单选题Questions 23-26

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单选题Questions 19-22

单选题We live, it is said, in a world of standardization: a place in which increasingly you can buy the same things—cappuccinos, food, cosmetics, fashions—in similar shops, in similar mails, in similar cities. The heart laments this and hopes it isn"t really happening. The head, though, has to accept that it has advantages, for standardized products save time, reduce confusion, and may be cheaper and more predictable, especially when attached to a trusted brand. There is one market, however, in which hearts and heads alike are forcing things in a different direction: women"s clothing. There, the customer is queen, and she seems to prefer confusion. It is not the fashions themselves that are flouting standardization. It is the sizes in which they are sold. Once upon a time these were predictable and numerological, even if the numbers used varied from country to country. It did not matter if a size 12 dress in Britain was called a 38 in Germany and a 44 in Italy, for a simple conversion chart would suffice. No longer. Increasingly, size is a matter of vanity not of measurement, for women have, well, become larger in various ways. Not surprisingly, they would like to have their cake, eat it, and stay exactly the same dress size. Some clothing firms have accommodated such delusional desires by sticking to the same sizing numbers but making the clothes larger. Others have resorted to therapeutic words—petite, regular, "missy". In America, it is even possible to buy women"s clothes in size 0; presumably negative sizing cannot be far behind. Men are, of course, going through the same dimensional change. They are not, however, encountering, or inviting, the same confusion. Occasionally it may be hard to work out what exactly is meant by "medium" or "extra large", but mainly real measurements still rule. This may be because men have another option: for suit-wearers the best trick is to buy not the right new size but a size too big, for then the suit looks loose and people may be fooled into thinking you are getting slimmer, not fatter. Or perhaps their vanity is of a more primitive sort. A (possibly apocryphal) story about Winston Churchill has the great man recommending that among aid shipments sent during the second world war should be packages of British condoms, all large size but labeled "small". But for women, meanwhile, shopping is becoming harder: more things must be tried on, taking more time, and buying online is a poor option. Central planners, ignoring the fact that this is the result of expressed female preferences, would want standardization reimposed. Here"s an alternative suggestion for our freer era: clothing firms could agree a standard sizing to be put on some sort of bar code or tag. Then those who want speed and clarity could buy (or be given) an electronic reader to find out the easily comparable truth. Those who would rather fool themselves can continue to do so by reading the written labels. Such are the workings of invisible hands.

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单选题—Where's John, do you know?—Oh, ______ to hospital. A. he's taken B. he'll be taken C. he's been taken D. he'll take

单选题Questions 21-25 A naked mole rat colony, like a beehive, wasp"s nest, or termite mound, is ruled by its queen, or reproducing female. Other adult female mole rats neither ovulate nor breed. The queen is the largest member of the colony, and she maintains her breeding status through a mixture of behavioral and, presumably, chemical control. Queens have been long-lived in captivity, and when they die or are removed from a colony one sees violent fighting for breeding status among the larger remaining females, leading to a takeover by a new queen. Eusocial insect societies have rigid caste systems, each insect"s role being defined by its behavior, body shape, and physiology. In naked mole rat societies, on the other hand, differences in behavior are related primarily to reproductive status (reproduction being limited to the queen and a few males), body size, and perhaps age. Smaller non-breeding members, both male and female, seem to participate primarily in gathering food, transporting nest material, and tunneling, larger non-breeders are active in defending the colony and perhaps in removing dirt from the tunnels. One work has suggested that differences in growth rates may influence the length of time that an individual performs a task, regardless of its age. Cooperative breeding has evolved many times in vertebrates, but unlike naked mole rats, most cooperatively breeding vertebrates (except the wild dog, Lycaon pictus) are dominated by a pair of breeders rather than by a single breeding female. The division of labor within social groups is less pronounced among other vertebrates than among naked mole rats, colony size is much smaller, and mating by subordinate females may not be totally suppressed, whereas in naked mole rat colonies subordinate females are not sexually active, and many never breed.

