英語四級長篇閱讀模擬練習題

　　下面是小編整理的，希望對大家有幫助。

　　：Hate Your Job? Here’s How to Reshape It

　　A*** Once upon a time, if you hated your job, you either quit or bit your lip. These days, a group of researchers is trumpeting a third option: shape your job so ifs more fruitful than futile.

　　B*** "We often get trapped into thinking about our job as a list of things to do and a list of responsibilities," says Amy Wrzesniewski, an associate professor at the Yale School of Management. "But what if you set aside that mind-set?" If you could adjust what you do, she says, "who would you start talking to, what other tasks would you take on, and who would you work with?"

　　C*** To make livelihoods more lively, Wrzesniewski and her colleagues Jane Dutton and Justin Berg have developed a methodology they call job-crafting. They’re working with Fortune 500 companies, smaller firms and business schools to change the way Americans think about work. The idea is to make all jobs--even mundane ***平凡的*** ones---more meaningful by empowering employees to brainstorm and implement subtle but significant workplace adjustments.

　　Step 1: Rethink Your Job--Creatively

　　D*** "The default some people wake up to is dragging themselves to work and facing a list of things they have to do," says Wrzesniewski. So in the job-crafting process, the first step is to think about your job holistically. You first analyze how much time, energy and attention you devote to your various tasks. Then you reflect on that allocation*** 分配***. See I0 perfect jobs for the recession--and after.

　　E*** Take, for example, a maintenance technician at Burt’s Bees, which makes personal-care products. He was interested in process engineering, though that wasn’t part of his job description. To alter the scope of his day-to-day activities, the technician asked a supervisor if he could spend some time studying an idea he had for making the firm’s manufacturing procedures more energy-efficient. His ideas proved helpful, and now process engineering is part of the scope of his work.

　　F*** Barbara Fredrickson, author of Positivity and a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, says it’s crucial for people to pay attention to their workday emotions. "Doing so," she says, "will help you discover which aspects of your work are most life-giving-and most life-draining."

　　G*** Many of us get stuck in ruts ***慣例 ***. Berg, a Ph.D. student at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania who helped develop the job-crafting methodology, says we all benefit from periodically rethinking what we do. "Even in the most constraining jobs, people have a certain amount of wiggle room," he says. "Small changes can have a real impact on life at work."

　　Step 2: Diagram Your Day

　　H*** To lay the groundwork for change, job-crafting participants assemble diagrams detailing their workday activities. The first objective is to develop new insights about what you actually do at work. Then you can dream up fresh ways to integrate what the job-crafting exercise calls your "strengths, motives and passions" into your daily routine. You convert task lists into flexible building blocks. The end result is an "after" diagram that can serve as a map for specific changes.

　　I*** lna Lockau-Vogel, a management consultant who participated in a recent job-crafting workshop, says the exercise helped her adjust her priorities. "Before, 1 would spend so much time reacting to requests and focusing on urgent tasks that I never had time to address the real important issues." As part of the job-crafting process, she decided on a strategy for delegating and outsourcing ***外包*** more of her administrative responsibilities.

　　J*** In contrast to business books that counsel, managers to influence workers through incentives, job-crafting focuses on what employees themselves can do to re-envision and adjust what they do every day. Given that according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it now takes the average job seeker more than six months to find a new position, it’s crucial to make the most of the job you’ve got.

　　Step 3: Identify Job Loves and Hates

　　K*** By reorienting ***使適應 *** how you think about your job, you free yourself up for new ideas about how to restructure your workday time and energy. Take an IT worker who hates dealing with technologically incompetent callers. He might enjoy teaching more than customer service. By spending more time instructing colleagues--and treating help-line callers as curious students of tech--the disgruntled IT person can make the most of his 9-to-5 position.

　　L*** Dutton, a professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, says she has seen local auto-industry workers benefit from the job-crafting process. "They come in looking worn down, but after spending two hours on this exercise, they come away thinking about three or four things they can do differently."

　　M*** "They start to recognize they have more control over their work than they realized," says Dutton, who parmered with Wrzesniewski on the original job-crafting research.

　　Step 4: Put Your Ideas into Action

　　N*** To conclude the job-crafting process, participants list specific follow-up steps: Many plan a one-0n-one meeting with a supervisor to propose new project ideas. Others connect with colleagues to talk about trading certain tasks. Berg says as long as their goals are met, many managers are happy to let employees adjust how they work.

　　O*** Job-crafting isn’t about revenue, per se, but juicing up *** 活躍 *** employee engagement may end up beefing up the bottom line. Amid salary, job and benefit cuts, more and more workers are disgruntled. Surveys show that more than 50% aren’t happy with what they do. Dutton, Berg and Wrzesniewski argue that emphasizing enjoyment can boost efficiency by lowering turnover rates and jacking up productivity. Job-crafting won’t rid you of a lousy boss or a subpar salary, but it does offer some remedies for job dissatisfaction. If you can’t ditch or switch a job, at least make it more likable.
 

　　1. A long time ago when a person hated his/her job, he/she will resign or bear it.

　　2. Amy Wrzesniewski think job could be adjusted.

　　3. Your first thing to do in the job-crafting process is to think about your job wholly .

　　4. The idea of a maintenance technician at Burt’s Bees turned out to be helpful and energy-efficient.

　　5. Berg’s suggestion about work is to rethink and make small changes.

　　6. According to Ina Lockau-Vogel, the benefit from job-crafting is that it helps her set priorities properly.

　　7. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the situation in job market is ---it is difficult to find a job.

　　8. Dutton has seen that local auto-industry workers profit from the job-crafting process.

　　9. According to Berg, if the job-crafting process is successful, the supervisors are willing to let employees adjust what to do.

