阅读理解Passage 1 Holiday Accommodation Parks,sometimes referred to as motor camps,are found in towns,resorts and rural are as,often near a natural or tourist attraction

阅读理解Passage E There were several reasons why the Industrial Revolution started in the Great Britain rather than in France, the other great power of the day

阅读理解While still catching-up to men in some spheres of modern life, women appear to be way ahead in atleast one undesirable category. “Women are particularly susceptible to developing depression andanxiety disorders in response to stress compared to men,” according to Dr. Yehuda, chief psychiatristat New York’s Veteran’s Administration Hospital.Studies of both animals and humans have shown that sex hormones somehow affects the stressresponse, causing females under stress to produce more of the trigger chemicals than do males underthe same conditions. In several of the studies, when stressed-out female rats had their ovaries (thefemale reproductive organs) removed, their chemical responses became equal to those of the males.Adding to a woman’s increased dose of stress chemicals, are her increased “opportunities” for stress.“It’s not necessarily that women don’t cope as well. It’s just that they have so much more to copewith,” says Dr. Yehuda. “Their capacity for tolerating stress may even be greater than men’s,” sheobserves, “it’s just that they’re dealing with so many more things that they become worn out from itmore visibly and sooner.”Dr. Yehuda notes another difference between the sexes. “I think that the kinds of things that womenare exposed to tend to be in more of a chronic or repeated nature. Men go to war and are exposed tocombat stress. Men are exposed to more acts of random physical violence. The kinds of interpersonalviolence that women are exposed to tend to be in domestic situations, by, unfortunately, parents orother family numbers, and they tend not to be one-shot deals. The wear-and-tear that comes fromthese longer relationships can be quite devastating.”Adeline Alvarez married at 18 and gave birth to a son, but was determined to finish college. “Istruggled a lot to get the college degree. I was living in so much frustration that that was my escape,to go to school, and get ahead and do better.” Later, her marriage ended and she became a singlemother. “It’s the hardest thing to take care of a teenager, have a job, pay the rent, pay the carpayment, and pay the debt. I lived from paycheck to paycheck.”Not everyone experiences the kinds of severe chronic stresses Alvarez describes. But most womentoday are coping with a lot of obligations, with few breaks, and feeling the strain. Alvarez’sexperience demonstrates the importance of finding ways to diffuse stress before it threatens yourhealth and your ability to function.

阅读理解(4) It is not difficult to imagine a world short of ambition

阅读理解What is the problem of longer-lasting clothes?

阅读理解Passage TwoBefore, whenever we had wealth, we started discussing poverty. Why not now? Why is the currentpolitics of wealth and poverty seemingly about wealth alone? Eight years ago, when Bill Clinton firstran for president, the Dow Jones average was under 3,500, yearly federal budget deficits wereprojected at hundreds of billions of dollars forever and beyond, and no one talked about the“permanent boom” or the “new economy”. Yet in that more straitened time, Clinton made much ofthe importance of “not leaving a single person behind”. It is possible that similar “compassionate”rhetoric might yet play a role in the general election.But it is striking how much less talk there is about the poor than there was eight years ago, when thecountry was economically uncertain, or in previous eras, when the county felt flush. Even lastsummer, when Clinton spent several days on a remarkable tour through impoverished areas fromIndian reservations in South Dakota to ghetto neighborhoods in East St. Louis, the administrationdecided to refer to the effort not as a poverty tour but as a “new market initiative”.What is happening is partly a logical, policy-driven reaction. Poverty really is lower than it has beenin decades, especially for minority groups. The most attractive solution to it—a growingeconomy—is being applied. The people who have been totally left out of this boom often havemedical, mental or other problems for which no one has an immediate solution. “The economy hassucked in anyone who has any preparation, any ability to cope with modern life,” says Franklin D.Raines, the former director of the Office of Management and Budget who is now head of Fannie Mac.When he and other people who specialize in the issue talk about solutions, they talk analytically andon a long term basis: education, development of work sill, shifts in the labor market, and adjustmentsin welfare reform.But I think there is another force that has made this a rich era with barely visible poor people. It isthe unusual social and imaginative separation between prosperous America and those still left out.It’s simple invisibility because of increasing geographic, occupational, and social barriers that blockone group from the other’s view.

