专项训练（二）
I Grammar
(A)
The fire is still raging. More than one billion birds, reptiles and mammals (1)______ have been killed by the fires sweeping across Australia, according to a new estimate from the University of Sydney.
Chris Dickman, a University of Sydney professor from the science faculty, (2)______ ______ revise his initial estimate of the number of animals killed or endangered on the enormous continent because of the fire’s violent spread.
“I think there’s (3)______ quite to compare with the devastation that’s going on over such a large area so quickly. It’s a shocking event (4)______ ______ ______ geography and the number of individual animals affected,” Dickman said in a statement released by the university.
The fires, which have ravaged Australia for months, have spread quickly and overwhelmed efforts to contain them. Two massive bushfires in southeastern Australia recently merged into one gigantic megafire (5)______ (measure) nearly 1.5 million acres, NPR reports. In total, over 130 bushfires (6)______ (claim) the lives of 26 people and destroyed at least 3,000 homes, according to published reports.
The professor, (7)______ has 30 years of experience working on the ecology, conservation and management of Australian mammals, explained in the statement: “We know that Australian biodiversity (8)______ (go) down over the last several decades, and it’s probably fairly well-known that Australia’s got the world’s highest rate of extinction for mammals. It’s events like this that may well hasten the extinction process for a range of other species. So, it’s a very sad time.”
“What we’re seeing are the effects of climate change. Sometimes, it’s said that Australia is the canary (金丝雀) in the coal mine with the effects of climate change being seen here most severely and earliest,” Dickman elaborated. “We’re probably looking at (9)______ climate change may look like for other parts of the world in the first stages in Australia at the moment.”
Dickman said that (10)______ ______ animals survive the fires and return to their habitats, they won’t have the resources they need for support. The University of Sydney notes that 34 species of native mammals have become extinct in Australia over the last 200 years.
(B)
Getting kids to share their toys is a never-ending battle, and forcing them to do so never seems to help. New research suggests that allowing children to make a choice to sacrifice their own toys in order to share with someone else (1)______ (make) them share more in the future. The new findings are published in Psychological Science.
These experiments were conducted by psychological scientists, Nadia Chernyak and Tamar Kushnir of Cornell University. They found that (2)______ (share) things with others when they are given a difficult choice leads children to think of themselves as people who like to share. It also makes them more likely to act in (3)______ pro-social (亲社会的) manner in the future.
Previous research has explained (4)______ rewarding children for sharing can backfire. Children come to think of themselves as people who don’t like to share (5)______ they had to be rewarded for doing so. Because they don’t view themselves as “sharers,” they are (6)______ (likely) to share in the future.
Chernyak and Kushnir were interested in finding out whether freely chosen sacrifice (7)______ have the opposite effect on kids’ willingness to share. To test this, the researchers introduced five-year-old children to Doggie, a sad puppet. Some of the children were given a difficult choice: Share a precious sticker with Doggie, or keep it for themselves. (8)______ were given an easy choice between sharing and putting the sticker away, while children in a third group were required by the researchers (9)______ (share).
Later on, all the children were introduced to Ellie, another sad puppet. They were given the option of how many stickers to share (up to three). The kids who earlier made the difficult choice to help Doggie shared more stickers with Ellie. The children who (10)______ (face) with an easy choice initially or gave their sticker to Doggie as required, on the other hand, shared fewer stickers with Ellie. Therefore, children did not benefit from simply giving something up, but rather from willingly choosing to give something up of value.
1， makes 2, sharing 3. a 4. why 5. since 6. less likely 7. might 8. Others 9. to share 10. are faced II Vocabulary
(A)
LONDON — One by one, the pubs are disappearing in Hampstead, a jewel-box village of cobbled lanes and Georgian homes that has become one of this city’s most fashionable neighborhoods.
Changing economics and shifting tastes have __1__ roughly one out of every five pubs during the last two decades in Britain, and things are growing worse. Since the 2008 financial crisis, 7,000 have shut, leaving some small communities facing something __2__: life without a “local,” as pubs are known.
And that has spurred (鼓励) the government into __3__. New legislation is letting people petition (请愿) to have a pub considered an “asset (财产) of community value,” a(n) __4__ that provides a degree of protection from destruction and helps community groups buy pubs themselves.
Still, the traditional pub is being __5__ as never before, even after George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer, reversed course last March and reduced the tax paid on every pint of beer, by a penny. Antismoking laws are keeping smokers away. Cut-price beer for sale at supermarkets is __6__ into business.
And then there is a cultural shift on beer: People in Britain are drinking about 23 percent less beer than a decade ago. Pubs have been trying to take up the slack (萧条) with other beverages and __7__ food menus.
One battleground here in Hampstead is at the Old White Bear. A handsome, two-chimney building of red brick, the Bear has __8__ its spot on Well Road for three centuries.
But after the Old White Bear was bought by a group of developers through a company on the Isle of Man, 2,000 people signed a petition to save the pub. The Bear has been declared an asset of community value, and the local council has so far refused permission to turn it into a six-bedroom house. Even so, the pub closed on Feb. 2. With the developers determined to fight, the Bear’s future is __9__.
Guy Wingate, a longtime patron, pointed to Hampstead’s __10__ locals. While the village has other pubs, the Old White Bear, he said, had become the center of his community.
“You destroy that, and we’re either all going to wander the streets or stay indoors and not see each other ever again,” Mr. Wingate said.
(B)
A. make up G. culture B. caution H. targets C. diagnosed I. rely on
D. defensive E. voiced F. take off J. practices K. immune Many employees have the intention to query the orders when they see their bosses headed down the
wrong track. But __1__, for fear of appearing foolish and thus possibly at the risk of losing their jobs, often leads workers to keep silent.
A __2__ of silence can be dangerous, argues a new book The Fearless Organization, by Amy Edmondson, a professor at Harvard Business School. Some of her examples are from the airline industry. One was its deadliest accident: a crash between Boeing 747s in the Canary Islands in 1977 when a co-pilot felt unable to query his captain’s decision to __3__ based on a misunderstanding of instructions from air-traffic control. Another case was that of the Columbia space shuttle in 2003; an engineer who may have __4__ damage to the shuttle’s wing before the flight felt unable to speak as he was “too low down” at NASA.
In a corporate culture based on fear, it may appear that __5__ are being achieved in the short term. But in the long run the effect is likely to be counterproductive. Studies show that fear inhibits (阻碍) learning. And when faced with a problem, scared workers find ways of covering it up or getting around it with inefficient __6__.
The solution is to create an atmosphere of “psychological safety” whereby workers can speak their minds. It does not mean that workers, or their ideas, are __7__ from criticism, or that they should complain continuously.
Pixar, the production firm, created what it called a “Braintrust” to give feedback to film directors. The rules were that feedback should be constructive and about the idea, not the person, and that filmmakers should not be __8__ in response.
And psychological safety is not about whistleblowing (检举). Indeed, if an employee feels the need to act as a whistleblower by speaking to external authorities, it suggests managers have not created an environment within the firm where criticism can be __9__. Nor is such a culture only about safety or avoiding mistakes. As mundane (单调的) tasks are automated, and workers __10__ computers for data analysis, the added value of humans will stem from their creativity. But as Ms Edmondson’s book amply demonstrates, it is hard to be either constructive or creative if you are not confident about speaking out.
(C)
With a name like The Daily Orange, you might think the Syracuse University student-run newspaper prints a new issue every day.
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