　　10. If you can’t quit your job, using job-crafting may at least offer some remedies for job dissatisfaction.

 

 

　　：Animals on the Move

　　A*** It looked like a scene from “Jaws” but without the dramatic music. A huge shark was slowly swimming through the water, its tail swinging back and forth like the pendulum of a clock. Suddenly sensitive nerve ending in the shark’s skin picked up vibrations of a struggling fish. The shark was immediately transformed into a deadly, efficient machine of death. With muscles taut, the shark knifed through the water at a rapid speed. In a flash the shark caught its victim, a large fish, in its powerful jaws. Then, jerking its head back and forth, the shark tore huge chunks of flesh from its victim and swallowed them. Soon the action was over.

　　Moving to Survive

　　B*** In pursuing its prey, the shark demonstrated in a dramatic way the important role of movement, or locomotion, in animals.Like the shark, most animals use movement to find food.They also use locomotion to escape enemies, find a mate, and explore new territories. The methods of locomotion include crawling, hopping, slithering, flying, swimming, or walking.Humans have the added advantage of using their various inventions to move about in just about any kind of environment. Automobiles, rockets, and submarines transport humans from deep oceans to as far away as the moon.However, for other animals movement came about naturally through millions of years of evolution. One of the most successful examples of animal locomotion is that of the shark. Its ability to quickly zero in on its prey has always impressed scientists. But it took a detailed study by Duke University marine biologists S. A. Wainwright, F. Vosburgh, and J. H. Hebrank to find out how the sharks did it. In their study the scientists observed sharks swimming in a tank at Marine land in Saint Augustine, Fla. Movies were taken of the sharks’ movements and analyzed. Studies were also made of shark skin and muscle.

　　Skin Is the Key

　　C*** The biologists discovered that the skin of the shark is the key to the animal’s high efficiency in swimming through the water. The skin contains many fibers that crisscross like the inside of a belted radial tire. The fibers are called collagen fibers. These fibers can either store or release large amounts of energy depending on whether the fibers are relaxed or taut. When the fibers are stretched, energy is stored in them the way energy is stored in the string of a bow when pulled tight. When the energy is released, the fibers become relaxed.

　　D*** The Duke University biologists have found that the greatest stretching occurs where the shark bends its body while swimming. During the body’s back and forth motion, fibers along the outside part of the bending body stretch greatly. Much potential energy is stored in the fibers. This energy is released when the shark’s body snaps back the other way.

　　As energy is alternately stored and released on both sides of the animal’s body, the tail whips strongly back and forth. This whip-like action propels the animal through the water like a living bullet.

　　Source of Energy

　　E*** What causes the fibers to store so much energy? In finding the answer the Duke University scientists learned that the shark’s similarity to a belted radial tire doesn’t stop with the skin. Just as a radial tire is inflated by pressure, so, too, is the area just under the shark’s collagen “radials”. Instead of air pressure, however, the pressure in the shark may be due to the force of the blood pressing on the collagen fibers.

　　F*** When the shark swims slowly, the pressure on the fibers is relatively low. The fibers are more relaxed, and the shark is able to bend its body at sharp angles. The animal swims this way when looking around for food or just swimming. However, when the shark detects an important food source, some fantastic involuntary changes take place. The pressure inside the animal may increase by 10 times. This pressure change greatly stretches the fibers, enabling much energy to be stored. This energy is then transferred to the tail, and the shark is off. The rest of the story is predictable.

　　Dolphin Has Speed Record

　　G*** Another fast marine animal is the dolphin. This seagoing mammal has been clocked at speeds of 32 kilometers ***20 miles*** an hour. Biologists studying the dolphin have discovered that, like the shark, the animal’s efficient locomotion can be traced to its skin. A dolphin’s skin is made up in such a way that it offers very little resistance to the water flowing over it. Normally when a fish or other object moves slowly through the water, the water flows smoothly past the body. This smooth flow is known as laminar flow. However, at faster speeds the water becomes more turbulent along the moving fish. This turbulence muses friction and slows the fish down.

　　H*** In a dolphin the skin is so flexible that it bends and yields to the waviness of the water. The waves, in effect, become tucked into the skin’s folds. This allows the rest of the water to move smoothly by in a laminar flow. Where other animals would be slowed by turbulent water at rapid speeds, the dolphin can race through the water at record breaking speeds.

　　Other Animals Less Efficient

　　I*** Not all animals move as efficiently as sharks and dolphins. Perhaps the greatest loser in locomotion efficiency is the slug. The slug, which looks like a snail without a shell, lays down a slimy trail over which it crawls. It uses so much energy producing the slimy mucus and crawling over it that a mouse traveling the same distance uses only one twelfth as much energy. Scientists say that because of the slug’s inefficient use of energy, its lifestyle must be restricted. That is, the animals are forced to confine themselves to small areas for obtaining food and finding proper living conditions. Have humans ever been faced with this kind of problem?
 

　　1.According to the passage, a shark can use movement to find food, to avoid being chased by its enemies, and to find a new place to live.

　　2.Examples of automobiles, rockets and submarines are used to show that human inventions enable us to travel in almost any kind of environment.

　　3.The skin is the key to the shark’s swift locomotion in water.

　　4.According to the Duke University scientists, when bending its body in swimming, the shark stretch its collagen fibers to the greatest extent.

　　5.Because it is also inflated by pressure, the area just under the shark’s collagen fibers similar to a belted radial tire.

　　6.A laminar flow is formed when a fish swims slowly through the water.

　　7.Consuming the equal amount of energy as a slug does, a mouse can travel 12 times as long as a slug.

　　8.A shark finds its prey by feeling the vibrations of a struggling prey.

　　9.According to the passage, collagen fibers can be compared to the string of a bow for both of them store energy when stretched.

　　10.When the shark detects an important food source, some fantastic involuntary changes take place.