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单选题 Directions: In this part of the test, you will hear several short talks and conversations. After each of these, you will hear a few questions. Listen carefully because you will hear the talk or conversation and questions ONLY ONCE. When you hear a question read the four answer choices and choose the best answer to that question. Then write the letter of the answer you have chosen in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET. Questions 11-14

单选题 Americans today don't place a very high value on intellect. Our heroes are athletes, entertainers, and entrepreneurs, not scholars. Even our schools are where we send our children to get a practical education—not to pursue knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Symptoms of pervasive anti-intellectualism in our schools aren't difficult to find. "Schools have always been in a society where practical is more important than intellectual," says education writer Diane Ravitch. "Schools could be a counterbalance." Ravitch's latest book, Left Back. A Century of Failed School Reforms, traces the roots of anti-intellectualism in our schools, concluding they are anything but a counterbalance to the American distaste for intellectual pursuits. But they could and should be. Encouraging kids to reject the life of the mind leaves them vulnerable to exploitation and control. Without the ability to think critically, to defend their ideas and understand the ideas of others, they cannot fully participate in our democracy. Continuing along this path, says writer Earl Shorris, "We will become a second-rate country. We will have a less civil society." "Intellect is resented as a form of power or privilege," writes historian and professor Richard Hofstadter in Anti-Intellectualism in American life, a Pulitzer Prize winning book on the roots of anti-intellectualism in US politics, religion, and education. From the beginning of our history, says Hofstadter, our democratic and populist urges have driven us to reject anything that smells of elitism. Practicality, common sense, and native intelligence have been considered more noble qualities than anything you could learn from a book. Ralph Waldo Emerson and other Transcendentalist philosophers thought schooling and rigorous book learning put unnatural restraints on children: "We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for 10 or 15 years and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing." Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn exemplified American anti-intellectualism. Its hero avoids being civilized—going to school and learning to read—so he can preserve his innate goodness. Intellect, according to Hofstadter, is different from native intelligence, a quality we reluctantly admire. Intellect is the critical, creative, and contemplative side of the mind. Intelligence seeks to grasp, manipulate, re-order, and adjust, while intellect examines, ponders, wonders, theorizes, criticizes and imagines. School remains a place where intellect is mistrusted. Hofstadter says our country's educational system is in the grips of people who "joyfully and militantly proclaim their hostility to intellect and their eagerness to identify with children who show the least intellectual promise".

单选题 {{B}}Questions 23-26{{/B}}

单选题The ancient reputation of Vikings as bloodthirsty raiders on cold northern seas has undergone a radical change in recent decades. A kinder, gentler, and more fashionable Viking emerged. But our view of the Norse may be about to alter course again as scholars turn their gaze to a segment of Viking society that has long remained in the shadows. Archaeologists are using recent findings and analysis of previous discoveries—from iron collars in Ireland to possible plantation houses in Sweden—to illuminate the role of slavery in creating and maintaining the Viking way of life. Scandinavian slavery still echoes in the English language today. The expression "to be held in thrall," meaning to be under someone"s power, traces back to the Old Norse term for a slave: thrall. Slavery in the region long predates the Vikings. There is evidence of vast economic disparity as early as the first century A. D. , with some people living with animals in barns while others live nearby in large, prosperous homes. Ancient chronicles long mentioned that people, as well as precious objects, were a target of the Viking raids that began in 793 A. D. at the Scottish monastery of Lindisfarne. The Annals of Ulster record "a great booty of women" taken in a raid near Dublin in 821 A. D. , while the same account contends that 3,000 people were captured in a single attack a century later. Neil Price, an archaeologist at Sweden"s Uppsala University, suspects that "slavery was a very significant motivator in raiding." One key factor may have been a dire need for women. Some scholars believe that the Vikings were a polygamous society that made it hard for non-elites to find brides. That may have driven the raids and ambitious exploration voyages for which Vikings are best known. Some genetic studies, for example, suggest that a majority of Icelandic women are related to Scottish and Irish ancestors who likely were raid booty. As Viking fleets expanded, so did the need for wool to produce the sails necessary to power the ships. This also may have driven the need for slaves. The pressing need for wool production likely led to a plantation-like economy, a topic now being studied by researchers. For example, at a Swedish site called Sanda, researchers in the 1990s found a great hail surrounded by small houses. Some Swedish archaeologists now believe this could have been a Viking plantation with slaves as the labor force. "What you likely have is a slave-driven production of textiles," said Price. "We can"t really know who is making the cloth, but the implications are clear." William Fitzhugh, an archaeologist at the Smithsonian Institution, added that "female slaves were concubines, cooks, and domestic workers." Male thralls likely were involved in cutting trees, building ships, and rowing those vessels for their Viking masters. Other studies suggest that Viking slaves were sometimes sacrificed when their masters died, and they ate poorly during their lives.

