题目内容
Most people in business have a strong sense that meetings are demanding more and more of their time. Fifty years ago meetings were barely necessary – the boss decided what was going to happen and told employees in a brief office memo.
Now everything in business is discussed extensively in large meetings attended by anybody who has the remotest interest in the subject. The gradual erosion of formal systems of authority has increased the appetite for face-to-face meetings. Consultation and discussion has taken the place of direct instruction.
The amount of travel to get to these meetings is increasing. More than nine million people passed through Heathrow(希思罗机场) in 2005 on the way to internal company events. As a consequence, corporate travel is a growing part of UK carbon emissions(排放). It would be easy to say we must reverse the trend towards more meetings to reduce the climate-change impact of modern business. Unfortunately, it is not going to be easy. Some interesting recent research shows that most of the attendees at corporate meetings do complain about the waste of time involved. But when they were questioned in private, the picture changes. Only 15 per cent of people rated their most recent meeting adversely. Though most attendees saw room for improvement, meetings were valuable both in helping build plans for action and in making employees feel part of the organization.
But do these meetings have to be face-to-face? British Telecom recently presented some data on the success of its internal voice conferencing. In the most recent year, more than two million telephone conferences took place in the company. BT estimates a saving of over ??200m from the use of this technology and a cut of almost 100,000 tonnes of CO2. Of course BT has a clear interest in telling us that phone meetings are a good substitute for wasteful corporate get-togethers. So far, such conferencing has struggled to take off as people have tended to prefer to travel. It is, after all, rather more difficult to understand the boss's body language over the phone. Nevertheless, BT's research on the considerable benefits of conferencing is reasonable. Rather than try to get rid of apparently unproductive meetings, we need to find ways to make telephone and video conferences ever better substitutes for those traditional meetings.
Why are there more and more meetings according to the passage?
A. Because the formal systems of authority has been established.
B. Because people prefer to solve problems through discussion.
C. Because the organizations are getting more and more complex.
D. Because modern transportation has been developing rapidly.
The word “ adversely” in the third paragraph is closest in meaning to ______.
A. approvingly B. enthusiastically C. feasibly D. unfavourably
British Telecom presented the figures to prove that voice conferencing _______.
A. stimulates the development of technology B. plays a vital role in large organizations
C. may well replace conventional ones D. brings large profit to the company
What can we learn from the passage?
A. Traditional face-to-face meetings bring more benefits than harm.
B. Corporate travel contributes a lot to environmental problems.
C. The idea of telephone conference is well accepted by employees.
D. Meetings should be abandoned because they are a waste of time.
【小题1】B
【小题2】D
【小题3】C
【小题4】B
解析:
略
it but later found it made you feel very uncomfortable over time? When you select your career, there’s whole lot more to it than assessing your skills and matching them with a particular position. If you ignore your personality, it will hurt you long-term regardless of your skills or the job's pay. There are several areas of your personality that you need to consider to help you find a good job. Here are a few of those main areas: 
right hand, and in many countries and regions in Europe some people still follow this tradition．
．You can have an inscription put on the inside the band．Farming was once the chief way of life in nearly every country. People cannot live without food, and nearly all their food comes from crops and animals raised on farms. Not many people farm for a living any more, but farming remains the most important work in the world.
Before the nineteenth century, the typical American family lived on a small farm. They raised pigs, cattle, sheep, chickens, and planted corn, frui
ts, garden vegetables, and wheat. Everyone worked long and hard, but the results were often poor. Families barely harvested enough food for themselves. This situation began to change during the last half of the 1800's and it changed remarkably(明显地) in the next century.
Scientific methods and labor-saving machinery have made farming increasingly productive. The development of improved plant varieties and fertilizers has helped double and even triple the production of some major crops. More scientific animal care and animal raising have helped increase the amount of meat and products that animals produce. At the same time, the use of tractors and other modern farm equipment has sharply reduced the need for farm labor.
As farming has become less important as a way of life in the United States, it has become more important as a source which offers materials to industry. Today's successful farmers are experts not just in agriculture but also in accounting, marketing, and finance. Farms that are
not run in a similar way have great difficulty surviving.
【小题1】 We are told in the first paragraph about ____.
| A．the history of farming | B．the importance of farming |
| C．the development of farming | D．the changes of farming |
| A．Farmers didn’t work hard on their farms. |
| B．Farmers used tractors to help them. |
| C．Farming was the main way of living for most people. |
| D．Farmers could supply materials to industry. |
| A．scientific methods | B．labor- saving machinery |
| C．farmers’ hard work | D．chemical fertilizers |
| A．the advantages of American farming | B．the changes in American farming |
| C．the situation of American farms | D．how rapidly farming has developed |