阅读理解 Madrid was hailed as a public health beacon last November when it rolled out ambitious restrictions on the most polluting cars. Seven months and one election day later, a new conservative city council suspended enforcement of the clean air zone, a first step toward its possible demise. Mayor Jose Luis Martinez-Almeida made opposition to the zone, a centrepiece of his election campaign, despite its success in improving air quality. A judge has now overruled the city's decision to stop levying fines, ordering them reinstated. But with legal battles ahead, the zone's future looks uncertain at best. Madrid's back and forth on clean air is a pointed reminder of the limits to the patchwork, city-by-city approach that characterized efforts on air pollution across Europe, Britain very much included. Among other weaknesses, the measures cities must employ when left to tackle dirty air on their own are politically contentious, and therefore vulnerable. That's because they inevitably put the costs of cleaning the air on to individual drivers—who must pay fees or buy better vehicles—rather than on to the car manufacturers whose cheating is the real cause of our toxic pollution. It's not hard to imagine a similar reversal happening in London. The new ultra-low emission zone (ULEZ) is likely to be a big issue in next year's mayoral election. And if Sadiq Khan wins and extends it to the North and South Circular roads in 2021 as he intends, it is sure to spark intense opposition from the far larger number of motorists who will then be affected. It's not that measures such as London's ULEZ are useless. Far from it, local officials are using the levers that are available to them to safeguard residents' health in the face of a serious threat. The zones do deliver some improvements to air quality, and the science tells us that means real health benefits—fewer heart attacks, strokes and premature births, less cancer, dementia and asthma, fewer untimely deaths. But mayors and councillors can only do so much about a problem that is far bigger than any one city or town. They are acting because national governments—Britain's and others across Europe—have failed to do so. Restrictions that keep highly polluting cars out of certain areas—city centres, 'school streets', even individual roads—are a response to the absence of a larger effort to properly enforce existing regulations and require auto companies to bring their vehicles into compliance. Wales has introduced special low speed limits to minimise pollution. We're doing everything but insist that manufacturers clean up their cars.

阅读理解Text 1 I can think of no better career for a young novelist than to be for some years a sub-editor on a rather conservativenewspaper

阅读理解Given such pitfall, its little wonder that Americans often make gaffes or fail to catch certain nuances

阅读理解Theme-park-bound bargain seekers would be wise to spend some time surfing online before they get in line at the parks this summer. A growing number of these attractions now allow customers to print e-tickets at home with large discounts off the gate price, in part to spur attendance that has declined in recent years. After boom times in the late 1990s, theme park attendance began to decrease, with an overall decline of about 4% over the past few years at North America''s 50 most-visited establishments, says James Zoltak, editor of Amusement Business. "The bloom was off the rose as we turned the corner into 2000, so there''s more discounting now," he says. Discounting isn''t new to an industry that has long partnered with other commercial enterprises, such as soft drink companies, to offer deals. But e-ticketing adds a new opportunity that not only brings savings but convenience as well, since it allows visitors to avoid the line at the gate. "If you can get in early before the lines fill up, you''re getting more for your money," says Robert Niles of the website Theme Park Insider.

阅读理解 A quality education is the ultimate liberator. It can free people from poverty, giving them the power to greatly improve their lives and take a productive place in society. It can also free communities and countries, allowing them to leap forward into periods of wealth and social unity that otherwise would not be possible. For this reason, the international community has committed itself to getting all the world's children into primary school by 2015, a commitment known as Education for All. Can education for all be achieved by 2015? The answer is definitely 'yes', although it is a difficult task. If we now measure the goal in terms of children successfully completing a minimum of five years of primary school, instead of just enrolling for classes, which used to be the measuring stick for education, then the challenge becomes even more difficult. Only 32 countries were formerly believed to be at risk of not achieving education for all on the basis of enrollment rates. The number rises to 88 if completion rates are used as the criterion. Still, the goal is achievable with the right policies and the right support from the international community. 59 of the 88 countries at risk can reach universal primary completion by 2015 if they bring the efficiency and quality of their education systems into line with standards observed in higher-performing systems. They also need significant increases in external financing and technical support. The 29 countries lagging farthest behind will not reach the goal without unprecedented rates of progress. But this is attainable with creative solution, including use of information technologies, flexible and targeted foreign aid, and fewer people living in poverty. A key lesson of experience about what makes development effective is that a country's capacity to use aid well depends heavily on its policies, institutions and management. Where a country scores well on these criteria, foreign assistance can be highly effective.

