阅读理解Questions 1 to 5 are based on the following passage: Eight times within the past million years, something in the Earths climatic equation haschanged, allowing snow in the mountains and the northern latitudes to accumulate from oneseason to the next instead of melting away

阅读理解Passage 2 Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia behind a veil of congressionally imposed secrecy in June 1776 for a country wracked by military and political uncertainties

阅读理解People change their position frequently in order to _________.

阅读理解Text 2 Grade inflation--the gradual increase in average GPAs(grade-point averages) over the past few decadesis often considered a product of a consumer era in higher education, in which students are treated like customers to be pleased

阅读理解Social isolation poses more health risks than obesity or smoking 15 cigarettes a day, according to research published by Brigham Young University. The【C1】________is that loneliness is a huge, if silen

阅读理解In this section there are five reading passages followed by a total of 20 multiple-choice questions and 5 short answerquestions. Please read the passages and then write your answers on the ANSWER SHEET.TEXT ATo understand the marketing concept, it is only necessary to understand the difference between marketing and selling. Not too many years ago, most industries concentrated primarily on the efficient production of goods, and then relied on “persuasive salesmanship” to move as much of these goods as possible. Such production and selling focuses on the needs of the seller to produce goods and then to convert them into money.Marketing, on the other hand focuses on the wants of consumers. It begins with first analyzing the preferences and demands of consumers and then producing goods that will satisfy them. This eye-on-the-consumer approach is known as the marketing concept which simply means that instead of trying to sell whatever is easiest to produce or buy for resale, the makers and dealers first endeavor to find out what the consumer wants to buy and then go about making it available for purchase.This concept does not imply that business is benevolent or that consumer satisfaction is given priority over profit in a company. There are always two sides to every business transaction—the firm and the customer—and each must be satisfied before trade occurs. Successful merchants and producers, however, recognize that the surest route to profit is through understanding and catering to customers. A striking example of the importance of catering to the consumer presented itself in mid-1985, when Coca Cola changed the flavor of its drink. The non-acceptance of the new flavor by a significant portion of the public brought about a prompt restoration of the Classic Coke, which was then marketed alongside the new King Customer ruled!

阅读理解About ______ of Taiwanese adults smoke 

阅读理解Questions 31-32 Half a century ago a radio astronomer called Frank Drake thought of a way to calculate the likelihood of establishing contact with aliens

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Questions 71 to 80 are based on the following passage

阅读理解Passage 1 From 2007 to 2010, American households lost $11 trillion in real estate, savings, and stocks More than half of all U

阅读理解Passage 1 What we know of prenatal development makes all this attempt made by a mother to mold the character of her unborn child by studying poetry, art, or mathematics during pregnancy seem utterly impossible

阅读理解 Science and its practical applications in the form of technology, or the 'science' of the industrial arts, as Webster defines the term, have had an enormous impact on modem society and culture. For generations it was believed that science and technology would provide the solutions to the problem of human suffering disease, famine, war, and poverty. But today these problems remain; in fact, many argue that they are expanding. Some even conclude that science and technology as presently constituted are not capable of meeting the collective needs of mankind. A more radical position is that modem scientific methods and institutions, because of their very nature and structure, thwart basic human needs and emotions; the catastrophes of today's world, and the greatest threat to its future, some claim, are the direct consequences of science and technology. A major paradox has been created: scientific rationality taken as the supreme form of the application of the rational faculties of human beings and which, along with its practical applications in the form of technological development, have liberated man from ignorance, from the whims and oppressions of a relentless nature and while having subordinated the earth to man, has become the potential instrument of the self-destruction of the human species. War, pollution, and economic oppression are seen as the inevitable results of scientific advance by large sections of the public. The atomic disaster of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings are seen as the products of an uninterested scientific rationality. In recent decades in the West there has emerged a wave of anti-scientific, antirational moods, especially among the young people, which threatens a complete rejection not simply of the technological fruits of science, but of scientific rationalism as well, in favor of one or another version of mysticism, irrationalism, and primitivism-or as one philosopher of science has called it, of blood and soil philosophy. Wartovsky has described the argument of the anti-science people as one in which we are warned to 'listen to the blood, get back to our roots, and cast out the evil demons of a blind and inhuman rationality, and thereby we will save ourselves'. The only 'reasonable thing' to do, according to the oppositionist, is to reject reason itself-at least in its scientific form. The very rejection of that reason, in 'reasonable' terms, is in itself a paradox.