阅读理解What happened when the author tried to find a good job?

阅读理解Every Tuesday, Carina goes to work in a bank

阅读理解Passage FourVegans try to live, as much as possible, in a way that avoids exploiting and being cruel to animals.This means following a plant-based diet. Vegans do not eat animals oranimal based products like meat,fish, seafood, eggs, honey and dairy products such as cheese. For many vegans, living a committed vegan lifestyle means not wearing clothes made fromanimal skins and avoiding any products which have been tested on animals. Vegans argue that suffering is caused in the production of these foods. For example, they say that,on some dairy farms, male calves (小牛) are killed because they are too expensive to keep, and cows are killed when they get older and produce less milk. As for honey，vegans say that bees make honey for bee, not for humans, and that bees’health can suffer when humans take the honey from them. Vegans believe that the products they use and consume should be free fromnot just cruelty but any exploitation of animals. The main reason for going vegan is probably that they believe animals and all other sentient (有感知能力的) beings should have the right to life and freedom. However, there are other reasons. Vegans argue that the production of meat and other animal products is very bad for the environment. They point out that a huge quantity of water is needed to grow grain to feed animals in the meat industry. The enormous amount of grain which the meat industry needs often leads to forests being cut down and habitats ( 栖息地) being lost. In contrast, much lower quantities of grain and water are needed to sustain a vegan diet. In addition, many vegans saythat all the nutritious elements our bodies need are contained in a carefully planned vegan diet and that this type of diet helps prevent some diseases. What is a vegan in this passage?

阅读理解Questions 31 to 40 are based on the following passage

阅读理解(2) My friend received another degree this month

阅读理解Directions: In this section, there are 3 passages followed by multiple-choice questions. Read the passages and thenwrite ONE best answer for each question on your ANSWER SHEET.Passage 1Many Americans harbor a grossly distorted and exaggerated view of most of the risks surrounding food. FergusClydesdale, head of the department of food science and nutrition at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, saysbluntly that if the dangers from bacterially contaminated chicken were as great as some people believe. “The streetswould be littered with people lying here and there.”Though the public increasingly demands no-risk food, there is no such thing. Bruce Ames, chairman of thebiochemistry department at the University of California, Berkeley, points out that up to 10% of a plant’s weight ismade up of natural pesticides. Says he: “Since plants do not have jaws or teeth to protect themselves, they employchemical warfare.” And many naturally produced chemicals, though occurring in tiny amounts, prove in laboratorytests to be strong carcinogens-a substance which can cause cancer. Mushrooms might be banned if they were judgedby the same standards that apply to food additives. Declares Christina Stark, a nutritionist at Cornell University:“We’ve got fat worse natural chemicals in the food supply than anything man-made.”Yet the issues are not that simple. While Americans have no reason to be terrified to sit down at the dinner table, theyhave every reason to demand significant improvements in food and water safety. They unconsciously andunwillingly take in too much of too many dangerous chemicals. If food already contains natural carcinogens, it doesnot make much sense to add dozens of new man-made ones. Though most people will withstand the small amountsof contaminants generally found in food and water, at least a few individuals will probably get cancer one daybecause of what they eat and drink.To make good food and water supplies even better, the government needs to tighten its regulatory standards, stiffenits inspection program and strengthen its enforcement policies. The food industry should modify some long-acceptedpractices or turn to less hazardous alternatives. Perhaps most important, consumers will have to do a better job oflearning how to handle and cook food properly. The problems that need to be tackled exist all along the food-supplychain, from fields to processing plants to kitchens.

阅读理解Text 2 In the 1950s, the pioneers of artificial intelligence (AI) predicted that, by the end of this century, computers wouldbe conversing with us at work and robots would be performing our housework

阅读理解Text 3 What is your favorite colour? Do you like yellow, orange, red? If you do, you must be an optimist, a leader, an active person who enjoys life, people and excitement

阅读理解Which of the following statement is true? 

