单选题Questions 6 to 10 are based on the following talk.

单选题

单选题Questions 6 to 10 are based on the following conversation.

单选题According to the passage, which of the following statements is NOT true about Google?

单选题 It is already common knowledge, on the beaches and in the cafes of mainland Europe, that Americans work too hard—just as it is well known on the other side of the Atlantic that Europeans, above all the French and the Germans, are slackers who could do with a bit of America's vigorous work ethic. But a new survey suggests that even those vacations American employees do take are rapidly vanishing, to the extent that 40 per cent of workers questioned at the start of the summer said they had no plans to take any holiday at all for the next six months, more than at any time since the late 1970s. It is probably mere coincidence that George W. Bush, one of the few Americans who has been known to enjoy a French-style month off during August, cut back his holiday in Texas to a fortnight. But the survey by the Conference Board research group, along with other recent statistics, suggests an epidemic of overwork among ordinary Americans. A quarter of people employed in the private sector in the US get no paid vacation at all, according to government figures. Unlike almost all other industrialized nations, including Britain, American employers do not have to give paid holidays. The average American gets a little less than four weeks of paid time off, including public holidays, compared with 6.6 weeks in the UK—where the law requires a minimum of four weeks off for full-time workers—and 7.9weeks for Italy. One study showed that people employed by the US subsidiary of a London-based bank would have to work there for 10 years just to be entitled to the same vacation time as colleagues in Britain who has just started their jobs. Even when they do take vacations, overworked Americans find it hard to switch off. One in three find not checking their email and voicemail more stressful than working, according to a study by the Travelocity website, while the traumas of travel take their own toll. "We commonly complain we need a vacation from our vacations," the author Po Bronson wrote recently. "We leave home tired; we come back exhausted " Christian Schneider, a German-born scholar at the Wharton business school in Philadelphia, argues that there is "a tendency to really relax in Europe, to disengage from work. When an American finally does take those few days of vacation per year they are most likely to be in constant contact with the office. " Mindful that well-rested workers are more productive than burnt-out ones, the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers has started closing all its US offices completely twice a year, for 10 days over Christmas and about five around Independence Day. "We wanted to create an environment where people could walk away and not worry about missing a meeting, a conference call or 300 emails," Barbara Kraft, a partner at the company, told the New York Times. Left to themselves, Americans fail to take an average of four days of their vacation entitlement—an annual national total of 574 million unclaimed days.

单选题Research into self-awareness consistently shows that most people think and speak highly of themselves. Time and again, subjects see positive traits as more self-descriptive than negative ones, they rate themselves more highly than they rate others, they rate themselves more highly than they are rated by others, they overestimate their contribution to team efforts, and they exaggerate their control over life events. It"s not that we consciously flatter ourselves, either. The response is more like a mindless reflex. In fact, when subjects are busy or distracted as they make self-ratings, the judgments they come up with are quicker and even more favorable. Most people also exhibit "unrealistic optimism", a tendency to predict a uniquely bright and rosy future for themselves. College students asked to predict their own future compared to that of their classmates believed, on average, that they were more likely to graduate higher in their class, get a better job, earn a higher salary, have a happier marriage, and bear a gifted child. They also believed that they were less likely to get fired, become depressed, become involved in a car accident, or suffer from a heart attack. Many other examples illustrate this point—as when voters predict that their favored candidate will prevail and sports fans bet on their favorite teams to win. Psychologists used to agree that an accurate perception of reality is vital to mental health. More and more, however, this view is being challenged by research on positive illusions. Are these illusions a sign of well-being or symptoms of disorder? In 1988 two psychologists reviewed the relevant research and noticed that people who are mildly depressed or low in self-esteem have less inflated and sometimes more realistic views of themselves than do others who are better adjusted. Their self-appraisals are more likely to match appraisals of them made by neutral others, they are less likely to exaggerate their control over uncontrollable events, and they make more balanced predictions about the future. Based on these results, psychologists arrived at the provocative conclusion that when it comes to the self, positive illusions—not accurate perceptions of reality—promote health and well-being. In their words, "these illusions help make each individual"s world a warmer and more active and beneficent place in which to live." In fact, research involving people under stress—such as people with serious illnesses—shows that perceived control, optimism, and other positive beliefs are "health protective" psychological resources that help people cope with adversity. Others are not so sure that eternal optimists are better off than hard realists. They argue that positive illusions can give rise to chronic patterns of self-destruction—as when people escape from self-awareness through the use of drugs and deny health-related problems until it s too late for treatment. In studies of interpersonal relations, people with inflated rather than realistic views of themselves were rated less favorably on certain dimensions by their own friends. In these studies, self-enhancing men were seen as assertive and ambitious, which are OK, but also as boastful, condescending, hostile, and inconsiderate. Self-enhancing women were seen as more hostile, more defensive and sensitive to criticism, more likely to overreact to minor setbacks, and less well liked by others. Consistent with these findings, other research shows that people filled with high self-esteem are more likely to lash out angrily in response to criticism, rejection, and other bruises to the ego. The result. People with inflated self-images may make a good first impression on others but they are liked less and less as time wears on.