阅读理解Directions: In this part for the test, there will be 5 passages for you to read. Each passage is followed by 4 questions or unfinished statement, and each question or unfinished statement is followed by four choices marked A, B, C and D. You are to decide on the best choice by blackening the corresponding letter on the ANSWER SHEET.Passage Five Advances in campaign against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq are forcing the extremists to abandon territory there, generating concerns that they are carving out a new stronghold in oil-rich Libya, Secretary of State John F. Kerry said Tuesday.“As everybody here knows, that country has resources,” Kerry said at a conference of 23 foreign ministers from nations that form the core of a coalition fighting the Islamic State. “The last thing in the world you’d want is a false caliphate with access to billions of dollars in oil revenue. ”In a joint statement, both Kerry and Italian foreign minister Paolo Gentiloni expressed concern over the “growing influence” of Islamic State in Libya. They vowed to “continue to National Accord in its efforts to establish peace and security for the Libyan people.”Kerry ruled out military intervention in Libya by the United States in near future. But he said that could change if there were some turn of events, like weapons of mass destruction ending up in the hands of the wrong people”Libya has been in a state of chaos since 2011 when Moammar Gaddafi was ousted. Two rival governments subsequently emerged, and continuing conflict has foiled efforts to establish a united Libyan government.Though the emerging threat in Libya commanded much of the diplomats’ attention, the situation in Syria remains troublesome. Success in pushing Islamic State fighters out of an estimated 40 percent of territory they controlled in Iraq and 20 percent to 30 percent of the land they held in Syria has created its own set of urgent problems.Fleeing fighters often booby-trap homes and demolish buildings, which then need to be cleared and rebuilt before residents can return. Kerry urged his fellow foreign ministers to donate more money to a stabilization fund for rebuilding and restoring services in those areas.Now that U. N. -backed Syria peace talks aimed at ending the war have started in Geneva, Kerry called on Russia to stop bombing opposition fighters and the Syrian government to grant humanitarian access to besieged towns.With the onset of peace talks, a cease-fire should follow shortly, he said.“We are at the table, and we expect a cease-fire,” he said. “And we expect adherence to the cease-fire, and we expect full humanitarian access. ”In Geneva, where U. N. envoy Staffan de Mistura on Monday declared the official opening of talks between the Syrian government and opposition, both sides said that as far as they were concerned, negotiations had not yet begun.In a statement, the opposition delegation said Syrian rebels are facing “ a massive acceleration of Russian and regime military aggression... including attacks on hospitals and critical infrastructurev near the cities of Aleppo and Homs over the past two days.The Syrian government delegation accused the opposition of acting like “ amateurs and not professional politicians”. Syria’s United Nations ambassador, Bashar Jaafari, representing Syrian President Basher al-Assad，said his side challenged the participation of two “terrorist” groups in the opposition delegation, according to the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency.The Obama administration is eager for the peace talks to begin and has pressured the opposition to participate. Opposition representatives have said the agreed-upon rules for the negotiations，in a U. N. resolution, call for an end to bombardments and government sieges of civilian areas, as well as the release of prisoners.Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters there that his government considered members of Jaish al-Islam and Ahrar al-Sham to be participating in the opposition delegation in their “personal capacity” rather than as official representatives. Lavrov also said that he considers it the responsibility of the United States, as leader of the coalition against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, to prevent conflict among the various participants operating strike aircraft over those countries.

