单选题In the world of entertainment, TV talk shows have undoubtedly flooded every inch of space on daytime television. And anyone who watches them regularly knows that each one varies in style and format. But no two shows are more profoundly opposite in content, while at the same time standing out above the rest, than the Jerry Springer and the Oprah Winfrey shows. Jerry Springer could easily be considered the king of "trash talk". The topics on his show are as shocking as shocking can be. For example, the show takes the eye, common talk show themes of love, sex, cheating, guilt, hate, conflict and morality to a different level. Clearly, the Jerry Springer show is a display and exploitation of society"s moral catastrophes, yet people are willing to eat up the intriguing predicaments of other people"s lives. Like Jerry Springer, Oprah Winfrey takes TV talk show to its extreme, but Oprah goes in the opposite direction. The show focuses on the improvement of society and an individual"s quality of life. Topics range from teaching your children responsibility, managing your work week, to getting to know your neighbors. Compared to Oprah, the Jerry Springer show looks like poisonous waste being dumped on society. Jerry ends every show with a "final word". He makes a small speech that sums up the entire moral of the show. Hopefully, this is the part where most people will learn something very valuable. Clean as it is, the Oprah show is not for everyone. The show"s main target audience are middle-class Americans. Most of these people have the time, money, and stability to deal with life"s tougher problems. Jerry Springer, on the other hand, has more of an association with the young adults of society. These are 18-to 21-year-olds whose main troubles in life involve love, relationship, sex, money and peers. They are the ones who see some value and lessons to be learned underneath the show"s exploitation. While the two shows are as different as night and day, both have ruled the talk show circuit for many years now. Each one caters to a different audience while both have a strong following from large groups of fans. Ironically, both could also be considered pioneers in the talk show world.

单选题 People who are extremely careful and "finish what they start" may have a reduced risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, according to a study involving Catholic nuns and priests. The most conscientious and self-disciplined individuals were found to be 89% less likely to develop this form of dementia—deterioration of intellectual faculties, such as memory, concentration, and judgment, resulting from an organic disease or a disorder of the brain—than their peers over the course of the 12-year study. Robert Wilson at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois, US, and colleagues followed 997 healthy Catholic nuns, priests and Christian brothers between 1994 and 2006. Early on in the study, participants completed a personality test to determine how conscientious they were. Based on answers to 12 questions such as "I am a productive person who always gets the job done", they received a score ranging from 0 to 48. On average, volunteers scored 34 points in the test. Volunteers also underwent regular neurological examinations and cognitive tests. Over the lifetime of the study, 176 of the 997 participants developed Alzheimer's disease. However, those with the highest score on the personality test—40 points or above—had an 89% lower chance of developing the debilitating condition than participants who received 28 points or lower. "These are people who control impulses, and tend to follow norms and roles," Wilson told New Scientist. Previous studies suggest that exercise and intellectual stimulation can decrease the risk of Alzheimer's disease. But the link between self-discipline and a reduced risk of the illness remained strong even after researchers discounted these factors from their study. Subjects still had a 54% lower chance of developing the condition. Exactly why conscientiousness should have an impact on Alzheimer's risk remains unclear, says Wilson. He notes that brain autopsies conducted on 324 of the study's participants failed to resolve the mystery. Earlier work has linked the presence of plaques and protein tangles within the brain to Alzheimer. Yet, in general, the brains of those who scored highly on the conscientiousness test had as many plaques and protein tangles as those of subjects who scored lower. Wilson suggests that more careful and conscientious individuals may have more active frontal brain regions, an area that is responsible for decision-making and planning. Increased activity in this region may perhaps compensate for a decline in function in other brain regions, he speculates. Based on the new findings, doctors could perhaps consider certain patients at greater risk of dementia, says Ross Andel at the University of South Florida, US. "This is a study about identifying people at risk," he says.

