SECTION A MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONSIn this section, there are several passages followed by ten multiple-choice questions. For each questions, there are four suggested answers marked A, B, C and D. Choose the one that you think is the best answer and mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET TWO.PASSAGE ONEExecutive coaching is primarily concerned with confidential one-to-one discussions between the coach and the executive. It is aimed at performance improvement. Primary needs are diagnosed and agreed upon, a "developmental-action plan" is drawn up, the skill base of the executive is broadened by coaching, and then the new skill sets are tested in the workplace under the guidance of the coach. Sometimes, these needs involve team coaching, but individual coaching is the normal starting point. The coach needs to guide the executive outside his or her comfort zone in order to improve performance.A coaching assignment normally focuses on two or three developmental needs of the individual, and lasts for 6 to 12 months. However, it sometimes involves multiple assignments aimed at bringing about cultural change in an organization. For example, a new chief executive may want to change the culture of his organization. He could then hire a coach, and brief him or her to change the mindset of his direct subordinates on a one-to-one basis.Compared with traditional management training, which is typically related to broadbased organizational change, sometimes of a technical nature, executive coaching is targeted to individual and small-group change. The primary focus of coaching is often behavioral and leadership change, and is rarely of a technical nature. The difference between coaching and training is that coaching is one-to-one, highly confidential and over 6—12 months, whereas training is typically of a short-term, group-work-shop nature.Referring to the key ingredients for enhanced performance and team success, business coaching has a lot to learn from sports.According to sports coaches, a coach is a catalyst for change, and is not paid to preserve the status quo, but to lift people out of their comfort zone, so that they grow and develop. The coach must stay in touch with the state of the art and extract from it what is relevant.All sports coaches believe passionately in the power of the team to lift performance not by just a little, but by 100%. Considerable energy is devoted to defining goals, roles, a code of conduct and to fostering group dynamics in order to optimize team productivity.Both success and failure are learning opportunities, and there is a severity in their cold-eyed, weekly analysis, which business has yet to develop. Top athletes scrutinize both success and failure with their coach to extract lessons from them, but they are never distracted from longer-term goals.To be a champion athlete means developing an elitist attitude—not involving arrogance, but rather an unceasing desire to learn and improve. They never accept second best, but always strive for what has not yet been achieved.There must be a sport/life balance, so that athletes are not obsessed by their goals, and thus lack a sense of perspective to cope with inevitable failure or occasional success, or the ability to recharge their batteries outside the sporting arena.PASSAGE TWOMore and more young athletes are taking part in risky, adventurous activities called "extreme sports", or "X-sports". Its philosophy is to get as close to the edge as possible.In the past, young athletes would play hockey or baseball. Today, they want risk and excitement—the closer to the edge the better. They snowboard over cliffs and mountain-bike down steep mountains. They windsurf near hurricanes, go white-water rafting through rapids, and bungee-jump from towers.Extreme sports started as an alternative to more expensive sports. A city kid who didn"t have the money to buy expensive sports equipment could get a skateboard and have fun. But now it has become a whole new area of sports, with specialized equipment and high levels of skill. There"s even a special Olympics for extreme sports, called the Winter X-Games, which includes snow mountain biking and ice climbing. An Extreme Games competition is held each summer in Rhode Island. It features sports such as sky surfing, where people jump from airplanes with surfboards attached to their feet.What makes extreme sports so popular "People love the excitement," says Murray Nussbaum, who sells sports equipment. "City people want to be outdoors on the weekend and do something challenging. The new equipment is so much better that people can take more risks without getting hurt." An athlete adds, "Sure there"s a risk, but that"s part of the appeal. Once you go mountain biking or snowboarding, it"s impossible to go back to bike riding or skiing. It"s just too boring."Now even the older crowd is starting to join in. Every weekend a group of friends in their early 30s get together. During the week they work as computer programmers in the same office. On Sundays they rent mountain bikes that cost $2,000 each and ride down steep mountains together. Extreme sports are certainly not for everyone. Most people still prefer to play baseball or basketball or watch sports on TV. But extreme sports are definitely gaining in popularity.PASSAGE THREEPeople have been painting pictures for at least 30,000 years. The earliest pictures were painted by people who hunted