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单选题Questions 11 to 15 are based on the following talk.

单选题 Questions 23—26

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单选题Martin Hughes is not your typical hybrid-driving, clean-energy fanatic. Hughes and his wife, both longtime oil-industry veterans, zoom around Houston in no-compromise vehicles. His, a Nissan Xterra SUV. Hers, a zippy Volkswagen Passat. Yet when Hughes heard last year about an environmental startup called TerraPass Inc. , he was intrigued. The Menlo Park (Calif.) company sells "green tags," which cost up to $80 a year and which are designed to offset the emissions a car spews into the air during that period. After taking a small cut of each sale, TerraPass pools its members" fees and invests them in clean energy production, including wind power. Hughes checked out the service online last August and then forked over $129 for two TerraPass windshield decals. "I was impressed," he says. "It"s a for-profit product that allows you to exercise your conscience." TerraPass is channeling the good intentions of individual consumers concerned about carbon emissions, which are linked with global warming. U. S. companies are also adopting the certificates, in part because they wish to cater to this growing, green constituency. But the tags, which are now America"s fastest-growing alternative-energy product, aren"t simply a marketing vehicle. U. S. businesses have watched Europe and Japan adopt tough regulations on carbon emissions and say the tags could help them prepare for similar developments in the U. S. Starbucks Corp. has been a leader in the green-tag movement, mainly because renewable power is still hard to come by. Last year, Starbucks made a pledge to buy 20% of the annual electric power for its North American stores—about 150 million kilowatt hours—from renewable sources. But no single wind farm can service all 8,400 of its U. S. coffee shops. In fact, many Starbucks have no means of hooking up to any renewable power producer. So Starbucks stores continue to consume power as usual, but the company passes an extra payment of less than half a cent per kwh to a middleman called 3 Phases Energy Services in San Francisco. 3 Phases redistributes funds to 40 wind farms across the country, then issues a certificate. With this subsidy, the farms cut the price of their power and boost sales to local customers. The net effect: Nationwide, an amount of power equal to Starbucks" purchase is shifted to wind and away from conventional "dirty" sources. A host of companies is now using this clever type of transaction to meet renewable energy targets, slash emissions, and make their brands stand out. Whole Foods Market Inc. , based in Austin, Tex. , turned to certificates in January, when it decided to offset 100% of its energy consumption with renewables. Whole Foods quickly became the biggest corporate buyer of such tags in the U. S. Safeway, Liz Claiborne, and HSBC have also made major pledges in the past year. "We"ll see more and more reliance on (tags)" in coming months, says Blair Swezey, a policy adviser at the U. S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo. Green tags come with a cost. For big purchases, the certificates can tack an extra 0.5% to 8% onto an energy bill. "It"s not a financial hardship, but it is an incremental amount of money that"s not required," says Steve McDougal, senior manager of business development at 3 Phases, which also supplies green tags to Johnson & Johnson and IBM. Still, the premium that most companies pay for green tags works out to far less than they would pay to buy renewable power directly from a patchwork of suppliers, McDougal says. Now utilities are snapping up green tags as they scramble to meet new renewable energy regulations. To date, 23 states have adopted requirements that power companies replace a portion of the energy they sell with renewable power. California is committed to a goal of 20% by 2017, and New York has to hit 25% by 2013. In many cases, green tags offer the easiest path to meet the new minimums. For retail operations such as Starbucks and Whole Foods, the tags help attract a green clientele. For industrial companies such as DuPont, Staples, and J&J, green tags are also a way to meet, or anticipate, regulations. With the carbon-restricting rules of the Kyoto Accord in effect in Europe, Canada, and Japan, many such companies are trying to align their U. S. operations with global practices. "We need to understand how to do business as a company in a carbon-constrained environment," says Mark Buckley, vice-president for environmental affairs at Staples Inc. which aims to reduce its emissions by 7% by 2010. Meanwhile, a clutch of state-backed and nonprofit auditors, such as Green-e in San Francisco, is trying to standardize how tags are measured and tracked. While many companies are just beginning to experiment with green certificates, individuals are using them to offset the power consumed in everything from cross-country flights to wedding receptions and ski trips. At Mt. Hood Meadows Ski Resort, an hour east of Portland, Ore. , 18,000 skiers purchased green tags this year. One was Allen Engle, an electrical engineer in Bend, Ore. He buys a $2 green tag along with his $ 48 lift ticket, to compensate for the power consumed on his day trip to the slopes. "To get any new technology started, you need incentives, like tax incentives," says Engle. For many companies and consumers, tags are an acceptable short-term cost.