阅读理解By the time the Olympics begin in Atlanta this summer, the business world will have spent more than $1 billion to link their names and products to the Olympic Games. There are 10 Worldwide Sponsors, 10 Centennial Olympic Partners, about 20 regular sponsors and more than a hundred licensees (领有执照者). The Atlanta Games will boast an "official" timepiece (clock), two official game shows, and two official vehicles: a family car, and a luxury sedan (轿车). But what exactly do these companies reap for their huge investment? At the very least, they command tickets to the most popular events, invitations to the best parties and prime hotel rooms. But most of all, according to US Postal Service, it is purchasing the right to spend money. And the right to spend money is expensive. The biggest backers, Olympic sponsors like Anheuser-Busch, Coca-Cola, McDonald''s and Xerox, commit up to $40 million. But, getting the rights to the Olympic rings is only half the battle. The other half is the challenge to sort of wrap their product brands around that image. Often that means TV time. And at roughly $400,000 per 30-second slot, some of the biggest sponsors have already locked up every commercial slot in their product categories that NBC has to sell. Not everyone is convinced that the Games are worth the price of business admission. The biggest and most conspicuous naysayer (反对者) is Nike. Its spokesman says: "If I see a Reebok official who may not be in the best shape firing the starting pistol and Carl Lewis wearing Nike shoes, I''m going to go with Carl because that''s the authentic link." Nike''s strategy is hard to argue with—instead of sponsoring the Olympics, it sponsors Olympians. Yet even Nike wants a piece of the Atlantic action. Along with some other non-sponsors, Nike is trying to dot downtown Atlanta with billboards. Advertisement, it''s another Olympic event.

阅读理解Task 4Directions: The following is a business letter. After reading it , you should answer each of the 5 questions (No.61 to No.65)in no than 3 words. The answers should be written after the corresponding number on the Answer Sheet. Dear Mr. Robert, Although we sent you your goods on time, we have waited nearly two months for you to pay the balance of $5000, which is over due. When you ordered the shipment of computers, you requested that we send you the entire order no later than June 1, and we shipped the goods by air freight on May 25.  As you agreed in our original credit arrangement (赊账协议), payment was due in 30 days, on June 30. Yet, as it is already August 26, we still have not received your payment. In fact, we have not received any answer to the notice we sent to remind you that the payment is due. We regret to say that if we cannot receive your payment by September 15, we will be forced to ask our lawyer to take measures and collect it through legal procedures. Yours faithfully,  Adam Smith The Western Company What’s the purpose of the letter?To urge the buyer to _____________________ 

