问答题A commonplace criticism of American culture is its excessive preoccupation with material goods and corresponding neglect of the human spirit. Americans, it is alleged, worship only "the almighty dollar". We scramble to "keep up with the Joneses". The love affair between Americans and their automobiles has been a continuing subject of derisive commentary by both foreign and domestic critics. Americans are said to live by a quantitative ethic. Bigger is better, whether in bombs or sedans. The classical virtues of grace, harmony, and economy of both means and ends are lost on most Americans. As a result, we are said to be swallowing up the world"s supply of natural resources, which are irreplaceable. Americans constitute 6 percent of the world"s population but consume over a third of the world"s energy. These are now familiar complaints. Indeed, in some respects Americans may believe the "pursuit of happiness" to mean the pursuit of material things.

问答题 One evening, when Bagehot was at university, a student who lived next door to him fell badly ill. An ambulance was called, but its route was blocked by a pile of clothes and a gaggle of drunk, naked young men. They were members of a drinking society (roughly analogous to American fraternities). The boozy nudity at precisely this spot, they explained, refusing to budge, was an awfully important initiation rite. This incident came to mind last month when something not dissimilar happened near Wigan, in northern England. A group of youths obstructed an ambulance and harassed the paramedics in it, whose patient died. That little act of thuggery was scarcely noticed amid the ongoing run of murders by British youngsters, by knife and sometimes gun. Most of the victims have been young too: 18 people aged 18 or under have been killed in London this year, stabbed on the street or shot in nightclubs—not many by Los Angeles standards, perhaps, but troubling by Britain's. Not all the victims have been teenagers, a father in Warrington was beaten to death outside his home last week after remonstrating with vandals. "No street is safe any more from marauding hooligans," lamented the Sun, which recently fulminated about the yobs who urinated in drinking-water supplies delivered to flood-stricken western England. Are British delinquents really more depraved, and more numerous, than they used to be, or than other countries' are? That university prank—as well as confirming that the posh and plebeian classes can be oddly alike—suggests that there is little new under the sun, even if the Sun says there is. Hysteria over degenerate children was even more intense in 1993, when two ten-year-olds murdered a toddler in Liverpool. From punks and skinheads, through the gangs that prowled the post-war London rubble and beyond, "yoof" has always been a concern, and always getting worse. "I would there were no age between sixteen and three-and-twenty," says a Shakespearean character, "for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting." It is true that more teenage British wenches are got with child than other European ones, and that British teenagers are unusually prone to taking drugs, fighting, venereal disease and boozing: a senior policeman called this week for tighter rules on alcohol. But few who drink or smoke pot graduate to knife crime. Many do none of these things; most are better-off and better-educated than ever. Not much has changed—and don't generalise: those are the relaxed arguments of some sociologists, criminologists and other yoof-ologists. But an old problem still counts as a problem: that Britons have always worried about yoof doesn't mean they are wrong to do so now. And conversations with teachers, youth workers and yoof itself suggest that in some ways the plight and behaviour of teenagers have indeed deteriorated. Hard evidence is difficult to come by, but more British teenagers seem to be carrying knives, intended to protect but liable to endanger. More assaults than previously seem to be provoked by imagined "disrespect"; afterwards, a teenage omerta often confounds the police. Murder is still overwhelmingly a male offence, but girls seem to be committing more violent crime too. Urban gangs are pursuing rivalries and vendettas against groups from other neighbourhoods, separated by boundaries that are invisible to oblivious adults. "Happy-slapping", whereby assailants film their attacks for their later amusement, has been an unanticipated consequence of putting cameras on mobile phones. As in America, the worst problems are often concentrated in specific communities. But they have wider costs, because adults can't tell the sociopaths from the bored loiterers. British adults, research suggests, are less likely to intervene than other Europeans if they see youngsters up to no good, with the result that parks and squares are turned over to adolescent rule.

问答题春节是我国民间最隆重、最热闹的一个传统节日。春节时，家家户户都要做充足的准备。节前十天左右，人们就开始忙碌着采购年货，为小孩子们添置新衣新帽，准备过年时穿。另外，节前人们会在家门口贴上红纸写成的春联，屋里张贴色彩鲜艳。寓意吉祥的年画，窗户上贴着窗花，门前挂上大红灯笼或贴“福”字。“福”字还可以倒贴，路人一念福倒了，也就意味着福气到了。