阅读理解 Women do not avoid fighting because they are dainty or scared, but because they have a greater stake than men in staying alive to rear their offspring. Women compete with each other just as tenaciously as men, but with a stealth and subtlety that reduces their chances of being killed or injured, says Anne Campbell of the department psychology at the University of Durham. Across almost all cultures and nationalities, men have a much smaller role than women in rearing children. 'Males go for quantity of children rather than quality of care for offspring, which means that the parental investment of women is much greater,' says Campbell. And unlike men, who can't be sure that their children have not been fathered on the sly by other men, women can always be certain that half an offspring's genes are theirs. Women have therefore evolved a strong impulse than men to see their children grow up into adults. Men's psychological approach is geared to fathering as many children as possible. To make this strategy work and to attract partners, men need to establish and advertise their dominance over rival males. Throughout evolution this has translated into displays of male aggression, ranging in scale from playground fights to world wars. Men can afford to take more risks because as parents they are more expendable. Women, meanwhile, can only ensure reproductive success by overseeing the development of their children, which means avoiding death. 'The scale of parental investment drives everything,' says Campbell. 'It's not that women are too scared to fight,' she says. 'It's more to do with the positive value of staying alive, and women have an awfully big stake not just in offspring themselves but in offspring they might have in the future,' she says. This means that if women do need to compete—perhaps for a partner—they choose low-risk rules of engagement. They use indirect tactics, such as discrediting rivals by spreading malicious rumors. And unlike men who glory in feats of dominance, women do better by concealing their actions and their 'victories'. But there is no doubt, says Campbell, that the universal domination of culture by males has exaggerated these differences in attitudes to physical aggression. 'The story we've always been told is that females are not aggressive,' says Campbell. And when they are aggressive, women are told that their behavior is 'odd or abnormal'.

阅读理解Questions are based on the following passage

阅读理解Task 5 Directions: The following is an advertisement

阅读理解Throughout history, gold has been a precious material, eagerly sought and cherished. It was probably the first metal to be mined because it is beautiful and imperishable (which will always exist or cannot wear out), and because beautiful objects can be made from it-even with primitive tools. The amount of gold known to ancient peoples probably totaled not much more than the amount produced each year by the world''s largest gold mine located in the Witwatersrand district of South Africa. Stores of gold discovered by archaeologists in Greece, Scythia, and Egypt, as well as the gold from Indian treasuries in Mexico and Peru, represented years of patient collection of small quantities from streams and veins (矿脉) , often by slave labor. 　　The essential value of gold has always been known, even before gold was used in coinage. It remains the only universally recognized standard of value in international monetary exchange. Most of the world''s refined gold is absorbed by governments and central banks to provide backing for paper currency. But the amount of gold used in arts and in industry is increasing. In addition to its use for jewelry, decorative finishes, and dentistry, its special properties have led to many applications in modern science and technology. Surface coatings of gold protect earth satellites from heat and corrosion, and certain electrical components and circuits of spacecraft are made of gold when extreme reliability is required. 　　Gold was first produced in the United States from the southern Appalachian region, beginning about 1792. These deposits, though rich, were relatively small and were quickly depleted. The discovery of gold at Sutter''s Mill in California sparked the gold rush of 1849-50. Hundreds of mining camps sprang to life as new deposits were discovered. As a result, the production of gold increased rapidly. 　　During World War I and for some years thereafter, annual production declined to about two million ounces. When the price of gold was raised in 1934 to $35 an ounce, production increased rapidly. Shortly after the start of World WarⅡ, gold mines were closed and the government did not permit them to reopen until 1945. Since then the production of gold has not exceeded two million ounces a year. 　　The largest producing gold mine in the United States is the Homestake Mine in South Dakota, which yields about 575,000 ounces of gold each year. Other mines scattered throughout various parts of the world produce even larger amounts of this highly prized and eagerly sought yellowish material.

阅读理解Passage 2 Open up most fashion magazines and you will see incredibly thin models with impossible hair and wearing unreasonably expensive, impracticably styled clothes

阅读理解Questions 6 to 10 are based on the following passage: If you smoke and you still dont believe that theres a definite between smoking and bronchial troubles, heart disease and lung cancer, then you are certainly deceiving yourself