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Creative Destruction of Higher EducationA)Higher education is one of the great successes of the welfare country. What was once the privilege of a few has become a middle-class entitlement, thanks mainly to government support. Some 3. 5 million Americans and 5 million Europeans will graduate this summer. In the modern world universities are developing rapidly: China has added nearly 30 million places in 20 years. Yet the business has changed little since Aristotle taught at the Athenian Lyceum(雅典学园): young students still gather at a specific time and place to listen to the wisdom of scholars.B)At present, a revolution has begun, thanks to three forces: rising costs, changing demand and new technology. The result will be the complete change of the university. While the prices of cars, computers and much else have greatly fallen, universities have been able to charge ever more for the same service because they are protected by public funding and the high value employers place on degrees. For two decades the cost of going to college in America has risen by 1.6 percentage points more than inflation every year.C)For most students, the university remains a great deal. The total lifetime income from obtaining a college degree, in net-present-value(净现值)terms, can increase as much as $590,000. But an increasing number of students have gone deep into debt, especially the 47% in America and 28% in Britain who do not complete their course. As for them, the degree by no means values for that sum of money. And the government becomes more and more unwilling to fund the university. In America government funding per student fell by 27% between 2007 and 2012, while average tuition fees, adjusted for inflation, rose by 20% . In Britain, tuition fees close to zero two decades ago can reach $15,000 a year.D)The second factor resulting in change is the labor market. In the standard model of higher education, people go to university in their 20s. A degree is an entry ticket to the professional classes. But automation is beginning to have the same effect on white-collar jobs as it has on blue-collar ones. According to a study from Oxford University, 47% of occupations are at risk of being automated in the next few decades. As innovation wipes out some jobs and changes others, people will need to top up their human capital all through their lives.E)By themselves, these two forces would be pushing change. A third—technology—ensures it. The internet, which has turned businesses from newspapers through music to book sale upside down, will turn over higher education. Now the MOOC, or " Massive Open Online Course", is offering students the chance to listen to star lecturers and get a degree for a fraction of the cost of attending a university. MOOCs started in 2008: however, they have so far failed to live up to their promise. Largely because there is no formal system of accreditation(认证), drop-out rates have been high. But this is changing as private investors and existing universities are drawn in. One provider, Coursera, claims over 8 million registered users. Though its courses are free, it received its first $ 1 million in incomes last year after introducing the option to pay a fee of between $ 30 and $ 100 to have course results certified. Another, Udacity, has teamed up with AT&T and Georgia Tech to offer an online master's degree in computing, at less than a third of the cost of the traditional version. Harvard Business School will soon offer an online "pre-MBA" for $ 1,500. Starbucks has offered to help pay for its staff to take online degrees with Arizona State University.F)MOOCs will destroy different universities in different ways. Not all will suffer. Oxford and Harvard could benefit. People of great ambition will always want to go to the best universities to meet each other, and the digital economy tends to favor a few large institutions in charge of its operation. The big names will be able to sell their MOOCs around the world. But ordinary universities may suffer the fate of many newspapers. Were the market for higher education to perform in future as that for newspapers has done over the past decade or two, universities' incomes would fall by more than half, employment in the industry would drop by nearly 30% and more than 700 institutions would shut their doors. The rest would need to adjust themselves to survive.G)Like all revolutions, the one taking place in higher education will have victims. Many towns and cities rely on universities. In some ways MOOCs will further make the difference both among students and among teachers. The talented students will be much more comfortable than the weaker outside the structured university environment. Superstar lecturers will earn a fortune, to the anger of their less charming colleagues.H)Politicians will come under pressure to halt this revolution. They should remember that state spending should benefit society as a whole, not protect professors from competition. The change of universities will benefit many more people than it hurts. Students in the rich world will have access to higher education at lower cost and greater convenience. The flexible nature of MOOCs appeals to older people who need training. EdX, another provider, says that the average age of its online students in America is 31. In the modern world online courses also offer a way for countries like Brazil to go ahead Western ones and supply higher education much more cheaply. And education has now become a global market: the Massachusetts Institute of Technology discovered Battushig Myanganbayar, a remarkably talented Mongolian teenager, through an online electronics course.I)Rather than maintaining the old model, governments should make the new one work better. They can do so by supporting common standards for accreditation. In Brazil, for instance, students completing courses take a government-run exam. In most Western countries it would likewise make sense to have a single, independent organization that certifies exams. Changing an ancient institution will not be easy. But it does promise better education for many more people. Rarely have need and opportunity so neatly come together.

For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay on ecological civilization construction. You should write at least 120 words but no more than 180 words.

