I'm taking a test and have to guess the right answer to the question after the article. Article: As each semester begins, my colleague greets his students wearing a jacket and tie. "You make only one first impression," he says. So while the rest of the semester he teaches class in his usual, more casual clothes, the first week he presents a different image. His thought is that students will remember their first meet positively and more readily think highly of him as the semester goes on because that favorable first impression has an influence on them. The sequence that we meet matters in how we judge subsequent information. The big influence of first impressions is related to the halo effect, where the perception of positive qualities in one thing or part gives rise to the perception of similar qualities in related things or in the whole. Here is an example: You meet a friendly person at a party and later are asked to collect money for a worthy cause. You call that person because you think she will make a contribution. In reality, there is no connection between being pleasant and being generous. Yet the halo effect leads you to think that the two are related. The halo effect is powerful, but it is questionable whether it matters much in long-term relationships, such as that between teacher and student. While dressing up may make students think the teacher must know his subject matter because he creates a professional first impression, the effect wears thin if the person turns out to be a poor teacher after all. First impressions matter but they don't have the final word. Facts speak louder. If you had never seen or heard of Einstein, the first time you saw him your impression would most likely be negative. Now his face is connected with genius , not madness because he is the person who has come to define what genius is. The problem is that few of us are Einsteins and we often don't get the chance to change a negative first impression. Question: The author explains the halo effect mainly by _ . Options: A: following the order of importance B: making a comparison C: setting down general rules D: giving an example
D
I'm taking a test and have to guess the right answer to the question after the article. Article: Camaraderie over Competence The importance of liking people is the subject of an article in the Harvard Business Review,which has carried out an experiment to find out who we'd rather work with.Hardly surprisingly,the people we want most as our workmates are both:brilliant at their jobs and delightful human beings.And the people we want least are both unpleasant and useless.More interestingly,the authors found that,given the choice between working with lovable fools and competent jerks ,we irresistibly choose the former.Anyway,who likes those stupid men who annoy or hurt other people?We might insist that competence matters more,but our behavior shows we stay close to the people we like and sharing information with them. What companies should therefore do is get people to like each other more.The trick here is apparently to make sure staffs come across each other as often as possible during the day.They also should be sent on bonding courses and so on to encourage friendliness and break down displeasure.However,more outdoor-activity weekends and shared coffee machines inspire no confidence at all. The reality is that people either like each other or they don't.You can't force it.Possibly you can make offices friendlier by tolerating a lot of chat,but there is a productivity cost to that.In my experience,the question of lovable fool against competent jerk may not be the right one.The two are interrelated:we tend not to like our workmates when they are completely hopeless.I was once quite friendly with a woman whom I later worked with.I found her to be so outstandingly bad at her job that I lost respect for her and ended up not really liking her at all.Then is there anything that companies should be doing about it? By far the most effective strategy would be to hire people who are all pretty much the same,given that similarity is one of the main determinants of whether we like each other.I think this is a pretty good idea,but no one dares recommend this anymore without offending the diversity lobby group.There... Question: To encourage workmates to like each other,companies could . Options: A: arrange the training course for workers to study together B: organize team-building activities outside the office C: encourage a diversity of opinions in workplace D: employ staff who have a lot in common.
D
*Question*
I'm taking a test and have to guess the right answer to the question after the article. Article: The work of railroad pioneers in America became the basis for a great surge of railroad building halfway though the nineteenth century that linked the nation together as never before. Railroads eventually became the nation's number one transportation system, and remained so until the construction of the interstate highway system halfway through the twentieth century. They were of great importance stimulating economic expansion,but their influence reached beyond the economy and was strong in American society at large. By 1804, English as American inventors had experimented with steam engines for moving land vehicles. In 1820,John Stevens ran a locomotive and cars around in a circular track on his New Jersey estate,which the public saw as amusing toy. And in 1825, after opening a short length of track, the Stockton to Darlington Railroad in England became the first line to carry general traffic. American businesspeople, especially those in the Atlanic coastal region who looked for better communication with the West, quickly became interested in the English experiment. The first company in America to begin actual operations was the Baltimore and Ohio,wich opened a thirteen-mile length of track in 1830. It used a team of horses to pull a trainof passenger carriages and freight wagons along the track. Steam locomotive power didn't come into regular service until two years later. However, for the first decade or more, there was not yet a true railroad system. Even the longest of the lines was ly short in the 1830's, and most of them served simply to connect water routes to each other, not to link one railroad to another. Even when two lines did connect, the tracks often differed in width, so cars from one line couldn't fit onto tracks of the next line. Schedules were unreliable and wrecks were frequent. Significantly, however, some important developments during the 1830's and 1840's included the introduction of heavier iron rails, more flexible and powerful locomotives, and passenger cars were redesigned to... Question: Which of the following is NOT true about the 1830's and 1840's (line 24) Options: A: passenger cars became larger B: schedules were reliable C: locomotives became more powerful D: tracks were heavier
**Answer**
B