单选题 Questions 11～15 Eric Liu has spent most of his life climbing up the social ladder without looking back. The son of Chinese immigrants from Taiwan, he grew up learning to play down his ethnic identity in the mostly white community of Wappingers Falls, N.Y. Then he went on to amass a heap of power credentials: he graduated from Yale, at 25 he wrote speeches for President Clinton, and now he's at Harvard Law School. In his provocative, wonderfully honest new book, The Accidental Asian, Liu, 29, finally pauses long enough to reflect on his assimilationist's guilt, on the feeling that he's left something behind without knowing exactly what it is. Half cultural commentary, half memoir, "Accidental" is a remarkable accomplishment—both a defense of assimilation and an intense recounting of personal loss. Though he's one of Asian America's biggest stars, Liu doesn't act or feel particularly Asian- American. He married a white woman—half of all Asian-Americans intermarry, he points out. He says he cannot escape the feeling that the Asian-American identity is "contrived" and "unnecessary". "Asian-Americans are only as isolated as they want to be," he writes. "They do not face the levels of discrimination and hatred that demand an enclave mentality. The choice to invent and sustain a pan- Asian identity is just that: a choice, not an imperative. " His book, which just hit stores, is already infuriating Asian-Americans who have a fierce sense of ethnic pride. "Liu has been totally co-opted by the white mainstream," says Bert Wang, who works on labor issues and anti-Asian violence, and christened his rock band Superchink. "But would he be where he is today if he weren't Asian? They love him because he's this novelty who's pro-assimilation." Jeff Yang, the founder of A. Magazine, a sort of Asian Vanity Fair, finds Liu's view misguided and a bit naive. "Race is an obsession in our society," he says. "To be out of the racial equation takes us away from the table of dialogue completely. But we're creating a culture out of our common experiences: immigration, being perceived as strangers in our own land, serving as a bridge between East and West. " But even the most militant Asian-Americans admit to an identity crisis. Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos and other "Asians" have not only different cultures and languages but deep historical antagonisms toward one another. More than anything, what binds them together in America is what they look like—the exact basis for their stigmatization. The Asian-American "race" is just three decades old, born with the immigration boom in 1965. "Race is fundamentally an invention," says Liu. "And just as something can be invented, so it can be dismantled. If you believe in the identity, I can respect that. I'm just not sure it'll last another generation. " The economic success many Asian-Americans have achieved may only further weaken that identity. They account for 4 percent of the population, and have the highest median income of all races, including whites. A higher percentage of them earn advanced degrees than of any other group. But those statistics hide the growing number of poor immigrants who feel increasingly alienated from upper-class Asians. "The poor are an embarrassment to professionals who don't want to be seen as peasants," says Peter Kwong, head of Asian-American Studies at New York's Hunter College. "You're taught to be ashamed of your parents," says Chinatown labor activist Trinh Duong, whose mother works in a garment factory. Some activists, who say they have a hard time drawing attention to the plight of those immigrants, try to play down the achievements of upper-class Asians and chafe at the "model minority" stereotype. "That label is clearly part of a hostile discourse between whites and blacks," says Kwong. "Whites are basically saying to blacks, 'We're not racist, and the reason you're not as successful is because you're not working as hard as Asians'." Yet the abstract debate over assimilation can't do justice to the complex emotional acrobatics of dealing with your own ethnicity. While Liu grew up trying to fit into white America, that was the last thing I wanted. I was taught that Asians were smarter and harder-working than everyone else and that explained their success when the truth is that immigration laws favored professionals, a highly selective group to begin with. There seemed to be no way to have ethnic pride without ethnocentrism. The only solution, it seemed, was to try and transcend race to erase racial concerns by ignoring them. I started to think a lot like Liu. But something always comes along to jolt me out of this colorblind slumber. The rising number of incidents of anti-Asian violence. College-admission quotas against us. Coverage of the campaign- finance scandals, filled with "shadowy" Orientals creeping into power, practicing the ancient Chinese art of guanxi, a scarily exotic word for "connections." And why do so many articles on race neglect to mention us? Why do so many reports from the Census Bureau include only blacks, whites and Hispanics? Is racial identity formed only through racial persecution? I was once berated by a white classmate for claiming I had never been persecuted, which made me wish that I had. But I can't help feeling that it would be contrived to suddenly become passionate about my ethnicity, or to dredge up racial scars that don't exist. Liu says, "Race for people of color should be as much of an option as ethnicity is for whites." But in America, trying to forget about being a minority can still get you in as much trouble as being one.