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单选题 There has been no lack of theories on the cause of war. But we do lack theories that hold up when tested against the facts of history. This deficiency of all existing theories has led a group of scholars to try to reverse the typical way of arriving at an explanation for war. Instead of coming up with a theory and then looking for the evidence, they have decided to look first at the evidence. Their first undertaking was to collect the most precise information possible about wars, their length, destructiveness, and participants. But before they could do even this they needed careful definitions of terms, so it would be clear which events belonged in the category of "war", when a state could be considered "participating in a war", what in fact a "state" was, and so on. Like all definitions, theirs were somewhat arbitrary, but they carefully justified their choices and, more important, they drew up their definitions first, before arriving at their conclusions so that they could not be accused of defining events in a way that would prove their presuppositions. After agreeing on definitions, they set out to collect data. Even though they confined themselves to wars fought in the last 150 years, they encountered difficulties in getting precise information on items such as the number of casualties. Nevertheless, they argue, their results are better than any that preceded them. These basic facts about wars were published in a handbook, The Wages of War 1865—1965, edited by two leaders of the project, J. David Singer and Melvin Small. Even though this is only the beginning of the project, it already provides some answers to questions about wars. You might hear a street corner preacher tell you that the end of the world is at hand, because the number of wars is increasing just as the Bible prophesies. If you want to check the validity of such an assertion, you could turn to The Wages of War and answer the question using the best available data. The next step in the project is to identify conditions or events that seem to be associated with wars. They are not looking for explanations, but just for correlations, that is, items that usually accompany each other. It is for this reason that they have named their project "The Correlates of War". Starting with their collection of data on wars, they could examine the hypothesis of Woodrow Wilson that autocracies are the cause of wars. If this were true, then autocracies would fight other autocracies and democracies might fight autocracies in defense, but democracies would never fight democracies. After defining "democracy" in a way that could be measured (for example, the frequency with which officeholders change office) they would see if any of the wars they had identified in the last 150 years had been fought between two countries clearly identifiable as democracies. If they could find no such wars, they could say there was a correlation between democracy and peace. It would not yet be a proof that autocracies cause war. There could be other explanations—the world might contain only one or two democracies. But a correlation would be an important first step. The Correlates of War project is just entering this second stage. It will be some time before a full theory appears. Even when the project does produce a theory of war (if it finds evidence to warrant such a theory), it may not provide the final word on the subject. Any such project must make decisions early in the research, such as what counts as a war and what does not. These decisions can crucially affect the outcome, even though it might not be evident for a long time that they will. Here is an example of this problem. The Correlates of War project counts the wars fought by Prussia under Bismarck as three separate wars because each stopped before the next one started. On the other hand, Hitler's belligerent moves against neighboring countries in 1939 and 1940 (Poland, Denmark, Belgium, France, Norway) are counted as only one war because they took place in rapid succession. If these data are used in specific ways, they could "demonstrate" that Bismarck was more warlike than Hitler. For some purposes this might be satisfactory but not for others. Another problem is revealed by this example. Because the Danes capitulated to the Germans in 1940, that encounter is not listed as a war at all. Because the Belgians did resist, that is counted as part of World War Ⅱ. But the difference between these two situations was not the willingness of German to fight but the willingness of Germany's victim to resist. What is measured, then, is not so much the willingness of states to go to war (which may be the most important phenomenon to explain), but the willingness of other states to resist aggression. In spite of such objections, however, the Correlates of War project is an important effort, in many ways superior to earlier studies on the causes of war.