问答题If I wanted to, I could come up with a dozen excuses. I was fired after a long day of work. Or maybe I was hungry. The simple truth is, when I walked into the living room and my 12-year-old son looked up at me and said. "I love you," I didn"t know what to say. For several long seconds all I could do was standing there and staring down at him, waiting for the other shoe to drop. He must need help with his homework was my first thought. Or he"s going to hit me up for an advance on his allowance. Or he"s assassinated his brother—I always knew it would happen someday—and he"s trying to prepare me gently for the news. Finally I asked, "What do you want?" He laughed, and started to run from the room. But I called him back. "Hey, what was that all about?" I demanded. " Nothing," he said, grinning, "My health teacher said we should, tell our parents that we love them and see what they say. It"s sort of an experiment. " The next day I called his teacher to find out more about this "experiment. " And, to be truthful, to find out how the other parents had reacted. "Basically, most of the fathers had the same reaction you did," my son"s teacher said. "When I first suggested we try this, I asked the kids what they thought their parents would say. They all laughed. A couple of them figured their folks would have heart attacks. " Some parents, I suspect, resented what the teacher had done. After all, a junior-high-school health teacher"s job is to teach children how to eat balanced diets and brush their teeth properly. What does saying "I love you" have to do with that? It is, after all, a personal thing between parents and their children, nobody else"s business. "The point is," the teacher explained, "feeling loved is an important part of health. It"s something all human beings require. What I"m trying to tell the kids is that it"s too bad we don"t all express those feelings. Not just parents to children and not just boys to girls. A boy should be able to tell his buddy that he loves him. " The teacher, a middle-aged man, understands how difficult it is for some of us to say the things that would be good for us to say. His father never said those things to him, he admits. And he never said them to his father — not even when his father was about to die. There are a lot of us like that. Men and women, who were raised by parents who loved us but never really said so. It is a common reason for the way many of us behave. But as an excuse it is starting to wear thin. Our generation has devoted a great deal of attention to getting in touch with our feelings and verbalizing our emotions. We know, or should know, that our children — sons as well as daughters — need more from us than food on the table and clothes in the closet. We know, or should know, that a father"s kiss will fit as comfortably on the cheek of a son as on that of a daughter. So when my son came to me that evening for his bedtime kiss—a kiss that seems to be getting briefer every night—I held on to him for an extra second. And just before he pulled away, I said in my deepest, most manly voice, "Hey, I love you too. " I don"t know if saying that made either of us healthier, but it did feel pretty good. Maybe next time when one of my kids says, "I love you," it won"t take me a whole day to think of the right answer.

问答题Directions: In this part of the test, you will hear 2 passages in English. You will hear the passages ONLYONCE. After you have heard each passage, translate it into Chinese and write your version in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET. You may take notes while you are listening. Now let' s begin Passage Translation with the first passage.

问答题In barely one generation we"ve moved from exulting in the time-saving devices that have so expanded our lives to trying to get away from them—often in order to make more time. The more ways we have to connect, the more many of us seem desperate to unplug. Like teenagers, we appear to have gone from knowing nothing about the world to knowing too much all but overnight. The average American teenager sends or receives 75 text messages a day. Since luxury, as any economist will tell you, is a function of scarcity, the children of tomorrow will crave nothing more than freedom, if only for a short while, from all the blinking machines, streaming videos and scrolling headlines that leave them feeling empty and too full all at once. The urgency of slowing down—to find the time and space to think—is nothing new, of course, and wiser souls have always reminded us that the more attention we pay to the moment, the less time and energy we have to place it in some larger context. "Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries," the French philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote in the 17th century, "and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries." He also famously remarked that all of man"s problems come from his inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