单选题{{B}}TEXT 1{{/B}} In order to get your point across in your target language, you have to learn plenty, of words. How do you set about it? Dr. Paul Meara, who lectures in applied linguistics, believes there are lots of different ways of learning words. "Generally, anything you do with the word which actually makes them yours rather than just abstract things which appear in a book or on a record will almost certainly help you to learn them. So, for example, writing them down is better than reading them. Putting them on bits of paper and sticking them up around your house is better than just looking at them in the page of a book. Saying them out loud is better than reading them quietly. Anything which actually gets you to use would probably help." Encouragement and nurturing in the students and belief in their ability to learn is one of the central tenets of a relatively new approach. It's called Accelerated Learning and it's an offshoot of an idea that began in Bulgaria. Michael Lawlor runs a language school for business executives, teaching foreign languages to the British, and English to foreigners. He's currently testing this system to see if he can incorporate it into his teaching program at his school. The main principle is to tap the students' emotions as well as their intellects and, to begin with, to get them to visualize themselves as successful communicators in the language they're learning. "They can actually create a very clear mental picture of themselves in five years' time, in the country where the language is spoken, interacting with the people. They can also boots their own confidence as learners by recreating past successful learning situations. Many people fail in learning a language because they lose belief in themselves as a learner. The other element which we have found very helpful is to teach people to relax. People learn better when they relax. We teach them to sit properly so that they don't lose energy up. All these things are part of the learning process." "Dr. Lazanov in Bulgaria, in his original experiments, found that baroque music produced a state of relaxed awareness, which is now known more generally as the alpha state. If you take the largo passages or the adagio passages from largo music, you find that they correspond more or less to the slowed-down speed of the human heart about 60 beats to the minute. So we're helping people to slow down their body rhythms. The mind then becomes more receptive and open to passive learning, to listening. So that's why music of this kind is important. But it also, of course, touches the emotions. The music will induce a state of pleasurable expectation and if we can link the emotion of pleasure with learning, then we're making a very valuable contribution to the students' affective, or emotional involvement with the learning process." The choice of a soft-spoken female voice to present the language in accelerated learning techniques is also deliberate. After ail, who was it who taught you to speak your own language all those years ago?

单选题 {{I}}Questions 14～16 are based on the following talk. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 14～16.{{/I}}

单选题What'sthemaintopicoftheconversation?