If a potential customer enjoys your advert, they are more likely to buy your product. It's a simple【C1】______ , but it is extremely difficult to know how well your advert is being received in the real world. Now a new system could help【C2】______ know exactly how their latest offering is going down with viewers, just by watching their face. The system, developed by Daniel McDuff and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, looks at how【C3】______ in the face move in response to watching a video. Software can then classify what counts as positive【C4】______ responses and smiles during the video and from that predict which adverts the viewer most enjoys. The team collected more than 3 200 videos of people, whose faces were【C5】______ by their own computer's webcam as they watched three adverts online during the Super Bowl in 2011. After each commercial—one for Doritos, one for Google and one for Volkswagen—the viewers were asked if they liked the video and whether they would want to watch it again. In tests, the system made correct【C6】______ more than 75 per cent of the time. The system would be a【C7】______ for advertisers trying to grab the attention of potential customers on the Internet. In future, the system could be used to personalize adverts for viewers as they watch programs online, depending on their【C8】______ , or as a more【C9】______ way of testing how good a new advert is at【C10】______ to customers.A) facial F ) created K) predictionsB) boon G ) suggestions L ) advertisersC) reaction H ) concept M) appealingD) filmed I ) effective N) peopleE) face J ) eyes O) muscles

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Forthispart,youareallowed30minutestowriteashortessay.Youshouldstartyouressaywithabriefdescriptionofthepictureandthenexpressyourviewsontheimportanceofhavingacleartarget.Youshouldwriteatleast120wordsbutnomorethan180words.

Schools outside cities[A] With its sandy beaches, charming ruins and occasionally blue waters, the Isle of Wight is a perfect spot off England's southern coast. Wealthy Londoners sail their boats there. It seems odd that such a place should contain some of the worst-performing schools in England. But it does: and in this, the Isle of Wight is not quite as strange as it seems.[B] Provisional figures show that last year just 49% of 16-year-olds on the island got at least five C grades, including in English and maths, in GCSE exams. That is fewer than in any of London's 32 boroughs (行政区), or indeed anywhere in the southern half of England apart from nearby Portsmouth. In the previous year the Isle of Wight was second to bottom in the whole country. Just 23% of pupils entitled to free school meals (a representative of poverty) got five decent grades, compared with a national average of 36%. In September the island's schools were deemed so bad that Hampshire County Council took them over.[C] Part of the explanation is distinctively local. Luring good teachers to an out-of-the-way spot is hard. In 2011 the island endured a confused transition from the sort of three-tier school system common in America, with primary, middle and secondary schools, to the two-tier one that is standard in England. But its results were bad even before that change. The Isle of Wight's real problems are structural. It suffers from three things that might appear to be advantages but are actually the opposite. The island lacks a large city: it has some, but not many, poor children: and it is almost entirely white.[D] England's worst schools used to be urban, poor and black—or sometimes Asian. But these days pupils, including poor ones, often fare better in inner cities than elsewhere. In Tower Hamlets, an east London borough that is the third most deprived place in England, children entitled to free school meals do better in GCSE exams than do all children in the country as a whole. Bangladeshis, who are concentrated in that borough, used to perform considerably worse than whites nationally: now they do better.[E] Poor whites are now the country's signal educational underachievers. Just 31% of white British children entitled to free school meals got five good GCSEs two years ago, fewer than poor children from any other ethnic group. They fare especially badly in suburbs, small towns and on the coast—places like the Isle of Wight.[F] Although the island contains pockets of poverty, it is hardly poverty-stricken: overall it comes 106th out of 326 local authorities in England on the government's deprivation index. A bigger problem is a pervasive lack of faith in education as a means of self-improvement. Steph Boyd, who runs a new free school on the island, says some parents doubt whether the education system can help their children— not altogether surprising given the island's failings. A few are more anxious for their offspring to go out and get jobs. And nearby career options are limited, points out Pat Goodhead, the headmistress of Christ the King College, the island's best secondary school. The jobs pages of the County Press, the local newspaper, are filled with advertisements for care workers, barmen and cleaners.The advantage of deep poverty[G] Oddly, the Isle of Wight might do better if it were poorer. Truly poor parts of England receive large amounts of government cash. Schools in Tower Hamlets get ￡7,014 a year for each child, compared with ￡4,489 in the Isle of Wight. In addition, secondary schools get ￡900 for each poor child thanks to the "pupil premium" introduced by the coalition government. Poverty-stricken spots also benefit from energetic, idealistic young teachers. Teach First, a programme that sends top graduates into poor schools for at least two years, started in London in 2002. Then it expanded to other big cities such as Manchester. Last year it started sending teachers to south coast towns, but in tiny numbers. Of the 1,261 graduates who joined the programme last year, just 25 were placed on the entire south coast, compared with 553 in London.[H] Poor children do best in schools where they are either scarce or very numerous. Where they are few, teachers can give them plenty of attention. Where they are numerous, as in the East End of London, schools have no choice but to focus on them. Most ill-served are those who fall in between, in schools where they are insufficiently numerous to merit attention but too many to succeed alone. The Isle of Wight's six state secondary schools are all stuck in the unhappy middle: between 9% and 17% of the children in them are entitled to free school meals.[I] One woman, who moved to the island from east London with her young daughter, suspects that the Isle of Wight's lack of diversity is itself a problem. She may be right about that. Illiteracy among white British children can be easier to overlook than illiteracy among immigrants. Where schools are forced to help the latter, natives often benefit too, says Matthew Coffey of Ofsted, the schools inspectorate. That seems to have happened in Lincolnshire, which has seen a surge in Portuguese and east European immigration.[J] The government and Ofsted are increasingly worried about the gap in attainment between poor white Britons and the rest. The Department for Education reckons changing the way schools' success is measured could help. The current emphasis on grades of C and above encourages teachers to focus on children on the edge of attaining that grade, at the expense of those who do really badly. Beginning in 2016 schools will have to track more closely the progress of each child, no matter what grades they are predicted to get. That should raise attentions of schools that have been able to coast along, ignoring the neediest, to give them more attention. But such reforms may not make much difference on the Isle of Wight. Schools there have struggled even against the current benchmark.[K] They might look to east London for inspiration. The dramatic improvement in Tower Hamlets resulted partly from efforts to change local culture. Schools ran programmes through mosques to tackle absenteeism (旷课). Parents were encouraged to become governors. But change will be harder outside the capital. Tower Hamlets benefits from nearby Canary Wharf, the capital's second financial district, which supplies good jobs and middle-class advisers. The levers of change are less obvious where poor children are scattered thin. And there are fewer obvious institutions through which to try and improve the lot of the godless white majority.