animals. They used to paint pictures of the animals they wanted to catch and kill. Pictures of this kind have been found on the walls of caves in France and Spain. No one knows why they were painted there. Perhaps the painters thought that their pictures would help them to catch these animals. Or perhaps human beings have always wanted to tell stories in pictures.About 5,000 years ago the Egyptians and other people in the Near East began to use pictures as a kind of writing. They drew simple pictures or signs to represent things and ideas, and also to represent the sounds of their language. The signs these people used became a kind of alphabet.The Egyptians used to record information and to tell stories by putting picture-writing and pictures together. When an important person died, scenes and stories from his life were painted and carved on the walls of the place where he was buried. Some of these pictures are like modern comic-strip (连环漫画) stories. It has been said that Egypt is the home of the comic strip. But, for the Egyptians, pictures still had magic power. So they did not try to make their way of writing simple. The ordinary people could not understand it.By the year 1,000 BC, people who lived in the area around the Mediterranean Sea had developed a simpler system of writing. The signs they used were very easy to write, and there were fewer of them than in the Egyptian system. This was because each sign, or letter, represented only one sound in their language. The Greeks developed this system and formed the letters of the Greek alphabet. The Romans copied the idea, and the Roman alphabet is now used all over the world.These days, we can write down a story, or record information, without using pictures. But we still need pictures of all kinds: drawings, photographs, signs and diagrams. We find them everywhere: in books and newspapers, in the street, and on the walls of the places where we live and work. Pictures help us to understand and remember things more easily, and they can make a story much more interesting.PASSAGE FOUROne August afternoon, Peaches gave birth to 14 puppies. The kids were thrilled. But it crossed my mind once or twice that I had no idea how we"d find good homes for so many adorable mutts.The father was a purebred golden retriever (寻回猎犬). And not until now had I wondered why Roberta, who gave Peaches to us, had named her in the plural. Peaches didn"t resemble a peach, either. She was jet black with long retriever hair, an agreeable blend of many breeds. But she was indeed a peach, although once when her round pups were lined against her tummy, we affectionately called her "Pea Pod," and that name pretty much stuck.The kids and I had a blast with the pups, but as our cuddly friends grew, the cleanup job on the backyard lawn increased as well. I usually ended up with the chore after the kids had left for school in the morning, and after eight weeks the job was getting old. Besides, the time had come to start to get them settled into permanent homes.So one weekend the kids and I piled into the van, puppies in the rear, playfully biting each other"s ears and tails, and we headed for the local humane society. But in northern California at that time, shelters were full of animals, and if they weren"t adopted quickly they were put to sleep. I tried stifling that bit of information, but it wouldn"t stay submerged; I cried the whole way.When we arrived at the shelter, I dried my tears and smoothed my puffy eyes. I walked alone up to the counter and cheerfully announced I had 14 wonderful puppies for them. The woman, without looking up from her paperwork, roared, "We don"t take puppies." I cried all the way home, this time with tears of relief.So I placed an ad for "free puppies" in the newspaper. I don"t think we got a single phone call. In the meantime, the kids and pups grew more inseparable. Only Happy and Callie, our two cats, were allowed to spend the nights inside, but from the giggling and the look of the blankets in the morning, some pups had been overlooked at bedtime.The gate on our backyard fence opened onto the elementary school"s grass field. Every afternoon, scores of kids arrived to play soccer. The children loved it when their games were over, for then I would open the floodgate, releasing 14 roly-poly, tail-wagging puppies for them to play with. Surely a parent wouldn"t mind taking one or two home The parents loved the pups, too; but their disciplined ability to decline our offering amazed me. Certainly the divine plan could not have been for us to keep all 14 puppies, even if they had been given perfect names.I desperately searched the heavens for a solution. The odd idea came to put another ad in the paper, this time asking $10 for each puppy. It worked.Placing a value on the mutts somehow had an effect. I made a deal with the kids: If they would prepare the puppy food and clean up the yard every day until all the puppies had homes, I would give them each, in turn, $10 for every pup sold. When he was about 11 weeks old, the last puppy—Boots, with four white socks—had gone. It was a sad day; the yard was much too quiet. So Saturday morning I had the kids get their money jars out. They proudly carried their savings as I drove them to their favorite place—the toy store.The dog pound might have seemed easier. But I liked this ending much better.
A．The time extent.B．The object.C．The content.D．The expense.
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