Cloze 1 

How to increase your worth in job market

    How much are you worth? In today's market-orientated (以市场为导向的) society, everyone has a value – some more than others, unfortunately. Trying to   __1__ the value of the price tag on our head can be difficult.

    First a little __2__ on how prices are calculated: Products can be __3__ because of the raw materials used, the skilled labour required to make the products, __4__ the scarcity of the product itself. Some __5__ take a long time to make. Others are expensive to distribute. Now skip ahead to the "people market" -- sports stars, __6__. They earn a lot of money __7__ the supply of their skills is low and the demand is high. But there are other jobs where there is the same __8__ supply. And yet because those who demand a person's skills are not rich, that person must __9__ a low price. Sometimes a person's, value increases when their work is __10__: an engineer in Iraq, for example. Sometimes a person's value is based upon __11__. A well-known economist versus an ordinary one, for instance.   

     Thinking about our worth in the job marketplace can enable us to discover new __12__ paths. For instance, you may love Chinese literature. You may __13__ have a degree in it. But maybe there are a lot of literature teachers in China. What if you __14__ your English-speaking ability so that you could teach Chinese to high school students in the US? What if you studied abroad in   __15__ school so you could become a professor of Chinese literature in the UK? Your value in the market place could skyrocket.

    In the right place, under the right circumstances, your skills can take you from rags to riches (从赤贫到巨富).

1. A. take care of  B. pick up       C. figure out       D. get rid of

2. A. background  B. story         C. description      D. skill

3. A. cheap       B. expensive     C. produced       D. sold

4. A. as long as   B.. because of    C. thanks to       D. as well as

5. A. products     B. people       C. decisions        D. profits

6. A. as well      B. in particular    C. and so on       D. for instance

7. A. so          B. because       C. though         D. but

8. A. short       B. sufficient       C. demanding      D. domestic

9. A. refuse       B. receive        C. ask            D. accept

10. A. dull        B. exciting        C. dangerous      D. hard

11. A. profession   B. reputation     C. age            D. knowledge

12. A. employment  B. career       C. job             D. occupation

13. A. never       B. ever          C. even           D. yet

14. A. increased    B. showed       C. developed      D. enlarged

15. A. academic    B. elementary    C. high           D. graduate

 

 

 

 

Cloze 2 

Bye-bye word search

     It's like this: You pass a person on the sidewalk wearing a pair of stylish shoes made of light brown leather, with a rounded toe. You'd like __1__ like that. But an Internet search for "shoes, light __2__, rounded toe" probably won't go very far.

     Don't worry. With the new image-searching technology, you have a better   __3__ of finding those dream shoes. The new US shopping website is like. com. Shoppers can upload a picture,

     __4__ keywords, and let it search online for a similar __5__.

    "This is a first," said Munjal Shah, creator of like. com: "Every other search   __6__ this was text-to-photo. But some things are hard to __7__ with a few keywords."

     The new image-mapping search technology may be a fundamental __8__   in the way people use the Internet.

     Shah explains how the website works: "We convert(转换) each picture into about 10,000 numbers, which __9__ more than 30 features, including shape, colour, texture and other details. When you search, what you're doing is comparing the numbers for different items. So, __10__ speaking, we don't compare two pictures, we compare two maths representations."

     With like. com, people can select clothes from celebrity (名人) photos. They can also use traditional text filters to sort by brand, __11__ and price.

     Besides online shopping, the new technology could soon be used to __12__human faces. A new image search engine being __13__ by the Swedish company Polar Rose is trying to make computers recognize faces.

     Polar Rose is still in beta(试用阶段) ,and it's not clear __14__the service will work. The photos on the Web have bad quality, different expressions and different poses.  "It's not easy. Even for people it's hard to __15__two photos sometimes," said Mikkel Thagaard, Polar Rose vice-president.

1. A. a person       B. a pair       C. the leather     D. the appearance

2. A. brown         B. blue        C. colour          D. style

3. A. computer      B. luck         C. chance         D. mood

4. A. with the help of  B. except for  C. in spite of      D. instead of

5. A. pict/are       B. item         C. shopper        D. image

6. A. after          B. before       C. like            D. beyond

7. A. write          B. choose       C. purchase       D. describe

8. A. change        B. invention     C. discovery      D. achievement

9. A. represent       B. suggest     C. contain         D. offer

10. A. comparatively  B. briefly       C. strictly         D. clearly

11. A. date         B. order         C. style           D. keywords

12. A. match        B. recognize     C. observe        D. photo

13. A. manufactured   B. built        C. developed      D. produced

14. A. when         B. where        C. how well       D. how fast

15. A. distinguish between   B. select from  

C. decide between      D. comment on

 

 

 

 

 

Cloze  3 

We can say goodbye to the era of cheap food

     The rise in food prices across world means China is not alone. As the US, Japan and European countries commit to relying more__1__ on biofuel, farmers everywhere in the world are rushing to __2__ maize(玉米) and palm trees.

      __3__ this may lower carbon emissions (排放)and improve __4__ security, it is affecting food prices.

      In the US, land __5__ farmed for human or animal food has been converted for ethanol (酒精燃料) production. And because __6__ grows most of the world's maize, in the last 10 months its price has doubled while the __7__ of wheat has risen about 50 percent.

     The era of cheap food is __8__. Meat, too, will cost more because chicken and pigs are __9__ largely on grain. And anyone __10__ will be better off.

     Some environmental and social factors are also gathering force. The global __11__ is rising by 87 million people a year. Developing countries __12__ China and India are switching to meat-based diets which need more land. h takes 7kg of grain to produce 1kg of beef, and increased __13__ will require huge amounts of grain-growing land.

     And __14__ change is leading to more intense rains and flooding as well as long droughts, hitting food producers hard.

     But some analysts say that the food price rises now being seen are __15__ and will fall back within a year as the market responds. Technologists pin their faith on (对….抱有信心) genetically modified crops, or drought-resistant crops, or trust that biofuel producers will develop technologies that require less raw material or use non-edible parts of food.

1. A. likely        B. heavily         C. recently         D. obviously

2. A. grow        B. buy            C. sell             D. gather

3. A. While       B. When           C. As             D. Because

4. A. public       B. energy          C. environment     D. nation

5. A. principally   B. definitely        C. lately           D. previously

6. A. Japan       B. China           C. America         D. Europe

7. A. production   B. cost            C. output           D. sale

8. A. leaving      B. coming         C. up              D. over

9. A. grown       B. eating          C. fed             D. depending

10. A. raising chickens    B. planting trees     

C. growing grains     D. selling food

11. A. warming    B. temperature      C. population     D. disaster

12. A. such as     B. that is           C. together with   D. except for

13. A. demand    B. cost             C. profit          D. products

14. A. surroundings  B. climate         C. season        D. situation

15. A. fatal       B. permanent        C. lasting        D. temporary

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cloze  1    1---15   C B A B C   D D C A B   C D B A A

Cloze  2    1---15   B A C D B   B D A A C   C B C C A  

 

cloze  3     1---15  B A A B D   C B D C C   C A A B D