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They call them the new bread earners. They are women, and they are set to take over. Women are beginning to rise【C1】______to the top in the workplace all over the developed world New figures show that in almost a third of American【C2】______with a working wife, the woman brings home more money than her husband and that they now occupy half the country's"high-paying, executive, administrative and【C3】______occupations", compared with 34 per cent 20 years ago. The trend is【C4】______by two main factors, experts say—a【C5】______acceptance of men as househusbands and mass unemployment of male white-collar workers from the technology, finance and media industries in the last three years. The University of Maryland has【C6】______a report that shows women to be the chief earner in 11 per cent of all US marriages. Pushing a buggy (婴儿车) on a sunny afternoon in New York's Central Park last week, Jonathan Blinderman, 33, said, he was【C7】______he had been able to see every moment of his daughter Lindsay's first six months of life while his wife, Sage, was out working. It is a sign of these times of【C8】______that when he mentions his status at parties he is either praised as a saint or【C9】______as a slave-cum-freeloader (爱占便宜的奴隶). For the revolution is nowhere near complete. But Maria Cancian, an economist at the University of Wisconsin, said【C10】______women were increasingly looking for househusbands. A. caused B. proud C. carelessly D. mocked E. produced F. managerial G. greedy H. precaution I. argued J. transition K. ambitious L. tackled M. growing N. steadily O. households

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各地火锅风格各异，所使用的火锅原料也不尽相同。

还有各种与龙相关的民俗活动，其中最受欢迎的就是赛龙舟(Dragon Boat Race)。

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四大发明 (the Four Great Inventions)是指中国古代对世界有巨大影响的四种发明。即造纸术、印刷术、 火药 (gunpowder)和指南针。造纸术和印刷术使信息的记录和传播有了革命性的进步。火药的发明和传播改变了 中世纪 (the Middle Ages)的战争模式。而指南针大大帮助了欧洲航海家探索新航路。四大发明是古代中国先进科学和技术的象征，在中国和世界文明发展中都有着重要的意义。

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There was a time, not that long ago, when women were considered smart if they played dumb to get a man, and women who went to college were more interested in getting a "Mrs. degree" than a bachelor's. Even today, it's not unusual for a woman to get whispered and unrequested counsel from her grandmother that an advanced degree could hurt her in the marriage market. "There were so many misperceptions out there about education and marriage that I decided to sort out the facts," said economist Betsey Stevenson, an assistant professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. So along with Wharton colleague Adam Isen, Stevenson calculated national marriage data from 1950 to 2008 and found that the marriage penalty women once paid for being well educated has largely disappeared. "In other words, the difference in marriage rates between those with college degrees and those without is very small," said Stephanie Coontz, a family historian at Evergreen State College. The new analysis also found that while high-school dropouts (辍学学生) had the highest marriage rates in the 1950s, today college-educated women are much more likely to marry than those who don't finish high school. Of course, expectations have changed dramatically in the last half century. "In the 1950s, a lot of women thought they needed to marry right away," Coontz said. "Real wages were rising so quickly that men in their 20s could afford to marry early. But they didn't want a woman who was their equal. Men needed and wanted someone who knew less." In fact, she said, research published in 1946 documented that 40 percent of college women admitted to playing dumb on dates. "These days, few women feel the need to play down their intelligence or achievements," Coontz said. The new research has more good news for college grads. Stevenson said the data indicate that modern college-educated women are more likely to be married before age 40, are less likely to divorce, and are more likely to describe their marriages as "happy". The marriages of well-educated women tend to be more stable because the brides are usually older as well as wiser, Stevenson said.

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