单选题Managers spend a great deal of their time in meetings. According to Henry Mintzbery, in his book, The Nature of Managerial Work, managers in large organizations spend only 22 per cent of their time on meetings. So what are the managers doing in those meetings? There have conventionally been two answers. The first is the academic version: Managers are coordinating and controlling, making decisions, solving problems and planning. This interpretation has been largely discredited because it ignores the social and political forces at work in meetings. The second version claims that meetings provide little more than strategic sites for corporate gladiators to perform before the organizational emperors. This perspective is far more attractive, and has given rise to a large, and often humorous, body of literature on gamesmanship and posturing in meetings. It is, of course, true that meeting rooms serve as shop windows for managerial talent, but this is far from the truth as a whole. The suggestion that meetings are actually battle grounds is misleading since the raison d"etre of meetings has far more to do with comfort than conflict. Meetings are actually vital props, both for the participants and the organization as a whole. For the organization, meetings represent recording devices. The minutes of meetings catalogue the change of the organization, at all levels, in a more systematic way than do the assorted memos and directives which are scattered about the company. They enshrine the minutes of corporate history, they itemize proposed actions and outcomes in a way which makes one look like the natural culmination of the other. The whole tenor of the minutes is one of total premeditation and implied continuity. They are a sanitized version of reality which suggests a reassuring level of control over events. What is more, the minutes record the debating of certain issues in an official and democratic forum, so that those not involved in the process can be assured that decision was not taken lightly. As Dong Bennett, an administrative and financial manager with Allied Breweries, explains: "Time and effort are seen to have been invested in scrutinizing a certain course of action. " Key individuals are also seen to have put their names behind that particular course of action. The decision can therefore proceed with the full weight of the organization behind it, even if it actually went through" on the nod ". At the same time, the burden of responsibility is spread, so that no individual takes the blame. Thus, the public nature of formal meetings confers a degree of legitimacy on what happens in them. Having a view pass unchallenged at a meeting can be taken to indicate consensus. However, meetings also serve as an alibi for action, as demonstrated by one manager who explained to his subordinates: "I did what I could to prevent it—I had our objections minutes in two meetings. "The proof of conspicuous effort was there in black and white. By merely attending meetings, managers buttress their status, while non-attendance can carry with it a certain stigma. Whether individual managers intend to make a contribution or not, it is satisfying to be considered one of those whose views matter. Ostracism, for senior managers, is not being invited to meetings. As one cynic observed, meetings are comfortingly tangible: "Who on the shop floor really believes that managers are working when they tour the works? But assemble them behind closed doors and call it a meeting and everyone will take it for granted that they are hard at work. " Managers are being seen to earn their corn. Meetings provide managers with another form of comfort too—that of formality. Meetings follow a fixed format: Exchanges are ritualized, the participants are probably known in advance, there is often a written agenda, and there is a chance to prepare. Little wonder then, that they come as welcome relief from the upheaval and uncertainty of life outside the meeting room. Managers can draw further comfort from the realization that their peers are every bit as bemused and fallible as themselves. Meetings provide constant reminders that they share the same problems, preoccupations and anxieties, that they are all in the same boat. And for those who may be slightly adrift, meetings are ideal occasions for gently pulling them round. As Steve Styles, the process control manager (life services) at Legal & General, puts it: "The mere presence of others in meetings adds weight to teasing or censure and helps you to "round up the strays". " Such gatherings therefore provide solace and direction for the management team—a security blanket for managers. Meetings do serve a multitude of means as well as ends. They relieve managerial stress and facilitate consensus. For the organization, they have a safety-net-cum-rubber-stamping function without which decisions could not proceed, much less gather momentum. In short, meetings are fundamental to the well-being of managers and organizations alike.

单选题 You will hear 3 conversations or talks and you must answer the questions by choosing A, B, C or D. You will hear the recording {{B}}ONLY ONCE.{{/B}} {{B}}Questions 11 ～ 13 are based on the following talk. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 11 ～ 13{{/B}}

单选题On an average of six limes a day, a doctor in Holland practices "active" euthanasia: intentionally administering a lethal drug to a terminally ill patient who has asked to be relieved of suffering. Twenty times a day, life-prolonging treatment is withheld or withdrawn when there is no hope that it can affect an ultimate cure. "Active" euthanasia remains a crime on the Dutch statute books punishable by 12 years in prison. But a series of court cases over the past 15 years has made it clear that a competent physician who carries it out will not be prosecuted. Euthanasia, often called "mercy killing", is a crime everywhere in Western Europe. But more and more doctors and nurses in Britain, West Germany, Holland and elsewhere readily admit to practicing it, most often in the "passive" form of withholding or withdrawing treatment. The long simmering euthanasia issue has lately boiled over into a sometimes fierce public debate, with both sides claiming the mantle of ultimate righteousness. Those opposed to the practice see themselves up-holding sacred principles of respect for life, while those in favor raise the banner of humane treatment. After years on the defensive, the advocates now seem to be gaining ground. Recent polls in Britain show that 72 percent of British subjects favor euthanasia in some circumstances. An astonishing 76 percent of respondents to a poll taken late last year in France said they would like the law changed to decriminalize mercy killings. Reasons for the latest surge of interest in euthanasia are not hard to find. Europeans, like Americans, are now living longer. The average European male now lives to the age of 72, women to almost 80. As Derek Humphrey, a leading British advocate of "rational euthanasia" says, "lingering chronic diseases have replaced critical illnesses as the primary cause of death." And so the euthanasists have begun to press their case with greater force. They argue that every human being should have the right to "die with dignity", by which they usually mean the right to escape the horrors of a painful or degrading hospitalization. Most advocates of voluntary euthanasia have argued that the right to die should be accorded only to the terminally and incurably ill, but the movement also includes a small minority who believe in euthanasia for anyone who rationally decides to take his own life. That right is unlikely to get legal recognition any time in the near future. Even in the Netherlands, the proposals now before Parliament would restrict euthanasia to a small number of cases and would surround even those with elaborate safeguards.