单选题{{B}}Directions:{{/B}} {{I}}In this section, you will read several passages. Each passage is followed by several questions based on its content. You are to choose ONE best answer, (A), (B), (C) or (D), to each question. Answer all the questions following each passage on the basis of what is stated or implied in that passage and write the letter of the answer you have chosen in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET.{{/I}} In general, our society is becoming one of giant enterprises directed by a bureaucratic management in which man becomes a small, well-oiled cog in the machinery. The oiling is done with higher wages, well-ventilated factories and piped music, and by psychologists and "human-relations" experts; yet all this oiling does not alter the fact that man has become powerless, that he does not wholeheartedly participate in his work and that he is bored with it. In fact, the blue-and the white-collar workers have become economic puppets who dance to the tune of automated machines and bureaucratic management. The worker and employee are anxious, not only because they might find themselves out of a job; they are anxious also because they are unable to acquire any real satisfaction or interest in life. They live and die without ever having confronted the fundamental realities of human existence as emotionally and intellectually independent and productive human beings. Those higher up on the social ladder axe no less anxious. Their lives axe no less empty than those of their subordinates. They axe even more insecure in some respects. They are in a highly competitive race. To be promoted or to fall behind is not a matter of salary but even more a matter of self-respect. When they apply for their first job, they are tested for intelligence as well as for the right mixture of submissiveness and independence. From that moment on they axe tested again and again--by the psychologists, for whom testing is a big business, and by their superiors, who judge their behavior, sociability, capacity to get along, etc. This constant need to prove that one is as good as or better than one's fellow-competitor creates constant anxiety and stress, the very causes of unhappiness and illness. Am I suggesting that we should return to the preindustrial mode of production or to nineteenth-century "free enterprise" capitalism? Certainly not. Problems axe never solved by returning to a stage which one has already outgrown. I suggest transforming our social system from a bureaucratically managed industrialism in which maximal production and consumption axe ends in themselves into a humanist industrialism in which man and full development of his potentialities—those of love and of reason--are the aims of all social arrangements. Production and consumption should serve only as means to this end, and should be prevented from ruling man.

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单选题 After a century and a half as cordial neighbors, two of the nation's biggest ranches find themselves feuding like the Hatfields and McCoys over wind energy and wildlife and whether the two can coexist. The storied King and Kenedy ranches, which together cover nearly 1.3 million acres in sparsely populated south Texas, are at odds over plans to erect 240-plus wind-powered turbines on the smaller Kenedy property. The structures and their massive blades can stand 400 feet tall—taller than most 30-story buildings. The King Ranch, with 825,000 acres near the Texas Gulf Coast, says the turbines will interfere with migratory birds' flight patterns, threaten other wildlife and create an eyesore—though the nearest highway is nearly 20 miles away. Managers of the charitable trust and foundation that oversee the Kenedy Ranch—a mere 400,000 acres—are resisting a public brawl, but the companies leasing their land for the wind farms say the King Ranch essentially ought to mind its own business. Besides, they say, they've spent two years studying migratory birds' flight patterns and are convinced the environmental impact will be minimal. Already, Texas leads the nation in wind-generated power, and numerous proposed projects are under way. But none have garnered attention like the Kenedy wind farms—in part because of the King vs. Kenedy skirmish. Wind farms generate electricity by using wind to turn giant blades that rotate on turbines, an alternative to power created by utilities using coal, natural gas and other sources. King Ranch President Jack Hunt has called for state legislation to regulate the farms—the lack of such laws governing wind farms making Texas a favorite spot for potential wind projects. Hunt said he met with Kenedy Ranch overseers when the wind farms were first proposed a couple of years ago, hoping to get them to understand they're "sacrificing the long-term value of a rare resource for short-term revenue. "But it sort of fell on deaf ears," he said. Marc Cisneros, who runs the John G. and Marie Stella Kenedy Memorial Foundation from nearby Corpus Christi, has declined to shout back. But he said the project on his section of the ranch not only is environmentally sound but will allow the foundation's charitable work to continue in an impoverished pan of the state. Led largely by Texas, the United States grew its wind-power capacity faster than anyone in the world in 2005 and 2006, arid wind farms now operate in 36 states. A recent study for Congress by the National Research Council said wind farms could generate up to 7 percent of the nation's electricity in 15 years—up from less than 1 percent today. That report also said more study was needed on the effect wind farms have on birds and bats. Besides the skyline of turbines endangering birds, Hunt bristles the most at the lack of regulation of the turbine-laden farms. Developers need neither state nor federal approval to erect the towers on private land. Hunt supported state legislation to require permitting for such sites, but it failed. Congress also considered such requirements, but nothing materialized.