阅读理解 Despite the numerous warnings about extreme weather, rising sea levels and mass extinctions, one message seems to have got lost in the debate about the impact of climate change. A warmer world won't just be inconvenient. Huge swathes (片) of it, including most of Europe, the US and Australia as well as all of Africa and China will actually be uninhabitable—too hot, dry or stormy to sustain a human population. This is no mirage. It could materialize if the world warms by an average of just 4℃, which some models predict could happen as soon as 2050. This is the world our children and grandchildren are going to have to live in. So what are we going to do about it? One option is to start planning to move the at-risk human population to parts of the world where it will still be cool and wet. It might seem like a drastic move, but this thought experiment is not about scaremongering (危言耸听). Every scenario is extrapolated from predictions of the latest climate models, and some say that 4℃ may actually turn out to be a conservative estimate. Clearly this glacier-free, desertified world—with its human population packed into high-rise cities closer to the poles—would be a last resort. Aside from anything else, it is far from being the most practical option: any attempt at mass migration is likely to fuel wars, political power struggles and infighting. So what are the alternatives? The most obvious answer is to radically reduce carbon dioxide levels now, by fast-tracking green technologies and urgently implementing energy-efficient measures. But the changes aren't coming nearly quickly enough and global emissions are still rising. As a result, many scientists are now turning to 'Earth's plan B'. Plan B involves making sure we have large scale geoengineering technologies ready and waiting to either suck CO2 out of the atmosphere or deflect the sun's heat. Most climate scientists were once firmly against fiddling with the Earth's thermostat, fearing that it may make a bad situation even worse, or provide politicians with an excuse to sit on their hands and do nothing. Now they reluctantly acknowledge the sad truth that we haven't managed to reorder the world fast enough to reduce CO2 emissions and that perhaps, given enough funding research and political muscle, we can indeed design, test and regulate geoengineering projects in time to avert the more horrifying consequences of climate change. Whatever we do, now is the time to act. The alternative is to plan for a hothouse world that none of us would recognize as home.

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 1He emerged, all of a sudden, in 1957: the most explosive new poetic talent of the English post-war era. Poetry specialized, at that moment, in the wry chronicling of the everyday. The poetry of Yorkshire-born Ted Hughes, first published in a book called “The Hawk in the Rain” when he was 27, was unlike anything written by his immediate predecessors. Driven by an almost Jacobean rhetoric, it had a visionary fervour. Its most eye-catching characteristic was Hughes’s ability to get beneath the skins of animals: foxes, otters, pigs. These animals were the real thing all right, but they were also armorial devices—symbols of the countryside and lifeblood of the earth in which they were rooted. It gave his work a raw, primal stink.It was not only England that thought so either. Hughes’s book was also published in America, where it won the Galbraith prize, a major literary award. But then, in 1963, Sylvia Plath, a young American poet whom he had first met at Cambridge University in 1956, and who became his wife in the summer of that year, committed suicide. Hughes was vilified for long after that, especially by feminists in America. In 1998, the year he died, Hughes broke his own self-imposed public silence about their relationship in a book of loose-weave poems called “Birthday Letters”. In this new and exhilarating collection of real letters, Hughes returns to the issue of his first wife’s death, which he calls his “big and unmanageable event”. He felt his talent muffled by the perpetual eavesdropping upon his every move. Not until he decided to publish his own account of their relationship did the burden begin to lighten.The analysis is raw, pained and ruthlessly self-aware. For all the moral torment, the writing itself has the same rush and vigour that possessed Hughes’s early poetry. Some books of letters serve as a personalized historical chronicle. Poets’ letters are seldom like that, and Hughes’s are no exception. His are about a life of literary engagement: almost all of them include some musing on the state or the nature of writing, both Hughes’s own or other people’s. The trajectory of Hughes’s literary career had him moving from obscurity to fame, and then, in the eyes of many, to life-long notoriety. These letters are filled with his wrestling with the consequences of being the part-private, part-public creature that he became, desperate to devote himself to his writing, and yet subject to endless invasions of his privacy.Hughes is an absorbing and intricate commentator upon his own poetry, even when he is standing back from it and good-humouredly condemning himself for “its fantasticalia, its pretticisms and its infinite verballifications”. He also believed, from first to last, that poetry had a special place in the education of children. “What kids need”, he wrote in a 1988 letter to the secretary of state for education in the Conservative government, “is a headfull [sic] of songs that are not songs but blocks of refined and achieved and exemplary language.” When that happens, children have “the guardian angel installed behind the tongue”. Lucky readers, big or small.

