part, to offer a no-shark menu as a choice to couples. After my first encounter with shark-fin soup, I decided that, like my colleagues, I would probably skip it next time. Unfortunately, that next time came at an intimate dinner in a small, private dining room, where I was both a guest and a stranger. When the soup—the centerpiece of the meal—was set down before me, I ate it. Apparently, I’m not the only one to cave. "You go to a wedding, and you refused to eat it just because you feel you’re insulted— I’m not that extreme, " Leung, the chef, says. "If other people believe that it brings luck .or brings face, I’d be a spoilsport. "To make a dent in the slaughter of the sharks, however, there are going to have to be a lot of people willing to spoil this particular sport. Which of the following statements about shark-fin soup is true
A. It has a price tag much bigger than $ 100 bowl.
B. It carries rich cultural meaning.
C. It tastes like champagne.
D. It is expensive for its high nutrition.
28()
A. sellers
B. people
C. buyers
D. agents
案例分析题When your child becomes a teenager, you’re well over halfway through the job of raising them, and you have only a few years left to instill all those values and principles you want them to go into adult life with. And suddenly, they look as if they’re throwing away all the work you’ve put in up to now. But actually, if you just keep your head, and follow these essential teenage Rules, you’ll find you come out the other end with a terrific adult you can really be proud of.41.______Unless your child is putting themselves in serious danger, you really do have to put up with it. The more you try to tell them, the more you push them in the opposite direction. They’re looking for something to kick at, to rebel against, because they’re programmed to. The more force you use, the more they’ll use. Remember Newton’s third law of motion For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. So what can you do when you see them going wrong You can tell them what you think, but don’t tell them what to do.42.______Teenagers are up to things you don’t want to know about. For example, your daughter has gone further than you’d like with her boyfriend. And they’ve almost certainly been offered drugs, but they won’t have any evidence of it hanging around in their room, so there’s no point looking under the mattress or reading their secret diary.And what are you going to do about it — confront them I think not. You’ll severely damage your relationship, and they’ll just keep them under the floorboards instead.Maybe you should think back to the things you did as a teenager that you didn’t want your parents to know about. See Your kids are just being perfectly normal teenagers.43. ______It’s one of the many paradoxes of teenagers. On the one hand, they want to rebel, to shock you, to do things that get to you, and on the other hand, they want your approval and your goodwill. So when you criticize your teenager’s choices, you criticize them. It’s an age of fragile egos and easily knocked self-esteem, and it’s easy to make your teenager feel that you disapprove, or even that you don’t like them. Whether it’s their music or their politics or the way they dress or their decision to become vegetarian, they need to know that it’s okay with you.44.______You started off with 18 years and counting. How many have you got left Because when you get to zero, they’ll be on their own. I know parents who are still looking after their kids when they’re 18. And the kids, not being crazy, let them do it. It takes two to play that game. You know your child’s strengths and weaknesses as well as anyone. So think through what they still need to learn, and make sure they do. If they’re hopeless with money, teach them to budget. Get them to do the family shopping for a week on your usual budget, or get firm about not paying to fill up their car beyond the agreed amount.45. ______Your kids need to know what is and isn’t acceptable. And they judge that by what was and wasn’t okay yesterday and the day before. If they’re not getting a consistent message, they’re clueless as to how they have to behave, and those all important boundaries aren’t being properly maintained. That means the kids feel confused, insecure, and perhaps even unloved.If you’ve decided that you don’t allow the kids to stay late outside, you have to stick to it. Just because your little one was a bit sad about something today, and you’re feeling a bit down yourself anyway... no, no, no ! Stop right there ! Let them come back at once and it will be ten times harder to say no to them next time, and they won’t understand why. Say no now and you’re only being cruel to be kind. 43()
A. Running after Them Doesn’t Help Anybody
B. Remember Newton’s Third Law
C. Show Some Respect for the Things They Care About
D. 18 Years Old:The Beginning of Adulthood
E. Know Strength and Weakness of Your Child
F. Don’t Look Under the Mattress
G. Be Consistent