单选题______ I can see, there is only one possible way to keep away from the danger. [A] As long as [B] As far as [C] Just as [D] Even if

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单选题 Directions: In this part of the test, you will hear several short talks and conversations. After each of these, you will hear a few questions. Listen carefully because you will hear the talk or conversation and questions ONLY ONCE. When you hear a question read the four answer choices and choose the best answer to that question. Then write the letter of the answer you have chosen in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET. Questions 11-14

单选题Questions 11-14

单选题 There are several different methods that can be used to create a forecast. The method a forecaster chooses depends upon the experience of the forecaster, the amount of information available to the forecaster, the level of difficulty that the forecast situation presents, and the degree of accuracy or confidence needed in the forecast. The first of these methods is the persistence method; the simplest way of producing a forecast. The persistence method assumes that the conditions at the time of the forecast will not change. For example, if it is sunny and 87 degree today, the persistence method predicts that it will be sunny and 87 degree tomorrow. If two inches of rain fell today, the persistence method would predict two inches of rain for tomorrow. However, if weather conditions change significantly from day to day, the persistence method usually breaks down and is not the best forecasting method to use. The trends method involves determining the speed and direction of movement for fronts, high and low pressure centers, and areas of clouds and precipitation. Using this information, the forecaster can predict where he or she expects those features to be at some future time. For example, if a storm system is 1,000 miles west of your location and moving to the east at 250 miles per day, using the trends method you would predict it to arrive in your area in 4 days. The trends method works well when systems continue to move at the same speed in the same direction for a long period of time. If they slow down, speed up, change intensity, or change direction, the trends forecast will probably not work as well. The climatology method is another simple way of producing a forecast. This method involves averaging weather statistics accumulated over many years to make the forecast. For example, if you were using the climatology method to predict the weather for New York City on July 4th, you would go through all the weather data that has been recorded for every July 4th and take an average. The climatology method only works well when the weather pattern is similar to that expected for the chosen time of year. If the pattern is quite unusual for the given time of year, the climatology method will often fail. The analog method is a slightly more complicated method of producing a forecast. It involves examining today's forecast scenario and remembering a day in the past when the weather scenario looked very similar (an analog). The forecaster would predict that the weather in this forecast will behave the same as it did in the past. The analog method is difficult to use because it is virtually impossible to find a predict analog. Various weather features rarely align themselves in the same locations they were in the previous time. Even small differences between the current time and the analog can lead to very different results.