单选题Is language, like food, a basic human need without which a child at a critical period of life can be starved and damaged? Judging from the drastic experiment of Frederick Ⅱ in the thirteenth century, it may be. Hoping to discover what language a child would speak if he heard no mother tongue, he told the nurses to keep silent. All the infants died before the first year. But clearly there was more than lack of language here. What was missing was good mothering. Without good mothering, in the first year of life especially, the capacity to survive is seriously affected. Today no such severe lack exists as that ordered by Frederick. Nevertheless, some children are still backward in speaking. Most often the reason for this is that the mother is insensitive to the signals of the infant, whose brain is programmed to learn language rapidly. If these sensitive periods are neglected, the ideal time for acquiring skills passes and they might never be learned so easily again. A bird learns to sing and to fly rapidly at the right time, but the process is slow and hard once the critical stage has passed. Experts suggest that speech stages are reached in a fixed sequence and at a constant age, but there are cases where speech has started late in a child who eventually turns out to be of high IQ. At twelve weeks a baby smiles and makes vowel-like sounds; at twelve months he can speak simple words and understand simple commands; at eighteen months he has a vocabulary of three to fifty words. At three he knows about 1,000 words which he can put into sentences, and at four his language differs from that of his parents in style rather than grammar. Recent evidence suggests that an infant is born with the capacity to speak. What is special about man"s brain, compared with that of the monkey, is the complex system which enables a child to connect the sight and feel of, say, a toy-bear with the sound pattern "toy-bear". And even more incredible is the young brain"s ability to pick out an order in language from the mixture of sound around him, to analyze, to combine and recombine the parts of a language in new ways. But speech has to be induced, and this depends on interaction between the mother and the child, where the mother recognizes the signals in the child"s babbling, grasping and smiling, and responds to them. Insensitivity of the mother to these signals dulls the interaction because the child gets discouraged and sends out only the obvious signals. Sensitivity to the child"s non-verbal signals is essential to the growth and development of language.