单选题Questions 17 to 20 are based on the following job interview. You now have 20 seconds to read Questions 17 to 20.

单选题Nuclear science be developed to benefit the people ______ harm them.

单选题Questions 14 to 16 are based on the following conversation. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 14 to 16.

单选题 Questions 15—17 are based on the following talk.

单选题What makes Reader's Digest the most successful magazine in publishing history? Beneath the fun and excitement that fill our pages, it is, above all else, a serious magazine. Our readers are serious people. The Digest never loses sight of the fact that each day all of us confront a tough, challenging world. To millions who know our record of viewing this world, we are not a luxury; we are a necessity. Basic to our magazine is a steady focus on the power of the individual. We show that man's greatest ideas and accomplishment, his often stunning (极好的) faith and courage and hope, can be seen in the conduct of ordinary men and women. We reflect the universal skepticism that government can solve our problems; we herald the unending promise of self-determination and individual enterprise. Readers depend upon us for truth and accuracy, logic and common sense. Our stories come from the grit of human experience—the tough, the tender, the funny. These stories—always told in a powerful narrative style—spring from love and caring, from a sense of right and wrong, from a dedication to the vitality (生命力) of the human spirit. We are at the forefront of major issues of medicine, health, environment, human rights. We take readers behind the headlines to the cause and meaning of world events. We celebrate courage, champion adventure and always seek to expand the mind, and to enrich the spirit and the body. It is this clear voice—never preaching (说教), always showing—that has made readers set us apart from all other magazines. Deep within our widely varied package of humor, drama, and helpful information, there hums (哼唱) a subtle power that guides people in every aspect of their lives. They listen because what we put forth rings true. They are comfortable with our clear, concise words that inform them, entertain them, and remind them of those eternal values that fortify all decent people as they seek clarity and coherence in a confusing world. Our readers recognize that our compass is good for the long haul—that our principles are good for all seasons, good for all ages, good for all those who wish to play a role in making their world a better place. So long as we never lose sight of these powerful principles that are at the soul of our magazine—and so long as we remain at the cutting edge of life in our world—then we are prepared to lay claim to a future as brilliant and as exciting as our past.

单选题Eskimo villages today are larger and more complex than the traditional nomadic groups of Eskimo kinsmen. Village decision making is organized through community councils and co-operative boards of directors, institutions which the Eskimos were encouraged by the government to adopt. They have been more readily accepted in villages like Fort Chimo where there is an individualistic wage ethos and where ties of kinship are less important than in the rural village such as Port Burwell, where communal sharing between kinsmen is more emphasized. Greater contact with southern Canadians and better educational facilities have shown Fort Chimo Eskimos that it is possible to argue and negotiate with the government rather than to acquiesce passively in its policies. The old-age paternalism of southern Canadians over the Eskimos has died more slowly in the rural villages where Eskimos have been more reluctant to voice their opinions aggressively. This has been a frustration to government officials trying to develop local leadership amongst the Eskimos, but a blessing to other departments whose plans have been accepted without local obstruction. In rural areas the obligations of kinship often ran counter to the best interests of the village and potential leaders were restrained from making positive contributions to the village council. More recently, however, the educated Eskimos have been voicing the interests of those in the rural areas. They are trying to persuade the government to recognize the rights of full-time hunters, by protecting their hunting territories from mining and oil prospector, for example. The efforts of this active minority are percolating through to the remoter villages whose inhabitants are becoming increasingly vocal. Continuing change is inevitable but future development policy in ungave must recognize that most Eskimos retain much of their traditional outlook on life. New schemes should focus on resources that the Eskimos are used to handling as the Port Burwell projects have done, rather than on enterprises such as mining where effort is all to easily consigned to an unskilled labor force The musk-ox project at Fort Chimo and the tourist lodge at George River are new directions for future development but there are pitfalls. Since 1967 musk oxen have been reared near Fort Chimo for their finer-than-cashmere undercoat which can be knitted. But the farm lies eight kilometers from the village, across a river, and it has been difficult to secure Eskimo interests in the project. For several months of the year-at the freeze-up and break -- up of the river ice -- the river cannot be crossed easily, and a small number of Eskimo herdsmen become isolated from the amenities and social life of Fort Chimo. The original herd of fifteen animals is beginning to breed but it will be difficult to attract more herdsmen as long as other employment is available within the village. The Eskimo-owned tourist lodge near George River has been a success. American fishermen spend large amounts of money to catch trout and Arctic char, plentiful in the port sub-Arctic rivers. The lodge is successful because its small size allows its owner to communicate with his employees, fellow villagers in George River, on a personal basis. This is essential when Eskimos are working together. If the lodge were to expand its operations, the larger number of employees would have to be treated on a more impersonal and authoritarian basis. This could lead to resentment and a withdrawal of labor.

