试题库在线考试题库-历年真题模拟试题及答案-考博英语在线试题测试中心-希赛网

对外经济贸易大学

The philosopher Susan Neiman believes growing up means finding the courage to live in a world of painful uncertainty. A grown-up, Neiman writes, helps to move the world closer to what it should be while never losing sight of what it is. So, growth is a goal rarely achieved entirety, and all the more worth striving for.Topic: My Understanding of Growing-UpOutline:I. State your understanding of growing up.II. Justify your understanding with your experiences during Covid-19 pandemic.III. Draw a natural conclusion.Marks will be awarded for content, organization, grammar and appropriateness.Failure to follow the instructions may result in a loss of marks.

In 1924 the Phoebus Cartel, an association of manufacturers including General Electric, Osram and Philips, held a meeting in Switzerland. They agreed to reduce the life of light bulbs—at the time proudly averaging 2,500 hours, to 1,000 hours, thereby more than doubling the number of light bulbs that would be sold. Members of the cartel controlled their subsidiaries firmly, and those who did not reduce the quality of their light bulbs were fined. The cartel was successful, within a decade, in making the thousand-hour light bulb the standard. In 1928 the young advertising journal Printers’ Ink proclaimed “an article that refuses to wear out is a tragedy for business.” The manufacture of goods designed to decay was hardly limited to light bulbs. The auto industry discovered it early, allowing General Motors to dominate the market by 1931, edging out Henry Ford, who clung to the obsolete idea that goods should be built to last.The phrase “planned obsolescence (过时，淘汰)” was first used in a pamphlet written in 1932 by American entrepreneur Bernard London, who argued that in order to reduce unemployment during the Great Depression, the government should make planned obsolescence compulsory. In an age that had yet to develop environmental concerns, the solution looked simple: the more often a product decays, the more products need to be made, the more workers needed to make them. There was no need to be explicit about the greater profit created for corporations. London’s proposal for compulsory planned obsolescence proved unnecessary, for the advertising industry was learning that seduction was more effective than legal force. Convincing consumers that their things were unfashionable before they actually broke down began in the 1950s in earnest. Occasionally a product still needed tinkering (修补): after DuPont invented nylon stockings strong enough to tow a truck, it sent its chemists back to the laboratory to design ones that ran when snagged by a fingernail. Today’s products often hide computer chips that ensure their demise, and we now expect to replace most of the things we depend on every few years. Nor does the maintenance of this system of production any longer require cartels or fines. In 1981, the East German light-bulb manufacturer whose products lit up half Beijing tried to peddle (推销) its longer-lasting wares at a West German trade fair. No company was interested in stocking them. The factory was closed shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall ended travel restrictions for Eastern Europeans, and business restrictions for Western companies.Critics as different as Goodman, Vance Packard and David Riesman deplored the introduction of planned obsolescence, and other features of the burgeoning consumer culture of the early 1960s. That’s probably the reason the term went out of use and was replaced by the woollier “product life cycle”. Life cycles sound normal, part of an organic process of birth and decay. We now find it natural that most of the objects we use will need replacement before we have finished paying for them. In a way, this sounds no surprising. We have long known that advertisers target our unconscious desires and insecurities in their efforts to get us to buy their products. It was in 1957 that The Hidden Persuaders first claimed to pull back the curtain and reveal the manipulations and tricks that the ad-men were practicing on us.

It has long been understood that working outdoors has certain psychological and emotional benefits, especially when it involves tending nature. Gardening can prove helpful in alleviating depression, and there is evidence to suggest that the presence of foliage (植物叶子) directly lifts an individual’s mood.There is a long history of putting mentally troubled people to work on farms. People who can’t seem to find coherence in their own lives, can’t relate to a conventional job, or have suffered some brutal emotional rupture, discover that the presence of plants and animals has a calming influence.In the early 2000s, Beren Aldridge was looking to establish a farm of this sort in Cumbria, in Britain’s Lake District. In 2004, Growing Well was established, a ten-acre farm producing vegetables that are sold locally. Evaluations have shown that those who spend time working at the farm experience clear improvements in their conditions, which tend to be more sustainable than the improvements offered by medicalized forms of treatment.How should we make sense of the success of something like Growing Well? If one chooses to view the human mind or brain as some magically autonomous entity, with its own strange habits, tastes, fluctuations and dysfunctions (失调，功能紊乱), which we as human beings have to look after (with the assistance of managers, doctors and policy-makers), then the story is relatively obvious. People are occasionally victims of a spontaneous mental or neurological affliction which they are powerless to fix. The natural environment and physical activity offer a psychosomatic (身心的) treatment for these sorts of ailment, not unlike a drug or a talking cure.No doubt this is the sort of story that many of Growing Well’s funders and National Health Service collaborators would tell. Spending time with plants becomes a medical fix. But this is very different from how Beren Aldridge understands the project he founded. As far as he is concerned, Growing Well is a business, not some form of medical prescription in disguise. Prior to establishing the farm, Aldridge had done a master’s degree in vocational rehabilitation (康复), studying how work helps people recover from illnesses and painful life events. His dissertation looked at participatory management practices, exploring the benefits of democratic business structures, otherwise known as co-operatives. It struck him that including people in the running of businesses—be they social enterprises or not—was an obvious way of helping them rediscover a sense of purpose and agency in their own lives. Why not bring together the movement for “care farming”, which had traditionally been viewed as a service to mental health patients, with that of cooperatives, which offered a template for empowering people to organize and produce collectively?Virtually all the scientific analysis of the psychological effects of spending time with plants completely ignores why a person might do so. Gardening and harvesting become merely therapeutic (治疗的). The relationship between foliage and mood is represented as a simple one of cause and effect. The ethos of Growing Well is entirely different from this. Its organizing principle is that volunteers share the same purpose, of producing and selling good vegetables. The farm is established as an “industrial and provident society”, one of the legal forms available for the creation of co-operatives in the UK. Anyone who has an interest in Growing Well, be it as a customer, a volunteer or a visitor wanting to know more about farming, is encouraged to become a member, who is then able to participate in decision-making. Volunteers are offered the opportunity to engage in management of the business, at whatever level of seniority they would like. This isn’t just about “working with your hands”; it is also about expressing a view and taking some control.

