In some countries, New Year‘s Eve is the most important celebration of the year, but this

One of the most important components of Corporate Resource Management is to recruit and retain the best workforce possible. Unfortunately, hiring qualified employees is tougher today than it has ever been before. Competition for well-educated and highly experienced candidates is incredible and companies no longer control the hiring as they did in the past. New job creation has reached an all-time high of more than three million new positions per year. As a result, compensation packages required to attract the right candidates, especially for technical positions, have increased in a dramatic way. The recruiting landscape has changed virtually overnight. Not only is it a job seekers market, but the demand for technical talent has vastly increased while fewer technology "raw recruits" are entering the job market. It is incredible that the number of students studying computer science in the US is half of what it was about 10 years ago.

Some afternoon in my senior year—shortly before

Graduation, the dean of the school came to me asking if I

wanted to stay in the department as a teacher.

I was not surprised by an offer. I happened to be one of the S1.______

students who were doing relatively well in my class and it

was a long establishing practice for the school to lure some of S2.______

the best students to be part of its future faculty.

The offer would seem to work out perfect for everybody if S3.______

I choose to stay in the teaching profession. For the school, it S4.______

was safe to keep someone it knew to be competent and trustworthy.

For me, I would not need to find a new position upon

graduation. The transition of a student to a teacher would be as S5.______

smooth as silk.

However, there was something unwholesome about this

arrangement. With many young teachers shared the same tutor S6.______

or a few tutors working together, the arrangement—academic

inbreeding in nature—would stunt variety and creativity.

Though the young teachers would ultimately become

"mature" and pursued their individual and independent S7.______

academic studies, for a long time they would have work S8.______

alongside their siblings from the same academic stripe.

What's worse, Chinese culture had long attached great

significance to respect or even revering teachers. Though S9.______

many teachers would be wise enough to welcome challenges

from their pupils, there would also be those narrow-minded

ones which, if given the chance, would make those working S10.______

trader their tutelage feel uncomfortable and prevent them from

expressing new ideas.

【S1】

The celebration of the New Year is the oldest one of all holidays. It was first【1】in【2】Babylon about 4,000 years ago. New Year's Day is an【3】national holiday, and banks and offices will be closed. Many families have New year's Day【4】.

Traditionally, it was thought that it could【5】the luck they would have【6】the coming year by【7】they did or ate on the first day of the year. For that reason, it has become common for【8】to celebrate the first few minutes of a【9】new year in the【10】with the family and friends. Parties often last into the middle of the night after the ringing of a new year. It was once believed that the first visitor on New Year's Day would bring【11】good luck or bad luck to the rest of the year. It was particularly lucky if that visitor【12】to be a tall dark-haired man.

Traditional New Year's【13】are also thought to bring luck. People in many parts of the US celebrate the New Year by【14】black-eyed peas and cabbage. Black-eyed peas have been considered good luck in many cultures. Cabbage leaves are considered a【15】of prosperity, being【16】of paper currency. Other traditions of the season include the making of New Year's resolutions. That tradition also【17】back to the early Babylonians. Popular modern resolutions might include the【18】to lose weight or quit smoking.

The song, "Auld Lang Syne", is sung at the【19】of midnight in almost every English-speaking country in the world to bring in the New Year. "Auld Lang Syne" literally【20】"yearning for the old days."

(1)

A．remarked

B．commented

C．observed

D．viewed

The most important holiday in China is the Spring Festival. Preparations for New Year begin on the final days of the last lunar month, when most families clean their homes, cut their hair and buy new clothes. Houses are festooned with paper scrolls bearing auspicious poetry. On New Year's Eve, all the members of families come together to hold feasts. Jiaozi is popular in the North, while southerners favor a sticky sweet glutinous rice pudding called "Niangao". At midnight on New Year's Eve, people set off firecrackers to greet the arrival of the new year.

On the 15th day of the 1st month of the Lunar calendar is the Lantern Festival. It normally falls at the end of February, when people traditionally come out to see lanterns in the streets or parks and eat round, sweet rice-flour dumplings, called Yuanxiao in China.

The National Day celebrates the anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. Celebrations usually take the form. of parties in amusement parks in the daytime and fireworks and grand TV ensembles during the evening. During this time, people can have seven paid-days off.

The Dragon Boat Festival falls in May on the Lunar Calendar, is in memory of Qu Yuan, a great patriotic poet and statesman of the State of Chu during the Warring States period. Qu Yuan drowned himself to protest his fatuous king. In order to protect his body from being eaten by fish, people launched dragon-like boats and threw rice dumplings wrapped in bamboo leaves into the river. Nowadays, people still eat Zongzi to remember him, and the dragon boat contests enjoy great popularity.

What do Chinese people often do before the New Year?

In Your Face

Why is this man so angry? Wedon't know the reason, but we can see the emotion in his face.Whatever cultureyou have, you can understand the feeling that he is expressing.

Forty years ago, psychologistPaul Ekman of the University of California, San Francisco, became inter-ested in how people's faceshow their feelings. He took photographs of Americans expressing variousemo-tions. Then he showed them to the Fore people, who live in the jungle inNew Guinea.Most of the Fore had never seen foreign faces, but they easily understoodAmerican's expressions of anger, happiness, sadness,disgust, fear, andsurprise.

Then Ekman did the sameexperiment in reverse. He showed pictures of Fore faces to Americans,and theresults were similar. Americans had no problems reading the emotions on theFore people's faces. Ekman's research gave powerful support to the theory thatfacial expressions for basic emotions are the same everywhere. He did moreresearch inJapan,Brazil, andArgentina, and got the samere-sults.

According to Ekman, these sixemotions are universal because they are built into our brains. They developedto help us deal with things quickly that might hurt us. Some emotional triggersare universal as well. When something suddenly comes into sight, people feelfear, because it might be dangerous.But most emotional triggers are learned.For example, two people might smell newly cut grass. One reason spent wonderfulsummers in the country as a child, so the smell makes him happy. The otherperson remembers working very hard on a farm and being hungry, so he feels sad.

Once we make an emotionalassociation in our brain, it is difficult, and sometimes impossible, to changeit. "Emotion is the least changeable part of the brain. " says Ekman.But we can learn to manage our emotions better. For instance, we can be moreaware of things that make us angry, and we can think before we react.

There are many differencesbetween cultures, in their languages and customs. But a smile is exact-ly thesame everywhere.

Paul Ekman studies people's faces in different cultures.

A.Right

B.Wrong

C.Not mentioned