这本书是为非英语专业学生提高阅读水平设计的。

7月底， 中国环境保护部 (China's Environment Protection Ministry)发布了今年上半年空气质量状况报告。报告称，除了 拉萨 (Lhasa)、海口、舟山和惠州四个城市，我国其他主要大城市的空气质量均未达标。造成这一结果的原因有很多，其中包括不断增长的机动车数量和工业品产量。空气污染状况的不断恶化严重威胁公众的健康。一位官员表示，一份旨在控制空气污染的方案将在年内公布。

纸张发明之前，人们将文字刻在平整的竹片或木片上。由竹片或木片制成的书很笨重，不方便阅读和携带。 东汉时期 (the Eastern Han Dynasty)，蔡伦利用 树皮 (tree bark)、 麻头 (hemp)、破布等来造纸，得名“蔡伦纸”。由于轻便价廉，这种纸很快得到推广并取代竹片和木片。随后，中国的造纸技术流传至世界各地。造纸术是中国的四大发明之一，是中华民族对世界文明的杰出贡献。

“汉语桥”比赛旨在激发各国学生学习汉语的兴趣及加强世界对汉语和中国文化的了解。

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There's No Place Like Home[A] On almost any night of the week, Churchill's Restaurant is hopping. The 10-year-old hot spot in Rockville Centre, Long Island, is packed with locals drinking beer and eating burgers, with some customers spilling over onto the street. "We have lots of regulars—people who are recognized when they come in," says co-owner Kevin Culhane. In fact, regulars make up more than 80 percent of the restaurant's customers. "People feel comfortable and safe here," Culhane says, "This is their place."[B] Thriving neighborhood restaurants are one small data point in a larger trend I call the new localism. The basic idea: the longer people stay in their homes and communities, the more they identify with those places, and the greater their commitment to helping local businesses and institutions thrive, even in a downturn. Several factors are driving this process, including an aging population, suburbanization, the Internet, and an increased focus on family life. And even as the recession has begun to yield to recovery, our commitment to our local roots is only going to grow deeper. Evident before the recession, the new localism will shape how we live and work in the coming decades, and may even influence the course of our future politics.[C] Perhaps nothing will be as surprising about 21st-century America as its settledness. For more than a generation Americans have believed that "spatial mobility" would increase, and, as it did, feed a trend toward rootlessness and anomie (社会道德沦丧). In 2000, Harvard's Robert Putnam made a point in Bowling Alone, in which he wrote about the "civic malaise" he saw gripping the country. In Putnam's view, society was being undermined, largely due to suburbanization and what he called "the growth of mobility."[D] Yet in reality Americans actually are becoming less nomadic (游牧的). As recently as the 1970s as many as one in five people moved annually; by 2006, long before the current recession took hold, that number was 14 percent, the lowest rate since the census (人口普查) starting following movement in 1940. Since then tougher times have accelerated these trends, in large part because opportunities to sell houses and find new employment have dried up. In 2008, the total number of people changing residences was less than those who did so in 1962, when the country had 120 million fewer people. The stay-at-home trend appears particularly strong among aging boomers, who stay tied to their suburban homes—close to family, friends, clubs, churches, and familiar surroundings.[E] The trend will not bring back the corner grocery stores and the declining organizations—bowling leagues, Boy Scouts, and such—cited by Putnam and others as the traditional glue of American communities. Nor will our car-oriented suburbs copy the close neighborhood feel so celebrated by romantic urbanists. Instead, we're evolving in ways fit for a postindustrial society. It will not spell the decline of Wal-Mart or Costco, but will express itself in scores of alternative institutions, such as thriving local weekly newspapers that have withstood the shift to the Internet far better than big-city dailies.[F] Our less mobile nature is already reshaping the corporate world. The kind of corporate mobility described in Peter Kilborn's recent book, Next Stop, Reloville: Life Inside America's Rootless Professional Class, in which families relocate every couple of years so the breadwinner can reach a higher step on the managerial ladder, will become less common in years ahead. A smaller group of corporate executives may still move from place to place, but surveys reveal many executives are now unwilling to move even for a good promotion. Why? Family and technology are two key factors working against mobility, in the workplace and elsewhere.[G] Family, as one Pew researcher notes, "matters more than money when people make decisions about where to live." Interdependence is replacing independence. More parents are helping their children financially well into their 30s and 40s; the numbers of "boomerang kids" moving back home with their parents, has also been growing as job options and the ability to buy houses has decreased for the young. Recent surveys of the emerging generation suggest this family-centric focus will last well into the coming decades.[H] Nothing allows for geographic choice more than the ability to work at home. Demographer (人口学家) Wendell Cox suggests there will be more people working electronically at home full time than taking mass transportation, making it the largest potential source of energy savings on transportation. In the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles, almost one in 10 workers is a part-time telecommuter. Some studies indicate that more than one quarter of the U.S. workforce could eventually participate in this new work pattern. Even IBM, whose initials were once jokingly said to stand for "I've Been Moved," has changed its approach. About 40 percent of the company's workers now labor at home or remotely from a client's location.[I] These home-based workers become critical to the local economy. They will eat in local restaurants, attend fairs and festivals, take their kids to soccer practices, ballet lessons, or religious youth-group meetings. This is not merely a suburban phenomenon; localism also means a stronger sense of identity for urban neighborhoods as well as smaller towns.[J] Could the new localism also affect our future politics? Throughout our history, we have always preferred our politics more on the home-cooked side. On his visit to America in the early 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville was struck by the decentralized nature of the country. "The intelligence and the power are spread abroad," he wrote, "and instead of radiating from a point, they cross each other in every direction."[K] This is much the same today. The majority of Americans still live in a combination of smaller towns and cities, including many suburban towns within large metropolitan regions. After decades of hurried mobility, we are seeing a return to placeness, along with more choices for individuals, families, and communities. For entrepreneurs like Kevin Culhane and his workers at Churchill's, it's a phenomenon that may also offer a lease on years of new profits. "We're holding our own in these times because we appeal to the people around here," Culhane says. And as places like Long Island become less bedroom community and more round-the-clock location for work and play, he's likely to have plenty of hungry customers.