单选题If books had never been discovered, man would have found some other way of recording his communication. But then, for our consideration, we should include as books everything that is a written record. This would include tablets, papyrus and anything else—including computer diskettes. In the case of music, it would be impossible to think that man can live without it. Looking at primitive cultures, it appears that music is actually a part of the human psyche. When two things are knocked together, music is produced. So for the sake of our discussion, it is intended to restrict the meaning of music to the popularly accepted concept. Music is the pleasing combination of sounds that we like to listen to. Though it is difficult to, we can pretend that these things never existed. In this case we would not miss them today. To compare with recent inventions, let. us look at radio and television. Though we cannot think of life without them today, this is so only from comparatively recent times. There are many of us living today who had seen a time when there was no television. They will tell us that life was not that much different. The same is probably true of radio. But books are a different thing because they, or something akin to them, began thousands of years ago. In the case of music, it goes back even further—perhaps to millions of years. We may be able to imagine a world which never saw books, because books are a human invention. However, in the case" of music this does not seem possible. Pleasing sounds are all around us; like the singing of the birds and the whistling of the wind. Music just seems to be inborn in US and in the world around us. If books did not exist, the world will be a poorer place indeed. Great philosophies like Plato"s would become unknown and all the pleasures and lessons we could get from them will be lost forever. Then there is literature like the works of the great masters like Shakespeare, Dickens and Jane Austen. What a somber, miserable world it will be without the pleasures of reading. Since mere are so many other things which depend on reading-like plays, songs and movies—we can expect them to disappear also. It would be a dark and unsatisfying world where knowledge is not propagated; where there ale no books to derive pleasure from. In the case of music: Without it the world will be bleak and cold indeed. It would be a terrible world with no cheery runes, no songs to sing and no great music to lose ourselves in. A world which does not listen to the music of the great masters like Chopin and Beethoven would be a very sorry world. There will not be so many smiles on faces anymore. When we lose music. an expression of a deep part of ourselves—from the soul—is lost. With music, connected activities like dancing will be lost too. A world without music and dancing will bring US back to the Stone Age. Unlike radio, television, telephones and computers, reading and music ale not mere conveniences that we can live without. Reading is crucial for self-expression and for passing on records and knowledge to future generations. Music is part of our very soul. A world without these will not be the world as we know it. In fact. many of us would not want to live in such a world.

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单选题 Every day of our lives we are in danger of instant death from small high-speed missiles from space—the lumps of rocky or metallic debris which continuously bombard the Earth. The chances of anyone actually being hit, however, are very low, although there are recorded instances of "stones from the sky" hurting people, and numerous accounts of damage to buildings and other objects. At night this extraterrestrial material can be seen as "fireballs" or "shooting stars", burning their way through our atmosphere. Most, on reaching our atmosphere, become completely vaporised. The height above ground at which these objects become sufficiently heated to be visible is estimated to be about 60-100 miles. Meteorites that have fallen on buildings have sometimes ended their long lonely space voyage incongruously under beds, inside flower pots or even, in the case of one that landed on a hotel in North Wales, within a chamber pot. Before the era of space exploration it was confidently predicted that neither men nor space vehicles would survive for long outside the protective blanket of the Earth's atmosphere. It was, thought that once in space they would be seriously damaged as a result of the incessant downpour of meteorites falling towards our planet at the rate of many millions every day. Even the first satellites showed that the danger from meteorites had been greatly overestimated by the pessimists, but although it has not happened yet, it is certain that one day a spacecraft will be badly damaged by a meteorite. The greatest single potential danger to life on Earth undoubtedly comes from outside our planet. Collision with another astronomical body of any size or with a "black hole" could completely destroy the Earth almost instantly. Near misses of bodies larger than or comparable in size to our own planet could be equally disastrous to mankind as they might still result in total or partial disruption. If the velocity of impact were high, collision with even quite small extraterrestrial bodies might cause catastrophic damage to the Earth's atmosphere, oceans and outer crust and thus produce results inimical to life as we know it. The probability of collision with a large astronomical body from outside our Solar System is extremely low, possibly less than once in the lifetime of an average star. We know, however, that our galaxy contains great interstellar dust clouds and some astronomers have suggested that there might also be immense streams of meteorite matter in space that the Solar system may occasionally encounter. Even if we disregard this possibility, our own Solar system itself contains a great number of small astronomical bodies, such as the minor planets or asteroids and the comets, some with eccentric orbits that occasionally bring them close to the Earth's path.