Text 1
①Hunting for a job late last year, lawyer Gant Redmon stumbled across CareerBuilder, a job database on the Internet. ②He searched it with no success but was attracted by the site's“personal search agent”. ③It's an interactive feature that lets visitors key in job criteria such as location, title, and salary, then E-mails them when a matching position is posted in the database. ④Redmon chose the keywords legal, intellectual property, and Washington, D.C. ⑤Three weeks later, he got his first notification of an opening. ⑥“I struck gold,”says Redmon, who E-mailed his resume to the employer and won a position as in-house counsel for a company.
考研英语1真题
①With thousands of career-related sites on the Internet, finding promising openings can be time-consuming and inefficient. ②Search agents reduce the need for repeated visits to the databases. ③But although a search agent worked for Redmon, career experts see drawbacks. ④Narrowing your criteria, for example, may work against you:“Every time you answer a question you eliminate a possibility,”says one expert.
①For any job search, you should start with a narrow concept—what you think you want to do—then broaden it. ②“None of these programs do that,”says another expert. ③“There's no career counseling im
plicit in all of this.”④Instead, the best strategy is to use the agent as a kind of tip service to keep abreast of jobs in a particular database; when you get E-mail, consider it a reminder to check the database again. ⑤“I would not rely on agents for finding everything that is added to a database that might interest me,”says the author of a job-searching guide.
①Some sites design their agents to tempt job hunters to return. ②When CareerSite's agent sends out messages to those who have signed up for its service, for example, it includes only three potential jobs—those it considers the best matches. ③There may be more matches in the database; job hunters will have to visit the site again to find them—and they do. ④“On the day after we send our messages, we see a sharp increase in our traffic,”says Seth Peets, vice president of marketing for CareerSite.
①Even those who aren't hunting for jobs may find search agents worthwhile. ②Some use them to keep
a close watch on the demand for their line of work or gather information on compensation to arm themselves when negotiating for a raise. ③Although happily employed, Redmon maintains his agent at CareerBuilder.
④“Y ou always keep your eyes open,”he says. ⑤Working with a personal search agent means having
another set of eyes looking out for you.
41.How did Redmon find his job?
[A] By searching openings in a job database.
[B] By posting a matching position in a database.
[C] By using a special service of a database.
[D] By E-mailing his resume to a database.
42.Which of the following can be a disadvantage of search agents?
[A] Lack of counseling.
[B] Limited number of visits.
[C] Lower efficiency.
[D] Fewer successful matches.
43.The expression“tip service”(Line 3, Paragraph 3) most probably means __________.
[A] advisory
[B] compensation
[C] interaction
[D] reminder
44.Why does CareerSite's agent offer each job hunter only three job options?
[A] To focus on better job matches.
[B] To attract more returning visits.
[C] To reserve space for more messages.
[D] To increase the rate of success.
45.Which of the following is true according to the text?
[A] Personal search agents are indispensable to job-hunters.
[B] Some sites keep E-mailing job seekers to trace their demands.
[C] Personal search agents are also helpful to those already employed.
[D] Some agents stop sending information to people once they are employed.
Text 2
①Over the past century, all kinds of unfairness and discrimination have been condemned or made illegal. ②But one insidious form continues to thrive: alphabetism. ③This, for those as yet unaware of such a disadvantage, refers to discrimination against those whose surnames begin with a letter in the lower half of the alphabet.
①It has long been known that a taxi firm called AAAA cars has a big advantage over Zodiac cars when customers thumb through their phone directories. ②Less well known is the advantage that Adam Abbott has in life over ZoëZysman. ③English names are fairly evenly spread between the halves of the alphabet. ④Y et a suspiciously large number of top people have surnames beginning with letters between A and K.
①Thus the American president and vice-president have surnames starting with B and C respectively; and 26 of George Bush's predecessors (including his father) had surnames in the first half of the alphabet against just 16 in the second half. ②Even more striking, six of the seven heads of government of the G7 rich countries are alphabetically advantaged (Berlusconi, Blair, Bush, Chirac, Chretien and Koizumi). ③The world's three top central bankers (Greenspan, Duisenberg and Hayami) are all close to the top of the alphabet, even if one of them really uses Japanese characters. ④As are the world's five richest men (Gates, Buffett, Allen, Ellison and Albrecht).
