单选题 The Chinese written language is of conservation type that assigns a single distinctive symbol, or character, to each word of the vocabulary. Knowledge of 3000 to 4000 characters is needed to read newspapers, and a large dictionary contains more than 40,000 characters (arranged according to sound or form). Like other scripts of ancient origin, Chinese is derived from picture writing. It grew into a word-by-word representation of language when it was discovered that words too abstract to be readily pictured could be indicated by their sound rather than their sense. Unlike other scripts, however, Chinese still works pictographically as well as phonetically. Moreover, its sound indications have not been adapted to changes of pronunciation but have remained the key of pronunciation of 3000 years ago. The building blocks of the system are several hundred pictographs for such basic words as man, horse, and axe. In addition, expanded, or compound, pictographs exist. For example, a symbol of this type representing man carrying grain means "harvest," and thus "year"(nian). Phonetic loans are pictographs of concrete words borrowed to indicate abstract words of the same or similar sound. The principle here is that of the rebus, or visual pun. Thus, the pictograph for dustpan (ji) was borrowed for this, his, her, its (qi or ji). Through the Zhou period (11th century to 3rd century BC) many characters had such a dual use. If at that time the scribes had agreed that only the "dustpan" pictograph would stand for any syllable pronounced ji, they would have discovered the principle of the phonetic syllabary, precursor of the alphabet. Because of the great number of homonyms in Chinese, however, scribes instead retreated to picture writing. The picture of the dustpan came to be used exclusively for his, her, its. In the rarer instances when scribes actually meant to refer to a dustpan, however, they avoided ambiguity by employing a compound symbol in which "dustpan" had added to it the pictograph for "bamboo", representing the material from which dustpans were made. This process for reducing the ambiguity of phonetic loans became in time a process by which any pictograph, borrowed for its sound, could be joined to any other chosen to indicate the meaning, forming a phonetic compound. Thus, "dustpan," with the addition of "earth" instead of "bamboo," indicated ji, " base, foundation. " Today simple and compound pictographs continue to be used for some of the most basic vocabulary — home, mother, child, rice, fare. Perhaps 95 percent of the words in the dictionary are written with phonetic compounds, however. To express modem concepts, Chinese generally invents equivalents from its native stock of meaningful syllables or renders such terms in phonetic spelling. Thus, chemistry is expressed in Chinese as "study of transformations. " Shihuangdi (Shih-huang-ti), first emperor of a unified China, suppressed many regional scripts and enforced a simplified, standardized writing called the Small Seal. In the Han Dynasty (206BC-AD220) this developed into the Clerical, Running, Draft, and Standard scripts. Printed Chinese is modeled on the Standard Script, Cursive or rapid writing (the Running and Draft scripts) introduced many abbreviated characters used in artistic calligraphy and in commercial and private correspondence, but it was long banned from official documents. The printing of abbreviated characters is still forbidden in Taiwan but has become the normal practice in the People's Republic of China.

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单选题Traveling through the country a couple of weeks ago on business, I was listening to the talk of the late UK writer Douglas Adams" master work The Hitchhiker"s Guide to the Galaxy. on the radio and thought--I know, I"ll pick up the next hitchhikers I see and ask them what the state of real hitching is today in Britain. I drove and drove on main roads and side roads for the next few days and never saw a single one. When I was in my teens and 20s, hitchhiking was a main form of long-distance transport. The kindness or curiosity of strangers took me all over Europe, North America, Asia and southern Africa. Some of the lift-givers became friends, many provided hospitality on the road. Not only did you find out much more about a country than when traveling by train or plane, but there was that element of excitement about where you would finish up that night. Hitchhiking featured importantly in Western culture. It has books and songs about it. So what has happened to it? A few years ago, I was asked the same question about hitching in a column of a newspaper. Hundreds of people from all over the world responded with their view on the state of hitchhiking. Rural Ireland was recommended as a friendly place for hitching, as was Quebec, Canada--"if you don"t mind being criticized for not speaking French". But while hitchhiking was clearly still alive and well in some places, the general feeling was that throughout much of the west it was doomed. With so much news about crime in the media, people assumed that anyone on the open road without the money for even a bus ticket must present a danger. But do we need to be so wary both to hitch and to give a lift? In Poland in the 1960s, according to a Polish woman who e-mailed me, "the authorities introduced the Hitchhiker"s Booklet. The booklet contained coupons for drivers, so each time a driver picked somebody, he or she received a coupon. At the end of the season, drivers who had picked up the most hikers were rewarded with various prizes. Everyone was hitchhiking then." Surely this is a good idea for society. Hitchhiking would increase respect by breaking down barriers between strangers. It would help fight global warming by cutting down on fuel consumption as hitchhikers would be using existing fuels. It would also improve educational standards by delivering instant lessons in geography, history, politics and sociology. A century before Douglas Adams wrote his Hitchhiker"s Guide, another adventure story writer, Robert Louis Stevenson, gave us that what should be the hitchhiker"s motto: "To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive. "What better time than putting a holiday weekend into practice. Either put it to the test yourself, or help out someone who is trying to travel hopefully with thumb outstretched.