单选题Questions 1 to 5 are based on the following conversation.

单选题Questions 23-26

单选题Questions 23-26

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单选题"Is jazz a kind of folk music? Is it a performing style? How is it different from other kinds of music?" There is no simple answer to these questions, because the most important quality of jazz comes from its unique combination of different musical sources over a period of almost 400 years. The quality that unites the many different jazz forms is, in some degree, separate from its musical sources. That quality is the expression of freedom. The idea of freedom is central. The ancestors of jazz were black people from West Africa who were brought to America as slaves, or forced laborers, from the early 1600s to the mid-1800s. Most of them remained slaves until President Lincoln set them free on January 1,1863, during the American Civil War. With the loss of their personal freedom and the breaking up of their families, the slaves also lost the social traditions of their music from Africa. The complex rhythms (节奏) of this music involved a number of people performing together. The breaking apart of these social groups forced slaves to create new songs, that is, to develop a completely new musical tradition. Using some of the remembered African rhythms, the slaves gradually began to add some features of the European classical music that was played by the slave-owners. The slaves were also influenced by American folk songs. But the result of adding these borrowed elements to the complex African rhythms was the beginning of a completely new kind of music. Still, this music only existed privately among groups of slaves. The salves' work had another effect on their music. It introduced new kinds of musical rhythms. Some of these rhythms became work songs to accompany their planting and picking of cotton. Other rhythms were developed by teams of workers who needed to lift heavy loads of cotton onto carts that passed through the fields. Later, during the building of the railroads, individual workers created new songs to match the sharp rhythms of steel as they put the rails into place.

单选题How can I ever concentrate if you ______ continually ______ me with foolish questions? [A] have ... interrupted [B] had ... interrupted [C] are ... interrupting [D] were ... interrupting

单选题Questions 11-14

单选题Directions: 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. Questions 1～5 About three hundred years ago, there were approximately half a billion people in the world. In the two centuries that followed the population doubled, and, by 1850, there were more than a billion people in the world. It took only 75 years for the figure to double once more. Each day the population of the world increases by about 150,000. In former centuries the population grew slowly. Famines, wars, and epidemics, such as the plague and cholera, killed many people. Today, although the birth rate has not changed significantly, the death rate has been lowered considerably by various kinds of progress. Machinery has made it possible to produce more and more food in vast areas, such as the plains of America and Russia. Crops have been increased almost everywhere and people are growing more and more food. Improvement in communications and transportation has made it possible to send more food from the place where it is produced to other places where it is needed. This has helped reduce the number of famines. Progress in medicine and hygiene has made it possible for people to live longer. People in Europe and North America live, on the average, twice as long as they did a hundred years ago. In other countries, too, people generally live much longer than they once did. Babies, especially, have a far better chance of growing up because of increased protection against infant diseases. However, all countries do not benefit to same degree from this progress in medicine and hygiene. Half the world's people live in Asia, but most of them are concentrated in the coastal regions and on the islands. The same type of populace concentration is true of other continents, although they are often far less populated. There are still vast regions of the world where very few people live: the central regions of the larger continents, mountainous areas, deserts, the far north, and tropical jungles. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, migrations have taken place within certain countries: the cities with their industries have attracted people away from the country. The possibility of earning a fixed salary in a factory or office was more attractive than the possibility of staying on the farm and having one's work destroyed by frost, storms, or droughts. Furthermore, the development of agricultural machinery made it possible for fewer people to do the same amount of work. Thus, at the same time that the industrial revolution made it possible to produce goods more cheaply and more quickly in factories, an agricultural revolution also took place. Instead of leaving fields empty every third year, farmers began to plant clover or some other crop that would enrich the soil. Instead of using only animal fertilizer, farmers began to use chemical fertilizers to keep the soil rich. These methods have enabled French farmers, for example, to get five times as much wheat as was obtained from the same land two centuries ago.

