[单项选择]Old Japanese living alone can now hire a "family" for lunch and a few hours’pleasant talk. Just give them a ring and ask for, say, a daughter, son-in-law and grandchild. They will show up at your door, and greet you happily as if they hadn’t seen you for years.
Some 15 couples have so far hired "families". "We have nearly 80 people on the waiting list."Said the president of the company that offers such services. "What is common about these senior citizens is that they are eager for human love. We are helping them make their dreams come true."
Where once big families with three or more generations living together were common, now numbers are reducing fast. In cities there are very few indeed. Many old people seldom see their families. This may be because the children’s bosses have sent them to a distant city, even abroad, or just because busy family members can not find time to visit their parents.
"We have seen many cases in which parent-children relations are not in a h
A. They are too busy.
B. They work in distant cities.
C. They can’t afford expensive visits to their parents.
D. Their relations are not very tight.

[单项选择]Old Japanese living alone can now hire a "family" for lunch and a few hours’pleasant talk. Just give them a ring and ask for, say, a daughter, son-in-law and grandchild. They will show up at your door, and greet you happily as if they hadn’t seen you for years.
Some 15 couples have so far hired "families". "We have nearly 80 people on the waiting list."Said the president of the company that offers such services. "What is common about these senior citizens is that they are eager for human love. We are helping them make their dreams come true."
Where once big families with three or more generations living together were common, now numbers are reducing fast. In cities there are very few indeed. Many old people seldom see their families. This may be because the children’s bosses have sent them to a distant city, even abroad, or just because busy family members can not find time to visit their parents.
"We have seen many cases in which parent-children relations are not in a h
A. to ask for help when they are ill
B. to realize their big-family dreams
C. to seek love and comfort
D. to strengthen parent-children relations

[单项选择]

Old Japanese living alone can now hire a "family" for lunch and a few hours’ pleasant talk. Just give them a ring and ask for, say, a daughter, son-in-law and grandchild. They will show up at your door, and greet you emotionally as if they hadn’t seen you for years.
Some 15 couples have so far hired "families". "We have nearly 80 people on the waiting list," said the president of the company that offers such services. "What is common about these senior citizens is that they are thirsty for human love. We are helping them make their dreams come true."
Where once big families with three or more generations living together were common, now numbers are reducing fast. In cities there are very few indeed. Many old people see their families only rarely (稀少地,难得地) , if not at all. This may be because the children’s bosses have sent them to a distant city, even abroad, or just because busy family members cannot find
A. to ask for help when they are iii
B. to seek love and comfort
C. to strengthen (加强,巩固) parent-children relations
D. to realize their big-family dreams

[填空题]In America alone, tipping is now a $11 billion-a-year industry. Consumers acting rationally ought not to pay more than they have to for a given service. Tips should not exist. So why do they The conventional wisdom is that tips both reward the efforts of good service and reduce uncomfortable feelings of inequality. The better the service, the bigger the tip.
Such explanations no doubt explain the supposed origin of tipping--in the 11th century, boxes in English taverns (酒管) carried the phrase "To Insure Promptitude" (later just "TIP"). But according to new research from Cornell University, tipping no longer serves any useful function.
The paper analyses data from 2,542 groups dining at 20 different restaurants. The correlation between larger tips and better service was very weak: only a tiny part of the variability in the size of the tip had anything to do with the quality of service. Customers who rated a meal as "excellent" still tipped anywhere between 3% and 32% of t

[单项选择]In America alone, tipping is now a 16-billion-a-year industry--all the more surprising since it is a behavioral oddity. Consumers acting rationally ought not to pay more than they have to for a given service. Tips, which are voluntary, above and beyond a service’s contracted cost, and delivered afterwards, should not exist. So why do they The conventional wisdom is that tips both reward the efforts of good service and reduce uncomfortable feelings of inequality. The better the service, the bigger the tip.
A paper analyzing data from 2,547 groups dining at 20 different restaurants shows that the correlation between larger tips and better service was very weak: only a tiny part of the variability in the size of the tip had anything to do with the quality of service. Customers who rated a meal as "excellent" still tipped anywhere between 8% and 37% of the meal price. Tipping is better explained by culture than by economics. In America, the custom has become institutionalized: it i
A. are willing to give tips because they love the practice
B. like to give tips to service people to help them financially
C. are reluctant to give tips, but they still do so
D. are giving less and less tips