As our family are getting ready for the annual holiday of Thanksgiving, which is probably the most important holiday in the U.S because it's celebrated by people of all faiths. I think back to a cold November day more than twenty years ago. It was a day when my husband and I, married just about three months, got stuck on I -89 in Vermont when our car broke down.

    We had just visited my husband's parents in Vermont, and with a huge turkey they gave us slowly thawing (解冻）in the trunk of our old car, we were heading back to our apartment in Boston to celebrate our first Thanksgiving together. Our car broke down half an hour after we got on the highway. And it was raining. Back to then, not everyone had a cell phone, and in those days if you broke down along a lonely stretch of a highway far from the nearest emergency call box in cold November rain, it wasn't fun.

    Fortutiously for us, a van with a bunch of people coming back from a ski trip stopped andasked if we needed help. They gave us a ride to the nearest gas station, from where we could phone my father-in-law and asked him for help. My father-in-law arranged for :he car to be towed (拖引), and drove us all the way to Boston that day.

    So as we sit down to dinner and think of all the things we can be thankful for tonight, I want to say “thank you” to the strangers on I -89 some twenty years ago for giving a young couple a ride when their car with a frozen turkey in the trunk broke down.

    Never underestimate the difference you can make to the lives of others by one small act of kindness. Step forward, reach out and help. This week, reach to someone that might need a lift.

    Why do people like what they like? Scientists have taken on the task of solving this mystery(奥秘)for ages. In the 1960s, psychologist Robert Zajonc conducted a series of experiments where he showed people nonsense words and random shapes. Afterward he asked his subjects which they preferred out of ever thing they had been shown. In study after study, people always chose the words and shapes they had seen the most. Their preference was for familiarity.

    This discovery was one of the most important findings in modern psychology. But the preference for familiarity has clear limits. People get tired of even their favorite songs and movies. On one hand, humans seek familiarity, because it makes them feel safe. On the other hand, people love the thrill of something new. This change between familiarity and discovery affects ns all the time- not just our preferences for pictures and songs, but also our preferences for ideas and even people.

    For that reason, the power of familiarity seems to be strongest when a person isn't expecting it. The opposite is also true: A surprise seems to work best when it contains some familiarity. Nobody knows this better than Raymond Loews, who is considered to be the "father of industrial design. He had a theory that he said could help artists sell anything to anyone. He called it MAYA --"Most Advanced Yet Acceptable""To sell something surprising, make it familiar; and to sell something familiar, make it surprising," he said.

    One of Loewy's final tasks was too add an element(要素)of familiarity to a truly new invention: NASA's first space station. Loewy's biggest contribution to the space station was that he insisted NASA install a window with a view of Earth. Today, tens of millions of people have seen this small detail in films about astronauts. It is hard to imagine a more perfect example of MAYA: a window to a new world can also show you home.

    When was the last time you sent someone a letter by regular mail? Thanks to the Internet, many people prefer to send e-mails rather than mail letters using the postal system. Young people entering the working world today find themselves sending and replying to hundreds of business related e-mails every week.

    However, many of these same young people don't seem to know some basic rules when it comes to sending e-mails at work. Most of the people said they didn't check their spelling or punctuation (标点) before hitting „send'.

    Even more surprising was that 5% of them said they sometimes end e-mails to their boss with the words „love and kisses!' While this is fine for personal messages to friends and loved ones, it is normally considered improper in work place.

    The main reason for this use of informal language in workplace e-mail is that a lot of young people have always communicated with others on the Internet—especially using e-mails—in a relaxed and friendly manner. For many people, online communication outside of work, such as talking with others in chat rooms, posting on message boards, and sending e-mail to friends, is usually for fun.

    Another reason is that young people now are unfamiliar with how to write formal letters, because they have never had to write a formal letter before. They have had no training in how to write a basic business letter, and are unaware of the style and language that should, and should not, be used.