阅读理解Passage 1 The United States is on the verge of losing its leading place in the worlds technology

阅读理解Passage Two: Questions are based on the following passage

阅读理解Passage 8 Not so long ago, for most people, listening to radio was a single task activity

阅读理解Questions 31-35 are based on the following passage: In spite of endless talk of difference, American society is an amazing machine for homogenizing people

阅读理解Section A Benjamin West,thefather of American painting, showed his talent for art when he was only sixyears of age

阅读理解To understand why the current process for training teachers is so broken, lets use a business example

阅读理解Text 2 Loneliness has been linked to depression and other health problems

阅读理解 Too much alcohol dulls your senses, but a study in Japan shows that moderate drinkers have a higher IQ than teetotalers. Researchers at the National Institute for Longevity Sciences in Aichi Prefecture, 250 kilometers west of Tokyo, tested the IQs of 2000 people between the ages of 40 and 79. They found that, on average, men who drank moderately—defined as less than 540 milliliters of sake or wine a day—had an IQ that was 3.3 points higher that men who did not drink at all. Women drinkers scored 2.5 points higher than female teetotalers. The type of alcohol didn't influence the results. The volunteers tried a variety of tipples, which ranged from beer and whisky to wine and sake. The researchers are quick to point out that the results do not necessarily show that drinking will make you more intelligent. 'It's very difficult to show a cause-effect relationship,' says senior researcher Hiroshi Shimokata. 'We screened subjects for factors such as income and education, but there may be other factors such as lifestyle and nutritional intake.' Shimokata says that people who drink sake, or Japanese rice wine, tend to eat more raw fish. This could be a factor in enhanced intelligence, as fish often contain essential fatty acids that have been linked to brain development. Similarly, wine drinkers eat a lot of cheese, which is not something Japanese people normally consume or buy. Shimokata says the high fat content of cheese is thought to be good for the brain. If alcoholic drinks are directly influencing IQ, Shimokata believes chemicals such as polyphenols could be the critical factor. They are known to have antioxidant properties and other beneficial effects on ageing bodies, such as dilating constricted coronary arteries. The study is part of a wider research project to find out why brain function deteriorates with age.

阅读理解The world is going through the biggest wave of mergers and acquisitions ever witnessed. The process sweeps from hyperactive America to Europe and reaches the emerging countries with unsurpassed might. Many in these countries are looking at this process and worrying: "Won'' t the wave of business concentration turn into an uncontrollable anti-competitive force?" There''s no question that the big are getting bigger and more powerful. Multinational corporations accounted for less than 20% of international trade in 1982. Today the figure is more than 25% and growing rapidly. International affiliates account for a fast-growing segment of production in economies that open up and welcome foreign investment. In Argentina, for instance, after the reforms of the early 1990s, multinationals went from 43% to almost 70% of the industrial production of the 200 largest firms. This phenomenon has created serious concerns over the role of smaller economic firms, of national businessmen and over the ultimate stability of the world economy. I believe that the most important forces behind the massive M&A wave are the same that underlie the globalization process: falling transportation and communication costs, lower trade and investment barriers and enlarged markets that require enlarged operations capable of meeting customers'' demands. All these are beneficial, not detrimental, to consumers. As productivity grows, the world '' s wealth increases. Examples of benefits or costs of the current concentration wave are scanty. Yet it is hard to imagine that the merger of a few oil firms today could re-create the same threats to competition that were feared nearly a century ago in the U. S. , when the Standard Oil trust was broken up. The mergers of telecom companies, such as WorldCom, hardly seem bring higher prices for consumers or a reduction in the pace of technical progress. On the contrary, the price of communications is coming down fast. In cars, too, concentration is increasing--witness Daimler and Chrysler, Remault and Nissan--but it does not appear that consumers are being hurt. Yet the fact remains that the merger movement must be watched. A few weeks ago, Alan Greenspan warned against the megamergers in the banking industry. Who is going to supervise, regulate and operate as lender of last resort with the gigantic banks that are being created.''? Won''t multinationals shift production from one place to another when a nation gets too strict about infringements to fair competition.''? And should one country take upon itself the role of "defending competition" on issues that affect many other nations, as in the U. S. vs. Microsoft case7

阅读理解Pop stars today enjoy a style of living which was once the prerogative only of Royalty

阅读理解Passage four: Questions are based on the following passage