阅读理解Passage 2 Questions 6 to 10 are based on the following passage: Torontos third City Hall, now known as Old City Hall, was designed by Edward James Lennox and declared open on Sept

阅读理解Gregory Currie, a professor of philosophy eat the University of Nottingham, recently argued in The New York Times that we ought not to claim that literature improves us as people, because there is no “compelling evidence that suggests that people are morally or socially better for reading Tolstoy” or other great books. Actually, there is such evidence. Raymond Mar, a psychologist at York University in Canada, and Keith Oatley, a professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Toronto, reported in studies published in 2006 and 2009 that individuals who often read fiction appear to be better able to understand other people, empathize (起共鸣)with them and view the world from their perspective. This link persisted even after the researchers factored in the possibility that more empathetic individuals might choose to read more novels. Recent research in cognitive science, psychology and neuroscience has demonstrated that deep reading of books is a distinctive experience, very different from the information-driven reading we do on the Web. Although deep reading does not, strictly speaking, require a conventional book, the built-in limits of the printed page are uniquely conducive to the deep reading experience. A books lack of hyperlinks allows the reader to remain fully immersed in the narrative, without having to make such decisions as whether to click on a link or not. That immersion is supported by the way the brain handles language rich in sensory detail and emotional and moral complexity, by creating a mental representation that draws on the same brainregions that would be active if the scene were unfolding in real life. The emotional situations and moral dilemmas that are the stuff of literature are also vigorous exercise for the brain, propelling us inside the heads of fictional characters and even increasing our real-life capacity for empathy. This is not reading as many young people are coming to know it. Their reading, mostly done onscreen, is pragmatic and instrumental. If we allow our children to believe reading onscreen is all there is, we will have deprived them of an enjoyable and enlightening experience that will enlarge them as people. Instead molding our education around young people’s attachment to digital devices and onscreen habits, we need to show them some place they’ve never been to, a place only deep reading can take them to.

阅读理解 For the first time in history more people live in towns than in the country. In Britain this has had a curious result. While polls show Britons rate 'the countryside' alongside the royal family, Shakespeare and the National Health Service (NHS) as what makes them proudest of their country, this has limited political support. A century ago Octavia Hill launched the National Trust not to rescue stylish houses but to save 'the beauty of natural places for everyone forever.' It was specifically to provide city dwellers with spaces for leisure where they could experience 'a refreshing air.' Hill's pressure later led to the creation of national parks and green belts. They don't make countryside any more, and every year concrete consumes more of it. It needs constant guardianship. At the next election none of the big parties seem likely to endorse this sentiment. The Conservatives' planning reform explicitly gives rural development priority over conservation, even authorising 'off-plan' building where local people might object. The concept of sustainable development has been defined as prof itable. Labour likewise wants to discontinue local planning where councils oppose development. The Liberal Democrats are silent. Only Ukip, sensing its chance, has sided with those pleading for a more considered ap proach to using green land. Its Campaign to Protect Rural England struck terror into many local Conservative parties. The sensible place to build new houses, factories and offices is where people are, in cities and towns where infrastructure is in place. The London agents Stirling Ackroyd recently identified enough sites for half a million houses in the London area alone, with no intrusion on green belt. What is true of London is even truer of the provinces. The idea that 'housing crisis' equals 'concreted meadows' is pure lobby talk. The issue is not the need for more house but, as always, where to put them. Under lobby pressure, George Osborne favours rural new-build against urban renovation and renewal. He favours out-of-town shopping sites against high streets. This is not a free market but a biased one. Rural towns and villages have grown and will always grow. They do so best where building sticks to their edges and respects their character. We do not ruin urban conservation areas. Why ruin rural ones? Development should be planned, not let rip. After the Netherlands, Britain is Europe's most crowded country. Half a century of town and country planning has enabled it to retain an enviable rural coherence, while still permitting low-density urban living. There is no doubt of the alternative—the corrupted landscapes of southern Portugal, Spain or Ireland. Avoiding this rather than promoting it should unite the left and right of the political spectrum.

阅读理解Passage Two Our eating habits are very important for good health and a strong body

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 deicide the best choice and mark the corresponding letter on the Answer Sheet with a single line through the center.Passage FourIn one study of 400 adults who had got remarkable achievements in all areas of life, researchers found that three-fifths of these individuals did badly in school. Pablo Picasso, Charles Darwin, and Mark Twain all disliked school. About Oliver Goldsmith, one of his teachers remarked, “Never was dull a boy.” Often these children realize that they know more than their teachers, and their teachers often feel that these children are arrogant and inattentive.Some of these gifted people may have done poorly in school because their gifts were not scholastic. Maybe we can account for Picasso in this way. But most did poorly in school not because they lacked ability but because they found school unchallenging and consequently lost interest. So they were difficult to teach. As noted earlier, gifted children of all kinds tend to be strong-willed nonconformists.When highly gifted students in any domain talk about what was important to the development of their abilities, they are far more likely to mention their families than their schools or teachers. High-IQ children, in Australia studied by Miraca Gross had much more positive feelings about their families than their schools. About half of the mathematicians studied by Benjamin Bloom had little good to say about school. They all did well in school and took honors classes when available.

