Passage One

　　Questions 57 to 61 are based on the following passage.

　　The wallet is heading for extinction. As a day-to-day essential, it will die off with the generation who read print newspapers. The kind of shopping-where you hand over notes and count out change in return—now happens only in the most minor of our retail encounters，like buying a bar of chocolate or a pint of milk from a comer shop. At the shops where you spend any real money, that money is increasingly abstracted. And this is more and more true, the higher up the scale you go. At the most cutting-edge retail stores—Victoria Beckham on Dover Street, for instance—you don't go and stand at any kind of cash register when you decide to pay. The staff are equipped with iPads to take your payment while you relax on a sofa.

　　Which is nothing more or less than excellent service, if you have the money. But across society, the abstraction of the idea of cash makes me uneasy. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned. But earning money isn't quick or easy for most of us. Isn't it a bit weird that spending it should happen in half a blink(眨眼)of an eye? Doesn't a wallet—that time-honoured Friday-night feeling of pleasing, promising fatness—represent something that matters?

　　But I'll leave the economics to the experts. What bothers me about the death of the wallet is the change it represents in our physical environment. Everything about the look and feel of a wallet—the way the fastenings and materials wear and tear and loosen with age, the plastic and paper and gold and silver, and handwritten phone numbers and printed cinema tickets—is the very opposite of what our world is becoming. The opposite of a wallet is a smartphone of an iPad. The rounded edges, cool glass, smooth and unknowable as pebble(鹅卵石). Instead of digging through pieces of paper and peering into corners, we move our fingers left and right. No more counting out coins. Show your wallet, if you still have one. It may not be here much longer.

　　57.【题干】What is happening to the wallet?

　　【选项】

　　A.It is disappearing.

　　B.It is being fattened.

　　C.It is becoming costly.

　　D.It is changing in style.

　　【答案】A

　　【解析】第一段第一句The wallet is heading for extinction.

　　58.【题干】How are business transactions done in big modern stores?

　　【选项】

　　A.Individually.

　　B.Electronically.

　　C.In the abstract.

　　D.Via a cash register.

　　【答案】B

　　【解析】1. At the most cutting-edge retail stores—Victoria Beckham on Dover Street, for instance—you don't go and stand at any kind of cash register when you decide to pay. The staff are equipped with iPads to take your payment while you relax on a sofa.

　　59.【题干】What makes the author feel uncomfortable nowadays?

　　【选项】

　　A.Saving money is becoming a thing of the past.

　　B.The pleasing Friday-night feeling is fading.

　　C.Earning money is getting more difficult.

　　D.Spending money is so fast and easy.

　　【答案】D

　　【解析】2. But earning money isn't quick or easy for most of us. Isn't it a bit weird that spending it should happen in half a blink(眨眼)of an eye?

　　60.【题干】Why does the author choose to write about what's happening to the wallet?

　　【选项】

　　A.It represents a change in the modern world.

　　B.It has something to do with everybody's life.

　　C.It marks the end of a time-honoured tradition.

　　D.It is the concern of contemporary economists.

　　【答案】A

　　【解析】1.The wallet is heading for extinction. As a day-to-day essential, it will die off with the generation who read print newspapers.

　　61.【题干】What can we infer from the passage about the author?

　　【选项】

　　A.He is resistant to social changes.

　　B.He is against technological progress.

　　C.He feels reluctant to part with the traditional wallet.

　　D.He fells insecure in the ever-changing modern world.

　　【答案】D

　　【解析】But I'll leave the economics to the experts. What bothers me about the death of the wallet is the change it represents in our physical environment.

　　Passage Two

　　Questions 62 to 66 are based on the following passage.

　　Everybody sleeps, but what people stay up late to catch—or wake up early in order not to miss—varies by culture.

　　From data collected, it seems the things that cause us to lose the most sleep, on average, are sporting events, time changes, and holidays.

　　Around the world, people changed sleep patterns thanks to the start or end of daylight savings time. Russians, for example, began to wake up about a half-hour later each day after President Vladimir Putin shifted the country permanently to "winter time" starting on October 26.

　　Russia's other late nights and early mornings generally correspond to public holidays. On New Year's Eve, Russians have the world's latest bedtime, hitting the hay at around 3:30 am.

　　Russians also get up an hour later on International Women's Day, the day for treating and celebrating female relatives.

　　Similarly, Americans' late nights late mornings, and longest sleeps fall on three-day weekends.

　　Canada got the least sleep of the year the night it beat Sweden in the Olympic hockey(冰球)final.

　　The World Cup is also chiefly responsible for sleep deprivation(剥夺). The worst night for sleep in the U.K. was the night of the England-Italy match on June 14. Brits stayed up a half-hour later to watch it, and then they woke up earlier than usual the next morning thanks to summer nights, the phenomenon in which the sun barely sets in northern countries in the summertime. That was nothing, though, compared to Germans, Italians, and the French, who stayed up around an hour and a half later on various days throughout the summer to watch the Cup.

　　It should be made clear that not everyone has a device to record their sleep patterns, in some of these nations, it's likely that only the richest people do. And people who elect to track their sleep may try to get more sleep than the average person. Even if that's the case, though, the above findings are still striking. If the most health-conscious among us have such deep swings in our shut-eye levels throughout the year, how much sleep are the rest of us losing?

　　62.【题干】What does the author say about people's sleeping habits?

　　【选项】

　　A.They are culture-related

　　B.They affect people's health.

　　C.They change with the seasons.

　　D.They vary from person to person.

　　【答案】A

　　【解析】定位到第一段最后一句“varies by culture”， They are culture-related.

　　63.【题干】What do we learn about the Russians regarding sleep?

　　【选项】

　　A.They don't fall asleep until very late.

　　B.They don't sleep much on weekends.

　　C.They get less sleep on public holidays.

　　D.They sleep longer than people elsewhere.

　　【答案】C

　　【解析】第三段“Russia’s other late nights and early mornings generally coincided with public holidays”，所以答案为C，They don’t sleep much on holidays。

　　64.【题干】What is the major cause for Europeans' loss of sleep?

　　【选项】

　　A.The daylight savings time.

　　B.The colorful night life.

　　C.The World Cup.

　　D.The summertime.

　　【答案】C

　　【解析】倒数第二段的“compared to Germans, Italians, and the French, who stayed up around an hour and a half later on various days throughout the summer to watch the Cup”，原文的Germans, Italians, and the French就是题干中“Europeans”的同义改写，所以说他们缺乏睡眠的原因便是观看世界杯比赛。

　　65.【题干】What is the most probable reason for some rich people to use a device to record their patterns?

　　【选项】

　　A.They have trouble falling asleep.

　　B.They want to get sufficient sleep.

　　C.They are involved in a sleep research.

　　D.They want to go to bed on regular hours.

　　【答案】B

　　【解析】最后一段第一句，说到了富人为何用机器设备记录睡眠的事实，再往下一句看，“And people who elect to track their sleep may try to get more sleep than the average person”，记录睡眠的人是想要得到比普通人更多的睡眠。

　　66.【题干】What does the author imply in the last paragraph?

　　【选项】

　　A.Sleeplessness does harm to people's health.

　　B.Few people really know the importance of sleep.

　　C.It is important to study our sleep patterns.

　　D.Average people probably sleep less than the rich.

　　【答案】B

　　【解析】最后一句If the most health-conscious among us have such deep swings in our shut-eye levels throughout the year, how much sleep are the rest of us losing? 作者提到了health-conscious，人们对健康的意识是缺乏的，对健康是视而不见的，因此选B。

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