单选题   SECTION A MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS
    In this section there are several passages followed by ten multiple-choice questions. For each question, 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 ONE
    Rates of depression and anxiety are rising in the modern world. Proposed remedies are numerous. And one that is reaping growing attention is meditation, and mindfulness meditation in particular.
    The aim is simple: to pay attention—be 'mindful'. Typically, a teacher will ask you to sit upright, in an alert position. Then, they will encourage you to focus on something straightforward, like the in-and out-flow of breath. The aim is to nurture a curiosity about these sensations—not to explain them, but to know them.
    It's a way of concentrating on the here and now, thereby becoming more aware of how the here and now is affecting you. It doesn't aim directly at the removal of stresses and strains. In fact, it is very hard to develop the concentration necessary to follow your breath, even for a few seconds. What you see is your mind racing from this memory to that moment. But that's the trick: to observe, and to learn to change the way you relate to the inner sufferings. Therein lies the route to better mental health.
    Mindfulness, then, is not about ecstatic (入迷的) states. It's mostly pretty boring and dull. Moreover, it is not a fast track to delightful happiness. It can, in fact, be quite unsettling, as works with painful experiences, to understand them better and thereby get to the root of problems.
    Research into the benefits of mindfulness seems to support its claims. People prone to depression, say, are less likely to have depressive episodes if they practice meditation. Stress goes down. But it's more like going on a journey than taking a pill. Though meditation techniques can be learned quickly, it's no instant remedy and requires discipline.
    Mindfulness is a practice aimed at caring for yourself. Then, it's about knowing yourself better, something recognized as a crucial part of living well. It's striking that today we often don't take the time to do so. Hence, perhaps, many of the ills of the western world.
    But mindfulness says: make the time to step back, and here's a way to do it. It encourages you to be more aware of life, and promises that mindfulness is a source of insight and hope.
    PASSAGE TWO
    For thousands of years men have been wandering around—for pleasure, for profit, or to satisfy their curiosity. When the only means of transportation were horses, camels and small boats, travelers were already crossing seas and deserts to acquire rare goods or to visit famous places. For the pure joy of learning, scholars ventured into distant kingdoms and observed their customs. They tasted the foods; they questioned the wise men about their gods and their history, they sat in fearful admiration on the banks of newly discovered rivers. Then they went back home reflecting upon what they had seen, and perhaps they wrote a book or two about their discoveries. Slowly, nations learned about each other, men met and ideas spread—for better or worse.
    There was a time, close to ours, when artists and writers traveled all over Europe and sometimes further to study ancient works of art and to exchange ideas and methods with their foreign colleagues. Poor adventurers traveled on foot while rich ones in comfort. Two centuries ago, it became fashionable for wealthy families to send their grown children to foreign countries where they would complete their education. A young man was expected to acquire good manners and a taste for literature in France, an appreciation of music in Germany, and some feeling of history in Roman Forum.
    Thus all kinds of travelers learned and dreamed through the centuries. But their number was always limited, for they were only a privileged minority—the rich, the free, the talented and the adventurous—who could enjoy a pleasure unknown by the great masses.
    This is not true any more. Railroads, ships, buses, and airplanes have made travel easier, faster and cheaper, and the number of people who can spare the time and the money to take trips has grown enormously. It is not reserved to a lucky few, nowadays, to admire Inca temples, giant Buddhas, French castles and Australian kangaroos. Millions of people do each year. But instead of being called travelers, they are known as tourists and they are seen all over the world—floating down the Amazon, taking a pleasure trip by boat to Alaska, flying from Timbuktu to Easter Island, and taking picture of Norwegian churches and Pakistani costumes.
    PASSAGE THREE
    It was 1961 and I was in the fifth grade. My marks in school were miserable and, the thing was, I didn't know enough to really care. My older brother and I lived with Morn in a dingy multi-family house in Detroit. We watched TV every night. The background noise of our lives was gunfire and horses' hoofs from 'Wagon Train' or 'Cheyenne', and laughter from 'I Love Lucy' or 'Mister Ed'. After supper, we'd sprawl on Mom's bed and stare for hours at the tube.
    But one day Morn changed our world forever. She turned off the TV. Our mother had only been able to get through third grade. But she was much brighter and smarter than we boys knew at the time. She had noticed something in the suburban houses she cleaned—books. So she came home one day, snapped off the TV, sat us down and explained that her sons were going to make something of themselves. 'You boys are going to read two books every week,' she said. 'And you're going to write me a report on what you read.'
    We moaned and complained about how unfair it was. Besides, we didn't have any books in the house other than Mom's Bible. But she explained that we would go where the books were: 'I'd drive you to the library.'
    So pretty soon, there were these two peevish boys sitting in her white 1959 Oldsmobile on their way to Detroit Public Library. I wandered reluctantly among the children's books. I loved animals, so when I saw some books that seemed to be about animals, I started leafing through them.
    The first book I read clear through was Chip the Dam Builder. It was about beavers. For the first time in my life I was lost in another world. No television program had ever taken me so far away from my surroundings as did this verbal visit to a cold stream in a forest and these animals building a home.
    It didn't dawn on me at the time, but the experience was quite different from watching TV. There were images forming in my mind instead of before my eyes. And I could return to them again and again with the flip of a page.
    Soon I began to look forward to visiting this hushed sanctuary from my other world. I moved from animals to plants, and then to rocks. Between the covers of all those books were whole worlds, and I was free to go anywhere in them. Along the way a funny thing happened I started to know things. Teachers started to notice it too. I got to the point where I couldn't wait to get home to my books.
    Now my older brother is an engineer and I am chief of pediatric neurosurgery at John Hopkins Children's Center in Baltimore. Sometimes I still can't believe my life's journey, from a failing and indifferent student in a Detroit public school to this position, which takes me all over the world to teach and perform critical surgery.
    But I know when the journey began: the day Morn snapped off the TV set and put us in her Oldsmobile for that drive to the library.
    PASSAGE FOUR
    My heart sank when the man at the immigration counter gestured to the back room. I'm an American born and raised, and this was Miami, where I live, but they weren't quite ready to let me in yet.
    'Please wait in here, Ms Abujaber,' the immigration officer said. My husband, with his very American last name, accompanied me. He was getting used to this. The same thing had happened recently in Canada when I'd flown to Montreal to speak at a book event. That time they held me for 45 minutes. Today we were returning from a literary festival in Jamaica, and I was startled that I was being sent 'in back' once again.
    The officer behind the counter called me up and said, 'Miss, your name looks like the name of someone who's on our wanted list. We're going to have to check you out with Washington.'
    'How long will it take?'
    'Hard to say.., a few minutes,' he said. 'We'll call you when we're ready for you.'
    After an hour, Washington still hadn't decided anything about me. 'Isn't this computerized?' I asked at the counter. 'Can't you just look me up?'
    Just a few more minutes, they assured me.
    After an hour and a half, I pulled my cell phone out to call the friends I was supposed to meet that evening. An officer rushed over. 'No phones!' he said. 'For all we know you could be calling a terrorist cell and giving them information.'
    'I'm just a university professor,' I said. My voice came out in a squeak.
    'Of course you are. And we take people like you out of here in leg irons every day.' I put my phone away.
    My husband and I were getting hungry and tired. Whole families had been brought into the waiting room, and the place was packed with excitable children, exhausted parents, even a flight attendant.
    I wanted to scream, to jump on a chair and shout: 'I'm an American citizen; a novelist; I probably teach English literature to your children.' Or would that all be counted against me?
    After two hours in detention, I was approached by one of the officers. 'You're free to go,' he said. No explanation or apologies. For a moment, neither of us moved, we were still in shock. Then we leaped to our feet.
    'Oh, one more thing.' He handed me a tattered photocopy with an address on it. 'If you weren't happy with your treatment, you can write to this agency.'
    'Will they respond?' I asked.
    'I don't know—I don't know of anyone who's ever written to them before.' Then he added, 'By the way, this will probably keep happening each time you travel internationally.'
    'What can I do to keep it from happening again?'
    He smiled the empty smile we'd seen all day. 'Absolutely nothing.'
    After telling several friends about our ordeal, probably the most frequent advice I've heard in response is to change my name. Twenty years ago, my own graduate school writing professor advised me to write under a pen name so that publishers wouldn't stick me in what he called 'the ethnic ghetto'—a separate, secondary shelf in the bookstore. But a name is an integral part of anyone's personal and professional identity—just like the town you're born in and the place where you're raised.
    Like my father, I'll keep the name, but my airport experience has given me a whole new perspective on what diversity and tolerance are supposed to mean. I had no idea that being an American would ever be this hard.