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问答题"I don"t even like the word "network"," says Keith Ferrazzi, the supernetworker who just co-wrote (with Fortune Small Business contributing editor Tahl Raz) a hot book on the subject, called Never Eat Alone. "I don"t think of a network of people as a net, into which you wrangle contacts like a school of struggling cod." Well, that"s a relief. Ferrazzi, the CEO of a marketing and sales consulting firm called Ferrazzi Greenlight, has picked up so much buzz as a networking expert that he"s now teaching seminars on the subject to about 7,000 MBA students at Stanford, Wharton, and elsewhere, and he knows full well that the whole idea of networking makes many of us cringe. Still, there"s no doubt it"s a skill worth mastering: The Bureau of Labor Statistics not long ago analyzed how people got their jobs and learned that fewer than 20% of all working Americans found employment through a friend, relative, old school chum, or other personal connection. At the executive level, however—defined as managers earning $100,000 or more annually—72%, or well over three times the average, landed their positions by knowing somebody. Alas, networking has come to be seen as a "cynical tactic for manipulating your way to success," Ferrazzi says. Instead, he sees it as "a way to add richness to your life. Take those business acquaintances that everyone has and turn them into real friendships." But how? Dinner parties work, especially if you create a theme reflecting a personal interest. Ferrazzi loves singing, so "I do piano-bar parties, where I have Lionel Richie and the Yale Baker"s Dozen come and hang out," he says. "Years ago I was doing essentially the same thing"— presumably sans Richie—"in a one-bedroom apartment. You can throw holiday-themed parties or a gospel brunch or whatever your passion is." To expand your circle of friends, he suggests, invite one guest whom lots of others will want to meet, sort of on the same principle as having a big-name "anchor tenant" in a shopping mall. Then, when you chat with people, forget old chestnuts about what makes acceptable small talk. "The "experts" will tell you to avoid potentially controversial or emotional topics like politics or religion. I disagree," Ferrazzi says. "Do bring up a topic that is actually important to you, whether it"s your kids, a personal interest, or U. S. policy in the Middle East." A willingness to reveal a bit about who you really are—without being tedious—is "the key to intimacy, which is the heart of effective networking." What if you"re just shy? Ferrazzi describes himself as "pathologically extroverted," but "I ask more introverted people, "Do you play the violin? No? Well, if you practiced, do you think you could play a couple of notes by next week?" This is the same idea. Start small. Invite one or two new people into your circle. You"ll enjoy it, and you"ll want to do more of it." Above all, do whatever you can to help others succeed. Too often, in Ferrazzi"s view, networking devolves into a system of quid pro quo horse-trading. "Don"t keep score," he says. "If you give, give and give some more, it will come back to you. Generosity is the key to success." What a wonderful world it would be.

问答题Questions 4～6 A Chinese graduate"s record-setting $ 8,888,888 donation to his school at Yale University has stirred wide debate at home. While some say it"s up to Zhang Lei to do as he likes, others question why he didn"t donate to his alma mater in Beijing. The donation will primarily help build the new SOM campus, while a portion will provide scholarship support for the International Relations Program at Yale"s new Jackson Institute of Global Affairs, as well as fund a variety of China-related activities at the university. Opinions at home have been split in online forums since the story broke a few days ago. On pinggu, org, a forum run by Renmin University of China where Zhang was enrolled as a student of International Finance in 1989, netizens including alumni of the university have taken sides. Some asked why Zhang, who graduated from Yale less than 10 years ago, chose an overseas institution rather than his Chinese university for the donation. But a larger group of online users voiced support for Zhang"s move and said there is still room for improvement regarding management of universities in China. A prominent analyst urged people to be more tolerant toward the donation. "We should look at this news from an international standpoint," said Chi Fulin, professor and president of China Institute for Development and Reform. Chi said although Yale is the recipient of the fund, the donation will also benefit China. "It will promote more Sino-US exchange programs, and more Chinese will be involved in these exchanges." He said that China also has received a lot of support and funding from overseas donors, and Zhang"s move should be regarded with "respect, understanding and encouragement". In terms of cultural and educational exchanges between China and the United States, financial aid provided by the US government is rather limited, and a larger part of it comes from non-government organizations. "China should also try to attract more donations through such channels in the future," he said. According to Yale"s website, the SOM graduate was born in Central China in 1972. At the age of 17 he scored the highest in the university entrance exam out of about 100,000 students in his province before being enrolled by Renmin University. Zhang said Yale changed his life and taught him the spirit of giving. In his profile he wrote: "Yale has been helping China for more than 100 years. Many Chinese leaders were educated at Yale. But the relationship has been one-way for too long and I want to help change that. " Zhang, who graduated from the Yale School of Management in 2002, worked for the Yale Investments Office. In 2005, Zhang founded Hillhouse Capital Management Ltd, a Beijing-based investment fund that manages $ 2.5 billion.