单选题Questions 15-18

单选题In a remarkable moment during the State of the Union address, President George W. Bush caught the attention of the nation with five words: "America is addicted to oil." Soon after the speech, I talked to the President about energy, and he admitted that he had not anticipated the impact of that statement or that some commentators would find it incongruous. I believe he is sincere in wanting to focus efforts more on pursuing alternative energy sources. But his Texas roots, his high-profile advocacy of opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, and other associations with the oil industry have created long-standing public impressions that the President is an oilman who believes in the oil economy. Bush"s predicament mirrors the nation"s own love-hate relationship with 0il. For decades the energy debate in the U. S. has pitted so-called pro-oil realists against idealistic advocates of alternative energy. The pro-oil commentators have attempted to discredit alternatives by saying they make up a tiny share of energy consumed and that dependence on oil is a choice of the marketplace. They assert that our government can and should do little to change this. Former Exxon CEO Lee Raymond echoed such reasoning in 2005, when he noted that in 25 years, even with double-digit growth rates, alternatives like wind and solar power will still provide less than 1% of the energy needed to meet worldwide demand. "I am more interested in staying focused on the 99% ," he said. Yes, advocates of alternative energy must resist the temptation to suggest that energy problems are easily solved. They are not. Relieving our dependence on oil is going to take huge investments of time, money, and political will. But the difficulty of solving the problem doesn"t make doing so any less necessary. With less than 5% of the world"s population, the U. S. consumes 25% of its oil and will spend about $320 billion on oil imports this year. Most of the world"s oil is concentrated in places either hostile to U. S. interests or vulnerable to political upheaval or terrorism. Given that sobering outlook, I believe the balance of realism has passed from those who argue on behalf of oil and a laissez-faire energy policy relying on market evolution to those who recognize that life in America will be far more difficult in coming decades unless there is a major reorientation in the way we get our energy. No one who cares about U. S. foreign policy and long-term economic growth can ignore what is happening in Iran, Russia, or Venezuela. And no one who is honestly assessing the decline of American leverage around the world due to our energy dependence can fail to see that oil is the albatross of U. S. national security. We need an urgent campaign, led by a succession of committed Presidents and Congresses, to promote alternative sources. We could take our time if this were simply a matter of managing an industrial conversion to more cost-effective technologies. Unfortunately, U. S. dependence on ever scarcer fossil fuels has already created conditions that threaten our security and prosperity and undermine international stability. Most of the world"s oil and gas is not controlled by those who respect market forces. Foreign governments control up to 77% of world oil reserves via national oil companies, which set prices through production decisions—and can easily shut off the taps for political reasons. I am not suggesting that markets won"t someday come into play to stanch America"s oil dependence. Eventually, because of scarcity, terrorist attacks, market shocks, and foreign manipulation, the high price of oil will lead to enormous investment in, and political support for, alternatives. The problem is that such investment won"t happen overnight. Even if it did, building supporting infrastructure and changing behavior could take decades. In other words, by the time a sustained energy crisis fully motivates the market, the resulting investment will come too late to prevent the dire consequences of our oil fixation. This is the very essence of a problem requiring government action. That"s why I hope we will look back on President Bush"s declaration about oil addiction as a seminal moment in U. S. history. President Bush could use his standing as an oilman to lend special power to his advocacy of renewable energy. Such action is long overdue.