阅读理解Passage 3 The first mention of slavery in the statutes of the English colonies of North America does not occur until after 1660some forty years after the importation of the first Black people

阅读理解To what extent are the unemployed failing in their duty to society to work, and how far has the State an obligation to ensure that they have work to do? 　　It is by now increasingly recognized that workers may be thrown out of work by industrial forces beyond their control, and that the unemployed are in some sense paying the price of the economic progress of the rest of the community. But concern with unemployment and the unemployed varies sharply. The issues of duty and responsibility were reopened and revitalized by the unemployment scare of 1971-2. Rising unemployment and increased sums paid out in benefits to the workless had reawakened controversies which had been inactive during most of the period of fuller employment since the war ended the Depression. It looked as though in future there would again be too little work to go round, so there were arguments about how to produce more work, how the available work should be shared out, and who was responsible for unemployment and the unemployed. 　　In 1972 there were critics who said that the State''s action in allowing unemployment to rise was a faithless act, a breaking of the social contract between society and the worker. Yet in the main any contribution by employers to unemployment―such as laying off workers in order to introduce technological changes and maximize profits―tended to be ignored. And it was the unemployed who were accused of failing to honour the social contract, by not fulfilling their duty to society to work. In spite of general concern at the scale of the unemployment statistics, when the unemployed were considered as individuals, they tended to attract scorn and threats of punishment. Their capacities and motivation as workers and their value as members of society became suspect. Of all the myths of the Welfare State, stories of the work-shy and borrowers have been the least well-founded on evidence, yet they have proved the most persistent. The unemployed were accused of being responsible for their own workless condition, and doubts were expressed about the State''s obligation either to provide them with the security of work or to support them through Social Security. 　　Underlying the arguments about unemployment and the unemployed is a basic disagreement about the nature and meaning of work in society. To what extent can or should work be regarded as a service, not only performed by the worker for society but also made secure for the worker by the State, and supported if necessary? And apart from cash are there social pressures and satisfactions which cause individuals to seek and keep work. so that the workless need work rather than just cash?

阅读理解Passage 2 There are very few big adventures left and very few heroes

阅读理解Directions: There are 2 passages in this section. 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 your answers on the Answer Sheet.Passage 3The making of classifications by literary historians can be a somewhat risky enterprise. When Black poets are discussed separately as a group, for instance, the extent to which their work reflects the development of poetry in general should not be forgotten, or a distortion of literary history may result. This caution is particularly relevant in an assessment of the differences between Black poets at the turn of the century (1900-1909) and those of the generation of the 1920’s. These differences include the bolder and more forthright speech of the later generation and its technical inventiveness. It should be remembered, though, that comparable differences also existed for similar generations of White poets.When poets of the 1910’s and 1920’s are considered together, however, the distinctions that literary historians might make between “conservative” and “experimental” would be of little significance in a discussion of Black poets, although these remain helpful classifications for White poets of these decades. Certainly differences can be noted between “conservative” Black poets such as Counter Cullen and Claude McKay and “experimental” ones such as Jean Toomer and Langston Hughes. But Black poets were not battling over old or new styles; rather, one accomplished Black poet was ready to welcome another, whatever his or her style, for what mattered was racial pride.However, in the 1920’s Black poets did debate whether they should deal with specifically racial subjects. They asked whether they should only write about Black experience for a Black audience or whether such demands were restrictive. It may be said, though, that virtually all these poets wrote their best poems when they spoke out of racial feeling, race being, as James Weldon Johnson rightly put it, “perforce the thing the Negro poet knows best.”At the turn of the century, by contrast, most Black poets generally wrote in the conventional manner of the age and expressed noble, if vague, emotions in their poetry. These poets were not unusually gifted, though Roscoe Jamison and G. M. McClellen may be mentioned as exceptions. They chose not to write in dialect, which, as Sterling Brown has suggested, “meant a rejection of stereotypes of Negro life,” and they refused to write only about racial subjects. This refusal had both a positive and a negative consequence. As Brown observes, “Valuably insisting that Negro poets should not be confined to issues of race, these poets committed [an] error...they refused to look into their hearts and write.” These are important insights, but one must stress that this refusal to look within was also typical of most White poets of the United States at the time. They, too, often turned from their own experience and consequently produced not very memorable poems about vague topics, such as the peace of nature.