单选题 The basic story is very old indeed and familiar to most of us. The heroine, Cinderella, is treated cruelly by her stepmother and mocked by her two ugly stepsisters. And even though her father loves her, she can't tell him how unhappy she is because her stepmother has bewitched him. One day Cinderella's stepmother and stepsisters are invited to a ball at the royal palace. Cinderella is told she cannot go and is understandably very unhappy. However, her fairy godmother comes to the rescue and, waving her magic wand, produces some beautiful clothes for Cinderella as well as a carriage to convey her to the ball. There, she dances with the handsome prince, who falls in love with her… Just a sweet, pretty tale? Not in the view of Ellen Macintosh, who has written extensively about fairy tales. "This story features the stock, two-dimensional characters of most fairy tales, and little character development is attempted," she says. Indeed, although her comment does make one wonder why simplicity of this sort should be out of place in a story for children. Be that as it may, Ellen's main problem is with what the story implies. "Instead of standing up to her cruel stepmother and absurd stepsisters, Cinderella just waits for a fairy godmother to appear and solve her problem. But wouldn't you want a daughter of yours to show more spirit?" The story is enduring, whatever its shortcomings, and it doesn't take much in the way of analytical skills to see its influence on a number of recent Hollywood productions, all aimed at girls aged five to fifteen. In these versions for the silver screen, the Cinderella character no longer has to clean the house and has no siblings to make her life a misery, though she persists in not showing much backbone. The character of the rich and handsome stranger, however, is retained, and in some cases really is a prince. The role of the fairy godmother is often played by coincidence or sheer luck; we live in an enlightened age when even very young children might reject the notion of fairies. The wicked stepmother may be transformed into a villain of some sort. In the majority of film versions, the heroine has a profession and is even permitted to continue working after marrying her prince — this is the twenty — first century, after all. Doesn't the success of these films indicate that the story has relevance to children even today? "Yes," admits Ellen, who sees its message as being rooted in a fundamental childhood desire for love and attention. "Most children experience a sense of inner loneliness as they are growing up and empathies with the protagonist who faces some sort of test or challenge. This can be seen in the original story of Cinderella, where the fairy godmother tells the heroine that she must learn to be gracious and confident if she is to go to the ball. She has to grow spiritually, and by maturing, she becomes attractive to the prince, thus ensuring that the ending of the story will be happy." "In the later versions, this element is missing," says Ellen, "and the theme of the story is simply that a girl's role in life is to be more beautiful than other little girls so that she can carry off the prize: the handsome prince. Is this really what we want girls to grow up believing?"

单选题Whatwasthebabylikeatbirth?A.Healthyandnormal.B.Lightandweak.C.Fatandunhealthy.

单选题A.TheprocedureofNobelprizeawarding.B.ThepeoplewhoawardNobelprizes.C.ThepeoplewhoreceiveNobelprizes.D.TheceremonyofNobelprizeawarding.