单选题Questions 6 to 10 are based on the following news.

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单选题If the past couple of weeks are any indication, mainstream media may be primed for a comeback. In July, The Washington Post published its massive "Top Secret America" series, painstakingly detailing the growth of the US intelligence community after 9/11. When it ran, New York Observer editor Kyle Pope crowed (on Twitter, ironically), "Show me the bloggers who could have done this !" The Los Angeles Times recently mobilized a community to action when it broke the news that top city officials in Bell, Caiif. , one of the poorest cities in Los Angeles county, were raking in annual salaries ranging from $100,000 to $ 800,000. Clearly, if mainstream media is an aging fighter against the ropes, it still has a few punches left to throw. But such make-a-difference journalism requires lots of time and money, something most news outlets don't have. And it runs counter to the frantic pace of modern, Web-driven newsrooms. So for journalism to survive in the Digital Age, it needs to be simultaneously fast-paced and substantive, snarky and thought-provoking. Or, at the very least, it must find some middle ground where illuminating investigative pieces and Mel Gibson telephone call mash-ups can coexist. The 24/7 newsroom has become an intractable part of the media landscape, and the Web is the primary battleground news outlets have to win in order to stay competitive. That has forced journalists to become much more mindful of online traffic, which can sap morale. As a recent New York Times piece put it.- "Young journalists who once dreamed of trotting the globe in pursuit of a story are instead shackled to their computers, where they try to eke out a fresh thought or be first to report anything that will impress Google algorithms and draw readers their way. " But the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times pieces demonstrate that, regardless of whether the stories appear in print or online, reporters still need the time and space to be effective watchdogs--to track down sources and slog through financial disclosures, and court documents that often fill the better part of a journalist's working life. Right out of college, I spent several years working for a mid-size regional daily newspaper. I covered endless city and county government meetings, reported on crime and education, and learned that reporters should always carry a sensible pair of shoes in their car in case they are sent into the mountains to cover a wildfire. In my relatively short time in the newspaper trenches, I developed a profound respect for the people who do the decidedly unglamorous work of keeping government honest for little pay and even less job security. The Pew Research Center's State of the News Media 2010 report found that, while reported journalism is contracting and commentary and analysis is growing, 99 percent of the links on blogs circle back to the mainstream press. (Just four outlets--BBC, CNN, The New York Times, and The Washington Post--account for 80 percent of all links. ) The report concludes that new media are largely filled with debate that is dependent on the shrinking base of reporting coming from old media. The same report included polling data showing that 72 percent of Americans feel that most news sources are biased in their coverage, feel overwhelmed rather than informed by the amount of news and information they're taking in. I'm not advocating a return to some supposed halcyon period before the Internet. I'm still a product of my generation. I like the alacrity of the Web and admire its ability to connect people around the world, and to aggregate and spread information at lightning speed. It s warming glow gives me probably 90 percent of the news I consume, and I enjoy commenting on articles that friends post on Facebook. But I hope it won't make me sound prematurely aged to say that sometimes the Internet exhausts me. That I'm troubled by how frequently I find myself sucked into the blogging vortex of endless linkage, circuitous kvetching, and petty media infighting. I often emerge from these binges hours later, bleary-eyed and less informed than when I started. The media need to be quick and smart. They should tell us something new, rather than simply recycle outrage. Some of the watchdog role has been shouldered by nonprofit outfits like the Pulitzer Prize-winning ProPublica--which has recruited a number of top investigative reporters with a mission of producing journalism in the public interest--as well as smaller nonprofit ventures springing up around the country. Many old-school media outlets are moving, toward a primarily Web-focused model. The "Top Secret America" series may be the best example to date of a deeply reported piece that probably could not have been achieved without the resources and support of a major news operation, but which is also packaged appealingly for the Web. All of this seems to indicate that, despite reported journalism's painful contractions, a few small inroads are being made toward creating a new model for news. Solid reporting and thoughtful analysis shouldn't be the sole province of a dying medium.