阅读理解Passage Two 3M comes from Minnesota Mining Manufacturing, but those three Ms might better stand for Mistake=Magic=Money

阅读理解Section B Getting lesss leep has become a bad habit for most American kids

阅读理解Directions: There are 4 passages in this part. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A., B., C. and D. You should decide on the best choice and write down your answer on the Answer Sheet.Passage 3It started last year when a group of middle school children on a biology field trip in south-central Minnesota spotted some unusual-looking frogs. One was missing a leg, some had withered arms, others had shrunken eyes. Of the 22 frogs caught that day, 11 were deformed. Their teacher told officials. Reports of strange frogs began to mount: a frog with nine legs; a clubfooted frog; a frog with three eyes, one of them in its throat.At first, investigators from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency in St. Paul assumed that the problem was restricted to their state, and the agricultural part at that. They were wrong. Deformed frogs have since turned up in Wisconsin, South Dakota, Vermont and up into Canada.“Abnormalities like this get me worried,” says David Hoppe, a University of Minnesota researcher. “We don’t know how far this is going to go.” Because frogs spend much of their life in water, pesticides or harmful metals were prime suspects. But now possible causes include acid rain, global warming and increased ultraviolet light. Hoppe observes that different deformities seem to be concentrated in frogs from different regions. It may be, he says, that more than one cause is at work.What some scientists fear is that the frogs could be a sign that something is very wrong with the environment. “We may have a large problem here,” says Robert McKinnell, a University of Minnesota cancer researcher, who has collected hundreds of deformed frogs. “If frogs are not able to handle whatever it is that is causing this, it may turn out that people can’t either.”

阅读理解Emotion is a feeling about or reaction to certain important events or thoughts

阅读理解 For a century, urban commotion has been treated as a moral failing of individuals. Fixing it will require systemic changes to environmental noise. What are your ears hearing right now? Maybe the bustling sounds of a busy office, or your partner cooking dinner in the next room. Whatever the texture of the sonic landscape of your life may be, beneath it all is the same omnipresent din: the sound of cars. That might seem benign, or perhaps even endearing—the sound of the bustle of the big city. But the din of vehicles, along with transit and industrial activity, is making people sick. People forget that noise pollution is still pollution. And noise pollution is everywhere. Unlike many other injuries, hearing damage is irreparable. It also functions differently. People tend to assume that hearing loss is akin to turning down the volume in one's head—that everything just sounds quieter. But it's more complex than that. Sound at certain frequencies just vanishes—birdsong, intelligible human speech, the gentle rustling of leaves, the crispy highs of brushes on jazz cymbals. People can avoid using earbuds excessively or attending loud concerts. But people do not necessarily have the ability to avoid high levels of environmental noise—it's in their neighborhoods, near their schools, at their workplaces. That makes noise pollution a matter of bodily autonomy. Solving the environmental-noise problem has been difficult, partly because for more than a century anti-noise advocates have fought for the right to silence rather than the right to hear. Concerns about hearing loss largely focus on excessive noise exposure. But environmental noise is just as unsafe. People living in cities are regularly exposed (against their will) to noise above 85 decibels from sources like traffic, subways, industrial activity, and airports. That's enough to cause significant hearing loss over time. If you have an hour-long commute at such sound levels, your hearing has probably already been affected. Urban life also sustains average background noise levels of 60 decibels, which is loud enough to raise one's blood pressure and heart rate, and cause stress, loss of concentration, and loss of sleep. Sirens are a particularly extreme example of the kind of noise inflicted on people every day: They ring at a sound-pressure level of 120 decibels—a level that corresponds with the human pain threshold, according to the World Health Organization. But since the turn of the 20th century, protecting human hearing has taken a back seat to securing quiet for those with means, and punishing those without. Noise-abatement laws transformed an objective concern about environmental and health conditions into a subjective fight over aesthetic moralism.