单选题     How can we approach better mental health through mindfulness meditation?(PASSAGE ONE)

单选题     According to the passage, many of the ills of the western world come from ______.(PASSAGE ONE)

单选题     In an era close to us, artists and writers traveled to ______.(PASSAGE TWO)

单选题     What is travelling like nowadays?(PASSAGE TWO)

单选题     We can learn from the beginning of the passage that ______.(PASSAGE THREE)

单选题     Which of the following is NOT true about the author's family?(PASSAGE THREE)

单选题     The author began to love books for the following reasons EXCEPT that ______.(PASSAGE THREE)

单选题     The author was held at the airport because ______.(PASSAGE FOUR)

单选题     She was not allowed to call her friends because ______.(PASSAGE FOUR)

单选题     We learn from the passage that the author would ______ to prevent similar experiences from happening again.(PASSAGE FOUR)

单选题     SECTION B SHORT ANSWER QUESTIONS
    In this section there are five short answer questions based on the passages in Section A. Answer the questions with NO more than TEN words in the space provided on ANSWER SHEET TWO.
    According to the passage, what is the correct way to be mindful?(PASSAGE ONE)

单选题         What is the result of people's traveling thousands of years ago?(PASSAGE TWO)

单选题         What makes the author's experience of reading books different from watching TV?(PASSAGE THREE)

单选题         Why was the author prohibited from making a phone call by an immigrant officer?(PASSAGE FOUR)

单选题     What do most friends of the author advise her to do to avoid similar experiences?(PASSAGE FOUR)