    With more business letters now being conducted using the Internet than ever before, it is important for people to be aware of the differences in language use between personal and business communication—especially when using e-mails. So next time you send an e-mail at the office, remember you're not just online, you're at work.

    In recent years, our parenting culture began to send the message that competence was important for building self-esteem. However, that same parenting culture made a big mistake by telling parents that the way to instill competence in their children was to tell them how competent they were. But here's the problem. Children can't be convinced that they are competent.

    When parents try to convince their children of how competent they are, they often have the exact opposite effect. There is this little thing called reality that children have to confront on a daily basis. When children are faced with the conflict between what their parents had told them about how good they are and what reality is telling them, the result is the bursting of the “You are the best” bubble that their parents blew up for them.

    You can, however, do several things to encourage them to develop their own competence. First, you can give them opportunities in their daily lives to gain a sense of competence, for example, dressing, eating, drawing, cooking, and interacting with others. These daily experiences allow your children to develop specific competencies that will be helpful to them as they progress through childhood and into adulthood.

    Second, you can be sure that they gain the most value from their experiences. You can direct their focus to the competencies that enabled those successes (e.g., “You were really focused and worked hard on that project.”) rather than some generic praise of the accomplishment itself (e.g., “Good job!). And you can praise their accomplishments (e.g., “You must feel so good about your project.”).

    But you shouldn't just focus on the successes because, as every parent knows, as your children develop, they will experience far more failures than successes as they begin to gain competence. How you react often dictates how they will respond to those failures, if you are positive and supportive, your children will get the message that failure is okay and just a part of life.

    Water is the driving force of all nature, Leonardo da Vinci claimed. Unfortunately for our planet, water supplies are now running dry at an alarming rate. The world's population continues to increase but that rise in number has not been matched by adequate supplies of fresh water. Reports show that more than a billion individuals — one in seven people on the planet — now lack access to safe drinking water.

    In Sao Paulo, a Brazilian city, drought got so bad that residents began drilling through basement floors and car parks to try to reach groundwater. Officials in this city warned that rationing（配给制）of water supplies was likely soon. Citizens in Sao Paulo might have access to water for only two days a week. In California, US, officials have shown that the state has entered its fourth year of drought. At the same time, its per capita（人均）water use has continued to rise.

【写作内容】

1）用约30词概括上述信息的主要内容；

2）结合上述信息及日常生活，简要分析导致全球淡水资源短缺的主要原因（不少于两点）；

3）谈谈在日常生活中我们应如何保护淡水资源（不少于两点）。

【写作要求】

1）写作过程中不能直接引用原文语句；

2）作文中不能出现真实姓名和学校名称；

3）不必写标题。

【评分标准】

内容完整。语言规范，语篇连贯，词数适当。

Sales Strategies

    How can a company improve its sales? One of the keys to more effective selling is for a company to first decide on its “sales strategy”. In other words, what is the role of the salesperson? Is the salesperson's job narrative, suggestive, or consultive?

The “narrative” sales strategy depends on the salesperson moving quickly into a standard sales presentation. His or her pitch highlights the benefit for the customer of a particular product or service. This approach is most effective for customers whose buying motives are basically the same and is also well suited to companies who have a large number of prospects on which to call.

    The “suggestive” approach is tailored more for the individual customer. The salesperson must be in a position to offer alternative recommendations that meet a particular customer's needs. One key aspect of the suggestive approach is the need for the salesperson to engage the buyer in some sort of discussion. The salesperson can then use the information from the customer to suggest an appropriate product or service.

    The final strategy demands that a company's sales staff act as “consultants” for the buyer. In this role, the salesperson must acquire a great deal of information about the customer. They do this through market research, surveys, and face-to-face discussions. Using this information, the salesperson makes a detailed presentation tailored specifically to a consumer's needs.

    More and more sales teams are switching from a narrative or a suggestive approach to a more consultative strategy. As a result, corporations are looking more at intangibles (无形资产) such as creativity and analytical skills and less at educational background and technical skills.