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问答题British police forces are reviewing more than 450 unsolved crimes in a push to capitalise on dramatic advances in DNA forensic science. The advent of new ways to collect DNA from items at crime scenes, coupled with powerful analytical tools, has made it possible to obtain DNA profiles of suspects from undetected crimes or cold cases committed nearly 20 years ago, according to a Home Office spokeswoman. The operation has already identified 42 suspects. The reviews focus on serious, often sexual offences and encompass at least 451 crimes committed between 1989 and 1995. Forensic scientists are returning to items of evidence stored at the time, from scraps of clothing to microscope slides holding just a few cells obtained from victims. This week, scientists at the Forensic Science Service, which manages the police national DNA database, used the pioneering technique of familial searching to help convict James Lloyd, a shoe fetishist who pleaded guilty to six sexual assaults at Sheffield crown court. The conviction came after scientists recovered DNA from a 20-year-old sperm sample held on a microscope slide. While the DNA did not match anyone on the DNA database, scientists searched again for similar DNA profiles and found a close match with his sister. The high-profile success follows the first use of a new intelligence tool known as pendulum list searching (PLS) which led to the conviction last month of Duncan Turner for a sexual assault in Birmingham in August 2005. Scientists working on the case found a mixture of DNA from different people on a pair of sunglasses found at the crime scene. They used PLS to generate a list of theoretical DNA profiles that could make up the mix. Some 500 pairs of theoretical DNA fingerprints were entered into the database, and one matched Turner. The FSS ploughed a further ￡ 6m into research last year and more powerful and precise techniques are in the pipeline. Part of the push to review cold cases of sexual assaults comes from the development of a technique called Fish, or Fluorescent In Situ Hybridisation, which allows forensic experts to identify and pluck just a few male cells from a swab of female cells taken from the victim. The technique identifies male cells by dyeing green only those carrying the male Y chromosome. Once they are stained, another new tool, laser microdissection, is used to cut them out and collect them, so a full profile can be obtained. Jim Fraser, a forensic scientist who served as an expert witness in the case of Michael Stone, who was convicted of a double murder in Kent in 1996, said advances in DNA science had already led to suspects being identified beyond the grave and would continue to become more powerful. "The long arm of the law is getting considerably longer-there's really no hiding place now," he said. According to Cathy Turner, a consultant forensic scientist at the FSS, the rapid advances in DNA technology have transformed the role of forensic scientists. "We've gone beyond corroborating allegations to using DNA and other techniques to provide fresh intelligence," she said. The swelling of the police national DNA database, which now holds profiles for 3.5m people, has in the last five years quadrupled the number of cases in which DNA is used. It provides police with some 3,000 matches to suspects every month. The national DNA database has been criticised by privacy groups, who fear the privatised database could potentially be misused, but for police forces it is an invaluable resource, said Dr. Fraser. "None of this evidence is infallible, irrefutable or unarguable. But it's pretty much the best evidence that'll ever be presented to the criminal justice system by some considerable way," he said.

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问答题Today my topic is cultures and traditional holidays. 　　Holiday are special times of respite from work and other routines. In some cases, they are legal holidays when stores, businesses and government offices are officially closed. In other cases, they are celebrated without taking time off from work. Holidays are often times for celebration, revelry, eating, drinking, travel, and family gatherings, but they may also be times of rest and reflection. The current trend is away from rest and reflection, Even Mardi Gras, the day before the traditionally reflective period of Lent, has turned into an entire week of parties, parades and merry-making for those who make the annual pilgrimage to New Orleans, for example. 　　In most cultures the scheduling of holidays originally was related to the seasons, the lunar cycle, and religion, Christmas (December 25) celebrates the birth of Jesus, but it is not actually known whether Jesus was born in the wintertime. The first Roman emperor to espouse Christianity decided to have Christmas when the days are shortest to bring a spirit of optimism to the long winter months. It also helped bring Christianity to the pagans, who were accustomed to having festivals at the winter solstice, encouraging warmth and sunshine to return. Over the years Christmas has come to symbolize goodwill and generosity for both Christians and non-Christians through the personification of Santa Claus, originally a Christian saint, known as St,Nicholas. Nowadays Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer is almost as important a global symbol of Christmas as Jesus or Santa and the commercialization of Christmas threatens to replace generosity with greed. Many people forget that the original Christmas gifts were given by the Three Wise Men, all pagans, to Jesus, a Jewish child born in a manger. All they think of are the gifts they will give or receive, and all the money they have spent. 　　One reason for the increasing popularity of Christmas is its proximity to New Year’s Day, encouraging a long holiday to evolve out of both. In the U,S., the holiday has turned into an extended holiday season, lasting from Thanksgiving Day in late November until New Year’s Day, with a seemingly endless array of parties, dinners, concerts, parades, and vacation trips. The schools and colleges are closed from mid-December through early January while many people eat too much, drink too much, and watch too much American football on TV. Many gifts, cards, and annual newsletters are exchanged, and the various festivities are not always very restful. Then the same people make New Year’s Resolutions to eat less, drink less, spend less, and work harder in the coming year. 　　Christmas is by far the most important holiday in English-speaking countries. Other important holidays in addition to Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day are Valentine’s Day, St,Patrick’s Day, April Fools’ Day, and Easter. On Valentine’s Day, celebrated on February 14, people give cards, chocolates, flowers, and kisses to their spouses and sweethearts. On St,Patrick’s Day, March 17, people wear green to celebrate the luck of the Irish, and eat corned beef and cabbage washed down with green beer. During Easter Week in late March or early April, Christians remember the death and resurrection of Jesus while Jews celebrate Passover, in memory of the escape of the Jews from ancient Egypt, where they had been slaves. Although it is not actually a holiday and has no religious connotation, April Fools’ Day, celebrated on April 1, is a day when people play embarrassing tricks on their friends and colleagues and even on their teachers. Another holiday with some similarity to April Fools’ Day is Halloween on October 31,when children wear funny or scary costumes and ask their neighbors for, “tricks or treats”, The name Halloween means, hallowed evening”, the night before All Saints’ Day when Christian saints are honored. On the following day, All Souls’ Day, services and prayers are said for the dead. In many countries, it is a day when families visit cemeteries and place flowers on the tombs of their relatives. In Europe, Labor Day is celebrated on May 1, whereas in Canada and the United States, labor and laborers are honored by a legal holiday on the first Monday in September.