①Can this merely be coincidence? ②One theory, dreamt up in all the spare time enjoyed by the alphabetically disadvantaged, is that the rot sets in early. ③At the start of the first year in infant school, teachers seat pupils alphabetically from the front, to make it easier to remember their names. ④So short-sighted Zysman junior gets stuck in the back row, and is rarely asked the improving questions posed by those insensitive teachers. ⑤At the time the alphabetically disadvantaged may think they have had a lucky escape. ⑥Y et the result may be worse qualifications, because they get less individual attention, as well as less confidence in speaking publicly.
①The humiliation continues. ②At university graduation ceremonies, the ABCs proudly get their awards first; by the time they reach the Zysmans most people are literally having a ZZZ. ③Shortlists fo
r job interviews, election ballot papers, lists of conference speakers and attendees: all tend to be drawn up alphabetically, and their recipients lose interest as they plough through them.
46.What does the author intend to illustrate with AAAA cars and Zodiac cars?
[A] A kind of overlooked inequality.
[B] A type of conspicuous bias.
[C] A type of personal prejudice.
[D] A kind of brand discrimination.
47.What can we infer from the first three paragraphs?
[A] In both East and West, names are essential to success.
[B] The alphabet is to blame for the failure of Zo? Zysman.
[C] Customers often pay a lot of attention to companies' names.
[D] Some form of discrimination is too subtle to recognize.
48.The 4th paragraph suggests that __________.
[A] questions are often put to the more intelligent students
[B] alphabetically disadvantaged students often escape from class
[C] teachers should pay attention to all of their students
[D] students should be seated according to their eyesight
49.What does the author mean by“most people are literally having a ZZZ”(Line 2, Paragraph 5)?
[A] They are getting impatient.
[B] They are noisily dozing off.
[C] They are feeling humiliated.
[D] They are busy with word puzzles.
50.Which of the following is true according to the text?
[A] People with surnames beginning with N to Z are often ill-treated.
[B] VIPs in the Western world gain a great deal from alphabetism.
[C] The campaign to eliminate alphabetism still has a long way to go.
[D] Putting things alphabetically may lead to unintentional bias.
Text 3
①When it comes to the slowing economy, Ellen Spero isn't biting her nails just yet. ②But the 47-year-old manicurist isn't cutting, filling or polishing as many nails as she'd like to, either. ③Most of her clients spend $12 to $50 weekly, but last month two longtime customers suddenly stopped showing up. ④Spero blames the softening economy. ⑤“I'm a good economic indicator,”she says. ⑥“I provide a service that people can do without when they're concerned about saving some dollars.”⑦So Spero is downscaling, shopping at middle-brow Dillard's department store near her suburban Cleveland home, instead of Neiman Marcus. ⑧“I don't know if other clients are going to abandon me, too,”she says.
①Even before Alan Greenspan's admission that America's red-hot economy is cooling, lots of working folks had already seen signs of the slowdown themselves. ②From car dealerships to Gap outlets, sale
s have been lagging for months as shoppers temper their spending. ③For retailers, who last year took in 24 percent of their revenue between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the cautious approach is coming at a crucial time. ④Already, experts say, holiday sales are off 7 percent from last year's pace. ⑤But don't sound any alarms just yet. ⑥Consumers seem only mildly concerned, not panicked, and many say they remain optimistic about the economy's long-term prospects, even as they do some modest belt-tightening.
①Consumers say they're not in despair because, despite the dreadful headlines, their own fortunes still feel pretty good. ②Home prices are holding steady in most regions. ③In Manhattan,“there's a new gold rush happening in the $4 million to $10 million range, predominantly fed by Wall Street bonuses,”says broker Barbara Corcoran. ④In San Francisco, prices are still rising even as frenzied overbidding quiets. ⑤“Instead of 20 to 30 offers, now maybe you only get two or three,”says John Teadly, a Bay Area real-estate broker. ⑥And most folks still feel pretty comfortable about their ability to find and keep a job.
①Many folks see silver linings to this slowdown. ②Potential home buyers would cheer for lower interest rates. ③Employers wouldn't mind a little fewer bubbles in the job market. ④Many consumers seem to have been influenced by stock-market swings, which investors now view as a necessary ingre
dient to a sustained boom. ⑤Diners might see an upside, too. ⑥Getting a table at Manhattan's hot new Alain Ducasse restaurant used to be impossible. ⑦Not anymore. ⑧For that, Greenspan & Co. may still be worth toasting.