单选题 When prehistoric man arrived in new parts of the world, something strange happened to the large animals: they suddenly became extinct. Smaller species survived. The large, slow-growing animals were easy game, and were quickly hunted to extinction. Now something similar could be happening in the oceans. That the seas are being overfished has been known for years. What researchers such as Ransom Myers and Boris Worm have shown is just how fast things are changing. They have looked at half a century of data from fisheries around the world. Their methods do not attempt to estimate the actual biomass (the amount of living biological matter) of fish species in particular parts of the ocean, but rather changes in that biomass over time. According to their latest paper published in Nature, the biomass of large predators (animals that kill and eat other animals) in a new fishery is reduced on average by 80% within 15 years of the start of exploitation. In some long-fished areas, it has halved again since then. Dr. Worm acknowledges that these figures are conservative. One mason for this is that fishing technology has improved. Today's vessels can find their prey using satellites and sonar, which were not available 50 years ago. That means a higher proportion of what is in the sea is being caught, so the real difference between present and past is likely to be worse than the one recorded by changes in catch sizes. In the early days, too, longlines would have been more saturated with fish. Some individuals would therefore not have been caught, since no baited hooks would have been available to trap them, leading to an underestimate of fish stocks in the past. Furthermore, in the early days of longline fishing, a lot of fish were lost to sharks after they had been hooked. That is no longer a problem, because there are fewer sharks around now. Dr. Myers and Dr. Worm argue that their work gives a correct baseline, which future management efforts must take into account. They believe the data support an idea current among marine biologists, that of the "shifting baseline". The notion is that people have failed to detect the massive changes which have happened in the ocean because they have been looking back only a relatively short time into the past. That matters because theory suggests that the maximum sustainable yield that can be cropped from a fishery comes when the biomass of a target species is about 50% of its original levels. Most fisheries are well below that, which is a bad way to do business.

单选题 {{B}}Questions 23—26{{/B}}

单选题Which of the following about the video game is true?

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单选题Questions 21-25 Apple is hardly alone in the high-tech industry when it comes to duff gadgets and unhelpful call centers, but in other respects it is highly unusual. In particular, it inspires an almost religious fervor among its customers. That is no doubt helped by the fact that its corporate biography is so closely bound up with the mercurial Mr. Jobs, a rare showman in his industry. Yet for all its flaws and quirks, Apple has at least four important wider lessons to teach other companies. The first is that innovation can come from without as well as within. Apple is widely assumed to be an innovator in the tradition of Thomas Edison or Bell Laboratories, locking its engineers away to cook up new ideas and basing products on their moments of inspiration. In fact, its real skill lies in stitching together its own ideas with technologies from outside and then wrapping the results in elegant software and stylish design. The idea for the iPod, for example, was originally dreamt up by a consultant whom Apple hired to run the project. It was assembled by combining off-the-shelf parts with in-house ingredients such as its distinctive, easily used system of controls. And it was designed to work closely with Apple"s iTunes jukebox software, which was also bought in and then overhauled and improved. Apple is, in short, an orchestrator and integrator of technologies, unafraid to bring in ideas from outside but always adding its own twists. This approach, known as "network innovation", is not limited to electronics. It has also been embraced by companies such as Procter ＆ Gamble, BT and several drugs giants, all of which have realized the power of admitting that not all good ideas start at home. Making network innovation work involves cultivating contacts with start-ups and academic researchers, constantly scouting for new ideas and ensuring that engineers do not fall prey to "not invented here" syndrome, which always values in-house ideas over those from outside. Second, Apple illustrates the importance of designing new products around the needs of the user, not the demands of the technology. Too many technology firms think that clever innards are enough to sell their products, resulting in gizmos designed by engineers for engineers. Apple has consistently combined clever technology with simplicity and ease of use. The iPod was not the first digital-music player, but it was the first to make transferring and organizing music, and buying it online, easy enough for almost anyone to have a go. Similarly, the iPhone is not the first mobile phone to incorporate a music-player, web browser or e-mail software. But most existing "smartphones" require you to be pretty smart to use them. Apple is not alone in its pursuit of simplicity. Philips, a Dutch electronics giant, is trying a similar approach. Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, perhaps the most Jobsian of Europe"s geeks, took an existing but fiddly technology, internet telephony, to a mass audience by making it simple, with Skype; they hope to do the same for internet television. But too few technology firms see "ease of use" as an end in itself.