问答题When a Charleston, S.C., patrol officer stopped a young mother outside Walmart after store officials reported that she was shoplifting groceries, her first thought was of her children. Who would watch them if she were arrested? She could not afford the food she had taken for her family—let alone a babysitter, an attorney or bail. As the sheriff for Charleston County, I know that if the encounter had taken place a few years ago, she would likely have gone to jail, sending her and her children"s lives into an economic and emotional tailspin. In the past, law-enforcement officers had no alternatives to taking someone to jail for nonviolent offenses. Fortunately, that was not true in her case. Instead, the officer employed a new approach called "cite and release." Rather than jailing the woman for a low-level, nonviolent offense, the officer gave her a citation for shoplifting, instructed her to appear in court at a later date and let her go. She returned home to her children that day instead of spending weeks in jail awaiting trial at no benefit to public safety and to the detriment of her family. At a time of heartbreaking turmoil over police-community relations and rising incarceration, national attention has once again turned to Charleston with the start last week of the trial of a former police officer in the tragic shooting death of Walter Scott. Now more than ever is the time for law-enforcement leaders to acknowledge that serious problems exist in our criminal justice systems and that reform begins with us. Law-enforcement leaders need to develop fair and effective approaches that reflect our commitment to public safety while giving people the best chance to succeed and lead productive lives. That young mother"s story is a prime example of the kind of gains we can make and lives we can save when we rethink how our justice systems should work. How we use jails deserves a hard look. I have more than 30 years of experience in law enforcement, and I understand firsthand our obligation to protect public safety and the challenges my officers face every day as they work hard to protect us. I also know that the number of people in U.S. jails is high, and that even a brief stay in jail can upend lives and lead to deeper involvement in the criminal justice system. Some people never recover from a stay in jail. And the evidence shows that many of those people did not need to be there in the first place. Local jails—intended to hold people who pose a flight risk or threat to public safety—are instead incarcerating many who commit nonviolent offenses or are unable to afford bail, negatively affecting the community and the judicial system. In South Carolina, the average daily population in our jails has exceeded capacity since 1989. Most people are there for low-level offenses, not dangerous crimes. Many with mental illness and substance-abuse issues cycle in and out for minor violations. And amid rising homelessness in our community, people who have nowhere to sleep are often jailed for trespassing. We must ask ourselves whether putting so many people in jail for offenses unrelated to public safety is the best use of our justice system and limited resources. These challenges are not unique to Charleston. Across the country, there are nearly 12 million jail admissions each year, and many people remain behind bars and cut off from their families and jobs simply because they cannot afford bail. The problem is particularly acute for women: According to research from the Vera Institute of Justice, the number of women in jail is up 14-fold since 1970, and about 80% of them are mothers. Recognizing these troubling trends, Charleston is implementing a number of reforms to transform how we use jails that others should consider. We are one of several jurisdictions across the country that sought and received support to improve local justice systems and safely reduce jail populations. As part of holistic reform efforts, a new legal-defense program for those who are unable to afford counsel will provide an attorney to low-income residents at their initial bond hearings, when judges determine if they can safely be released into the community while awaiting trial. Our cite-and-release program gives my officers more discretion in how to handle low-level offenses in situations when jail is not the best outcome for anyone. In addition, a triage center service launching next year will help officers steer people who are living with homelessness, mental illness or addiction into treatment and other services—and avoid incarceration. We should not forget that many law-enforcement officers understand better than anyone where the problems lie in our justice systems. No one on my team wants to take someone to the county jail, away from family and livelihood, without any improvement to public safety. Together, we must do everything we can to find fairer, more-effective approaches to justice. As a law-enforcement leader and a sheriff, I know that jail is not always the answer.