单选题Questions 1～5 Farmers in the developing world would hate price fluctuations. It makes it hard to plan ahead. But most of them have little choice, they sell at the price the market sets. Farmers in Europe, the US and Japan are luckier: they receive massive government subsidies in the form of guaranteed prices or direct handout. Last month US President Bush signed a new farm bill that gives American farmers $190 billion over the next 10 years, or $ 83 billion more than they had been scheduled to get, and pushes US agricultural support close to crazy European levels. Bush said the step was necessary to "promote farmer independence and preserve the farm way of life for generations". It is also designed to help the Republican Party win control of the Senate in November"s mid-term elections. Agricultural production in most poor countries accounts for up to 50% of GDP, compared to only 3% in rich countries. But most farmers in poor countries grow just enough for themselves and their families. Those who try exporting to the West find their goods whacked with huge tariffs or competing against cheaper subsidized goods. In 1999 developing counties receive in aid close up to $14 just because of trade barriers imposed on the export of their manufactured goods. It"s not as if the developing world wants any favors, says Gerald Ssendawula, Uganda"s Minister of Finance. "What we want is for the rich countries to let us compete. " Agriculture is one of the few areas in which the Third World can compete. Land and labor are cheap, and as farming methods develop, new technologies should improve output. This is no pie-in- the-sky speculation. The biggest success in Kenya"s economy over the past decade has been the boom in exports of cut flowers and vegetables to Europe. But that may all change in 2008, when Kenya will be slightly too rich to qualify for the "least-developed country" status that allows African producers to avoid paying stiff European import duties on selected agricultural products. With trade barriers in place, the horticulture industry in Kenya will shrivel as quickly as a discarded rose. And while agriculture exports remain the great hope for poor countries, reducing trade barriers in other sectors also works: America"s African Growth and Opportunity Act, which cuts duties on exports of everything from handicrafts to shoes, has proved a boom to Africa"s manufacturers. The lesson. the Third World can prosper if the rich world gives it a fair go. This is what makes Bush"s decision to increase farm subsidies last month all the more depressing. Poor countries have long suspected that the rich world urges trade liberalization only so it can wangle its way into new markets. Such suspicions caused the Seattle trade talks to break down three years ago. But last November members of the World Trade Organization, meeting in Doha, Qatar, finally agreed to a new round of talks designed to open up global trade in agriculture and textiles. Rich countries assured poor countries that their concerns were finally being addressed. Bush"s handout last month makes a lie of America"s commitment to those talks and his personal devotion to free trade.

单选题They are going downtown ______ bus instead of ______ their bikes. A. by; by B. on; by C. by; in D. by; on

单选题If you intend using humor in your talk to make people smile, you must know how to identify shared experiences and problems. Your humor must be relevant to the audience and should help to show them that you are one of them or that you understand their situation and are in sympathy with their point of view. Depending on whom you are addressing, the problems will be different. If you are talking to a group of managers, you may refer to the disorganized methods of their secretaries; alternatively if you are addressing secretaries, you may want to comment on their disorganized bosses. Here is an example, which I heard at a nurses" convention, of a story which works well because the audience ail shared the same view of doctors. A man arrives in heaven and is being shown around by St. Peter. He sees wonderful accommodations, beautiful gardens, sunny weather, and so on. Everyone is very peaceful, polite and friendly until, waiting in a line for lunch, the new arrival is suddenly pushed aside by a man in a white coat, who rushes to the head of the line, grabs his food and stomps over to a table by himself. "Who is that?" the new arrival asked St. Peter. "Oh, that"s God," came the reply, "but sometimes he thinks he"s a doctor." If you are part of the group which you are addressing, you will be in a position to know the experiences and problems which are common to all of you and it"ll be appropriate for you to make a passing remark about the inedible canteen food or the chairman"s notorious bad taste in ties. With other audiences you mustn"t attempt to cut in with humor as they will resent an outsider making disparaging remarks about their canteen or their chairman. You will be on safer ground if you stick to scapegoats like the Post Office or the telephone system. If you feel awkward being humorous, you must practice so that it becomes more natural. Include a few casual and apparently off-the-cuff remarks which you can deliver in a relaxed and unforced manner. Often it"s the delivery which causes the audience to smile, so speak slowly and remember that a raised eyebrow or an unbelieving look may help to show that you are making a light-hearted remark. Look for the humor. It often comes from the unexpected. A twist on a familiar quote "If at first you don"t succeed, give up" or a play on words or on a situation. Search for exaggeration and understatements. Look at your talk and pick out a few words or sentences which you can mm about and inject with humor.