Milton Mizner once said, “A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he gets to know something.”Listening is not the simple thing it seems to be. Listening is participating in at least five important ways. You are a good listener if 1. you can “see” an idea when you hear it. 2. you can distinguish between essential points and details. 3. you can distinguish between facts and opinions. 4. you can distinguish between information and persuasion. 5. and if you can then make up your own mind about what has been said.You are to write a composition of 150 words or so about the power of listening. You should write according to the outline given below. Please write your composition neatly and clearly on your answer sheet.Topic: The Power of ListeningOutlineI evaluate your listening powerII justify the need to improve listening power educationally, socially, politically, nationally and internationallyIII draw a natural conclusionMarks will be awarded for content, organization, grammar and appropriateness.Failure to follow the instructions may result in a loss of marks.

The State Administration for Market Regulation, which launched the probe into the e-commerce giant in December, charged Alibaba with abusing its market dominance.The watchdog said its investigation concluded that Alibaba had hindered online retail in China, affected innovation in the platform-based internet economy, hurt the lawful rights of merchants and damaged consumers’ interests.The 18.23 billion yuan ($2.8 billion) fine on Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. was equivalent to four percent of Alibaba’s domestic sales in 2019, according to the Saturday statement. The company’s earnings report showed it registered profits of about $12 billion in the last three months of 2020.The announcement is the latest development in the government’s increased oversight on internet companies to avoid the “disorderly expansion of capital”, curbing behavior such as either-or choices for merchants between e-commerce platforms, and price gouging on regular customers via big data.Last December, China’s antitrust regulators made public through a statement the decision to fine, for an amount of 500,000 yuan, three of the country’s largest technology companies for failing to disclose the purchases of smaller competitors, escalating the level of enforcement against every kind of monopolistic corporate behavior that affects consumers’ interests.The companies hit by the decision are Alibaba Investment, which in three deals failed to obtain approval for the acquisition of department store operator Intime Retail Group; Tencent, which through its subsidiary China Literature failed to report the acquisition of New Classic Media; and SF Holding, which acquired a competitor previously owned by China Post Corp.As is the case with Alibaba’s investment and later privatization of Intime, the fines refer to deals concluded as early as 2014, leading to a great deal of concern for Chinese tech giants facing retroactive penalties as well as the potential amendment of the penalty amount in the upcoming antitrust law. Considering the number of acquisitions that both Alibaba and Tencent have conducted over the years, this could pose serious consequences.Strengthening anti-monopoly supervision has become a global trend, Economic Daily reported on Monday. Antitrust law enforcement agencies in countries and economies in the world have taken tough regulatory stances and restrictive measures on online platforms.According to incomplete statistics, the report said, technology behemoths like Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon have been deeply involved in antitrust investigations in the world during the past four years. Among them, Google faced 27 cases, Amazon and Apple both 22 cases, and Facebook 13 cases.The voices against big tech companies never cease. They are deemed to have too much power—too much power over our economy, our society, and our democracy. They have bulldozed competition, used our private information for profit, and tilted the playing field against everyone else. And in the process, they have hurt small businesses and stifled innovation.The growing importance of technology in the development of modern economies, and as a contributor to national GDP in the age of Covid-19, now requires the maximum level of legislative intervention from every country's government through an appropriate trade-off that encourages tech companies to grow and innovate, while guaranteeing an open and fair market environment, which is the basis of social and economic stability.Answer the following questions according to the above text.1) Why is the whole world so worried about the platform-based internet giants? (10 points)2) Do you think we need more antitrust laws to regulate the market competition or simply break up those tech giants under the context of Covid-19? Justify your opinions. (20 points)

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