单选题 Questions 23-26

单选题Some of the crops failed. ______, the cotton did pretty well. [A] Then [B] Besides [C] Therefore [D] However

单选题An eccentric is by definition someone whose behaviour is abnormal, someone who refuses to conform to the accepted norms of his society. This, of course, immediately begs the question, "What is normal?" Most of us, after all, have our quirks and oddities. It may be a passion for entering newspaper competitions, a compulsion for collecting beer mats, a tendency to write indignant letters to the press on every conceivable subject. Eccentricity is the assertion of our individuality. Within most of us that urge is constantly in conflict with the contrary force. It is as though in the depths of our psyche we have two locomotives head-to-head on the same track, pushing against each other. One is called individualism and the other conformity and in most of us it is conformity that is the more powerful. The desire to be accepted, loved, appreciated, to feel at one with our fellows, is stronger than the desire to stand out in the crowd, to be our own man, to do our own thing. Notice, for example, how people who have unusual hobbies, strong opinions, or unconventional behaviour, tend to congregate. They form clubs, hold meetings, and organise rallies where they can get together and discuss their common enthusiasms or problems. The important word is "common". They look for other people with whom they can share what in the normal run of events is regarded by relatives, friends and neighbours as an oddity. A crowd, even a small crowd, is reassuring. Probably all of us recognise a tension within ourselves between the two forces of individualism and conformity, for at the same time that most of us are going with the crowd, we tend to resent any suggestion that this is what we are doing. We feel a self-conscious need to assert our individuality as when the belligerent man at the bar informs his small audience, "Well, I say what I think." Or the wary stranger to whom we have just been introduced announces, "You must take me as you find me. I don"t stand on ceremony." Any of us can, at any time, reverse this trend. We can stoke the boiler of individualism, assert our own personality. Many people have made it to the top in their chosen professions, basically by doing just that. One example is Bob Dylan, the American singer, who has gone on record as saying, "When you feel in your gut what you are doing and then dynamically pursue it— don"t back down and don"t give up—then you"re going to mystify a lot of folk." But that self conscious assertion of individuality is not eccentricity, at least not in the early stages. When a pop singer deliberately wears bizarre clothes to gain publicity, or a society hostess makes outrageous comments about her guests in order to get herself noticed in the gossip columns, that is not eccentricity. However, if the pop star and the society hostess perpetuate such activities until they become a part of themselves, until they are no longer able to return to what most of us consider "normal behaviour", then they certainly would qualify. For the most important ingredient of eccentricity is its naturalness. Eccentrics are not people who deliberately try to be odd, they simply are odd. The true eccentric is not merely indifferent to public opinion, he is scarcely conscious at all. He simply does what he does, because of who he is. And this marks the eccentric as essentially different from, for example, enthusiasts, practical jokers, brilliant criminals, exhibitionists and recluses. These people are all very conscious of the world around them. Much of what they do, they do in reaction to the world in which they live. Some wish to make an impression on society, some wish to escape from society, but all are very much aware of society. The eccentric alone goes on his merry way regardless.

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单选题 {{B}}Questions 16 to 20 are based on the following talk.{{/B}}

单选题To us, it seems so natural to put up an umbrella to keep the water off when it rains. But actually the umbrella was not invented as protection against rain. Its first use was as a shade against the sun. Nobody knows who first invented it, but the umbrella was used in very ancient times. Probably the first to use it were the Chinese, way back in the 1th century B.C. We know that the umbrella was used in ancient Egypt and Babylon as a sunshade. And there was a strange thing connected with its use: it became a symbol of honor and authority. In the Far East, in ancient times, the umbrella was allowed to be used only by royalty or by those in high office. In Europe, the Greeks were the first to use the umbrella as a sunshade. And the umbrella was in common use in ancient Greece. But it is believed that the first persons in Europe to use the umbrella as protection against the rain were the ancient Romans. During the Middle Ages, the use of the umbrella practically disappeared. Then it appeared again in Italy in the late sixteenth century. And again it was considered a symbol of power and authority. By 1680, the umbrella appeared in France, and later on in England. By the eighteenth century, the umbrella was used against rain throughout most of Europe. Umbrellas have not changed much in style during all this time, though they have become much lighter in weight. It was not until the twentieth century that women' s umbrella began to be made, in a whole variety of colors.