单选题 {{B}}Questions 11-15{{/B}} Recent research has claimed that an excess of positive ions in the air can have an ill effect on people's physical or psychological health. What are positive ions? Well, the air is full of ions, electrically charged particles, and generally there is a rough balance between the positive and the negative charged. But sometimes this balance becomes disturbed and a larger proportion of positive ions are found. This happens naturally before thunderstorm, earthquakes when winds such as the Mistral, Hamsin or Sharav are blowing in certain countries. Or it can be caused by a build-up of static electricity indoors from carpets or clothing made of man-made fibres, or from TV sets, duplicators or computer display screens. When a large number of positive ions are present in the air many people experience unpleasant effects such as headaches, fatigue, irritability, and some particularly sensitive people suffer nausea or even mental disturbance. Animals are also affected, particularly before earthquakes, snakes have been observed to come out of hibernation, rats to flee from their burrows, dogs howl and cats jump about unaccountably. This has led the U. S. Geographical Survey to fund a network of volunteers to watch animals in an effort to foresee such disasters before they hit vulnerable areas such as California. Conversely, when large numbers of negative ions are present, then people have a feeling of well-being. Natural conditions that produce these large amounts are near the sea, close to waterfalls or fountains, or in any place where water is sprayed, or forms a spray. This probably accounts for the beneficial effect of a holiday by the sea, or in the mountains with tumbling streams or waterfalls. To increase the supply of negative ions indoors, some scientists recommend the use of ionisers: small portable machines, which generate negative ions. They claim that ionisers not only clean and refresh the air but also improve the health of people sensitive to excess positive ions. Of course, there are the detractors, other scientists, who dismiss such claims and are skeptical about negative/ positive ion research. Therefore people can only make up their own minds by observing the effects on themselves, or on others, of a negative rich or poor environment. After all it is debatable whether depending on seismic readings to anticipate earthquakes is more effective than watching the cat.

单选题{{B}}Statements{{/B}} Directions: In this part of the test, you will hear several short statements. These statements will be spoken ONLY ONCE, and you will not find them written on the paper; so you must listen carefully. Wizen you hear a statement, read the answer choices and decide which one is closest in meaning to the statement you have heard. Then write the letter of the answer you have chosen in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET.

单选题Which of the following best explains the expression "oil is the albatross of US national security" in Paragraph 5?

单选题The expression "benchmarking" has become one of the fashionable words in current management discussion. The term first appeared in the United States in the 1970s hut has now gained worldwide recognition. But what exactly does it mean and should your company be practising it? One straightforward definition of benchmarking comes from Chris Telfer, managing director of a New Zealand-based consultancy firm specialising in this area. "Benchmarking involves learning about your own practices, learning about the best practices of others, and then making changes for improvement that will enable you to meet or beat the best in the world." The essential element is not simply imitating what other companies do but being able to adapt the best of other firms" practices to your own situation. Instead of aiming to improve only against previous performance and scores, companies can use benchmarking to inject an element of imagination and common sense into their search for progress. It is a process which forces companies to look closely at those activities which they may have been taking for granted and comparing them with the activities of other world-beating companies. Self-criticism is at the heart of the process, although in some cases this may upset managers who are reluctant to question long-established practices. The process of identifying "best practice" in other companies does not just mean looking closely at your competitors. It might also include studying companies which use similar processes to your own, even though they are producing different goods. The point is to look at the process rather than the product. For example, Italian computer company Arita wanted to improve the quality of its technical manuals and handbooks. Instead of looking at manuals produced by other computer companies. Arita turned to a publisher of popular handbooks such as cookery books, railway timetables and car repair manuals. As Arita"s Technical Director Claudio Benelli says, "All of these handbooks are communicating complex information in a simple way—exactly what we are aiming to do. And in many cases they succeed far better than any computer company." There is some disagreement between benchmarking specialists as to the best methods to follow when starting a benchmarking exercise in your firm. Everyone agrees that the process must have the full approval of senior management but that it is best carried out by a comparatively small team. Some consultants feel this should be as small as three people, but most favour a team of between five and eight, at least one of whom should have some prior knowledge of the benchmarking process. In practice this often means bringing in an outside consultant—at least at the beginning. Once the team is assembled, there can be anything from three to five formal stages in the process—different companies have developed different approaches—but, whatever the exact technique, benchmarking can only work if everyone in the company, from top to bottom, is committed to change.

单选题Questions 23-26