阅读理解Text 2 Scientific publishing has long been a licence to print money

阅读理解Passage 1 Just how much does the Constitution protect your digital data? The Supreme Court will now consider whether police can search the contents of a mobile phone without a warrant if the phone is on or around a person during an arrest

阅读理解What mainly helped the author change his/her attitude toward the project？

阅读理解Passage Two The Queen has only given one interview while a sovereign(君主)

阅读理解Just over a decade into the 21st century, women’s progress can be celebrated across a range of fields. They hold the highest political offices from Thailand to Brazil, Costa Rica to Australia. A woman holds the top spot at the International Monetary Fund; another won the Nobel Prize in economics. Self-made billionaires in Beijing, tech innovators in Silicon Valley, pioneering justices in Ghana-in these and countless other areas, women are leaving their mark.But hold the applause. In Saudi Arabia, women aren’t allowed to drive. In Pakistan, 1000 women die in honor killings every year. In the developed world, women lag behind men in pay and political power. The poverty rate among women in the U.S. rose to 14.5% last year.To measure the state of women’s progress. Newsweek ranked 165 countries, looking at five areas that affect women’s lives: treatment under the law, workforce participation, political power, and access to education and health care. Analyzing data from the United Nations and the World Economic Forum, among others, and consulting with experts and academics, we measured 28 factors to come up with our rankings.Countries with the highest scores tend to be clustered in the West, where gender discrimination is against the law, and equal rights are constitutionally enshrined (神圣化). But there were some surprises. Some otherwise high-ranking countries had relatively low scores for political representation. Canada ranked third overall but 26th in power, behind countries such as Cuba and Burundi. Does this suggest that a woman in a nation’s top office translates to better lives for women in general? Not exactly. “Trying to quantify or measure the impact of women in politics is hard because in very few countries have there been enough women in politics to make a difference,” says Anne-Marie Goetz, peace and security adviser for U.N. Women.Of course, no index can account for everything. Declaring that one country is better than another in the way that it treats more than half its citizens means relying on broad strokes and generalities. Some things simply can’t be measured. And cross-cultural comparisons can’t account for differences of opinion.Certain conclusions are nonetheless clear. For one thing, our index backs up a simple but profound statement made by Hillary Clinton at the recent Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. “When we liberate the economic potential of women, we elevate the economic performance of communities, nations, and the world,” she said. “There’s a stimulative effect that kicks in when women have greater access to jobs and the economic lives of our countries: Greater political stability. Fewer military conflicts. More food. More educational opportunity for children. By harnessing the economic potential of all women, we boost opportunity for all people.”

阅读理解Passage FourEarly decision—you apply to one school, and admission is binding—seems like a great choice fornervous applicants Schools let in a higher percentage of early-decision applicants, which arguablymeans that you have a better chance of getting in. And if you do, you’re done with the wholeagonizing process by December. But what most students and parents don’t realize is that schoolshave hidden motives for offering early decision.Early decision since it’s binding, allows schools to fill their classes with qualified students; it allowsadmissions committees to select the students that are in particular demand for their college and knowthose students will come. It also gives schools a higher yield rate which is often used as one of theways to measure college selectivity and popularity.The problem is that this process effectively shortens the window of time students have to make oneof the most important decisions of their lives up to that point. Under regular admissions, seniors haveuntil May 1 to choose which school to attend; early decision effectively steals six months from them,months that could be used to visit more schools, do more research, speak to current students andalumni and arguably make a more informed decision.There are, frankly, an astonishing number of exceptional colleges in America, and for any givenstudent, there are a number of schools that are a great fit. When students become too fixated on aparticular school early in the admissions process, that fixation can lead to severe disappointment ifthey don’t get in or, if they do, the possibility that they are now bound to go to a school that, giventime for further reflection, may not actually be right for them.Insofar as early decision offers a genuine admissions edge; that advantage goes largely to studentswho already have numerous advantages. The students who use early decision tend to be those whohave received higher quality college guidance, usually a result of coming from a more privilegedbackground. In this regard, there’s an argument against early decision, as students fromlower-income families are far less likely to have the admissions know-how to navigate the oftenconfusing early deadlines.Students who have done their research and are confident that there’s one school they would bethrilled to get into should, under the current system, probably apply under early decision. But forstudents who haven’t yet done enough research, or who are still constantly changing their minds onfavorite schools, the early decision system needlessly and prematurely narrows the field ofpossibility just at a time when students should be opening themselves to a whole range of thrillingoptions.

阅读理解Passage 2 Most people can remember a phone number for up to thirty seconds

阅读理解Passage 3 Planet Earth was stricken by floods, drought and fire in 1997, a year which ended with the worlds major polluters quarreling about ways to prevent further environmental disaster

阅读理解Questions 36 to 40 are based on the following passage

阅读理解Material culture refers to the touchable, material thingsphysical objects that can be seen, held, felt, usedthat a culture produces

阅读理解Passage 3 Moods, say the experts, are emotions that tend to become fixed, influencing ones outlook for hours, days or even weeks