单选题 {{I}} Questions 11 to 13 are based on a talk about philanthropist Chuck Feeney. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 11 to 13.{{/I}}

单选题Whatarethespeakersdoing?A.Visitingthenewrestaurant.B.Watchingaparade.C.Havingapicnic.D.Goingtothebeach.

单选题Questions 21 to 24 are based on the following talk. You now have 20 seconds to read Questions 21 to 24.

单选题Whatarethetwopeopletalkingabout?A．Email.B．Acomputerclass.C．Computeringeneral,D．Theiroldcomputer.

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单选题{{B}}TEXT 1{{/B}} A report consistently brought back by visitors to the US is how friendly, courteous, and helpful most Americans were to them. To be fair, this observation is also frequently made of Canada and Canadians, and should best be considered North American. There are, of course, exceptions. Small-minded officials, rude waiters, and ill-mannered taxi drivers are hardly unknown in the US. Yet it is an observation made so frequently that it deserves comment. For a long period of time and in many parts of the country, a traveler was a welcome break in an otherwise dull existence. Dullness and loneliness were common problems of the families who generally lived distant from one another. Strangers and travelers were welcome sources of diversion, and brought news of the outside world. The harsh realities of the frontier also shaped this tradition of hospitality. Someone traveling alone, if hungry, injured, or ill, often had nowhere to turn except to the nearest cabin or settlement. It was not a matter of choice for the merely a charitable impulse on the part of the settlers. It reflected the harshness of daily life if you didn't take in the stranger and take care of him; there was no one else who would. And someday, remember, you might be in the same situation. Today there are many charitable organizations that specialize in helping the weary travelers. Yet, the old tradition of hospitality to strangers is still very strong in the US, especially in the smaller cities and towns away from the busy tourist trails. "I was just traveling through, got talking with this American, and pretty soon he invited me home for dinner, amazing." Such observations reported by visitors to the US are not uncommon, but are not always understood properly. The casual friendliness of many Americans should be interpreted neither as superficial nor as artificial, but as the result of a historically developed cultural tradition. As is true of any developed society, in America a complex set of cultural signals, assumptions, and conventions underlies all social interrelationships. And, of course, speaking a language does not necessarily mean that someone understands social and cultural patterns. Visitors who fall to "translate" cultural meanings properly often draw wrong conclusions. For example, when an American uses the word "friend", the cultural implications of the word may be quite different from those it has in the visitor's language and cultural implications of the word may be quite different from those it has in the visitor's language and culture. It takes more than a brief encounter on a bus to distinguish between courteous convention and individual interest, Yet, being friendly is a virtue that many Americans value highly and expect from both neighbors and strangers.