城镇化(urbanization)是指农村人口向城市迁移的过程。衡量一个国家城镇化水平的一个重要指标是农村和城镇地区的人口分布。去年，中国的城镇化率超过了50%。这标志着我国步入了一个全新的“城市型社会”。城镇化已经成为我国社会和经济发展的重要组成部分。它为城市居民提供了更好的教育和更多的就业机会，不但提高了人们的生活水平，也丰富了人们的文化体验。

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Forthispart,youareallowed30minutestowriteashortessay.Youshouldstartyouressaywithabriefdescriptionofthepictureandthenexpressyourviewsontheburdenchildrenarefacing.Youshouldwriteatleast120wordsbutnomorethan180words.

先逛店后网购 (showrooming)指先到传统实体商店查看某件商品，之后到网上低价买入的行为。虽然网上的产品文字描述和图片展示很详尽，但是上网购物仍有各种不足之处。人们在购买某些商品前倾向于亲眼看一下，如果对商品满意，就回家从网上购买。购物网站上的卖家没有店铺租金和商品陈列方面的成本支出，因此同一种产品，其网上价格比实体店相对较低。

It has been said that everyone lives by selling something. In the light of this statement, teachers live by selling【C1】______, philosophers by selling wisdom and priests by selling【C2】______comfort. Though it may be possible to measure the value of【C3】______good in terms of money, it is extremely difficult to estimate the true value of the services which people perform for us. There are times when we would【C4】______give everything we possess to save our lives, yet we might grudge paying a surgeon a high fee for offering us precisely this service. The conditions of society are such that【C5】______have to be paid for in the same way that goods are paid for at a shop. Everyone has something to sell. Tramps(流浪汉)seem to be the only【C6】______to this general rule. Beggars almost sell themselves as human being to【C7】______the pity of passers-by. But real tramps are not beggars. They have nothing to sell and require nothing from others. In seeking independence, they do not【C8】______their human dignity. A tramp may ask you for money, but he will never ask you to feel sorry for him. We often speak of tramps with【C9】______and put them in the same class as beggars, but how many of us can honestly say that we have not felt a little【C10】______of their simple way of life and their freedom from care?A)arouse B)knowledge C)scored D)sacrificeE)material F)invulnerable G)spiritual H)anxiousI)envious J)willingly K)skills L)associateM)happiness N)exception O)contempt

中国的汽车业在近30年间取得了巨大的成就。在20世纪70年代，中国每年生产的轿车还不足3000辆。而在去年，我国轿车的产销量都突破了1000万辆，位居全球之首。中国的品牌车已经有了长足的进步。一些中国的一流厂家，如 上汽集团 (SAIC)和 吉利汽车 (Geely)，正开始在国外推出品牌。去年他们出口了90万辆轿车，而这个数量还会不断增加。

传统中医(traditional Chinese medicine)可以不借助任何仪器给病人治病，堪称奇迹。

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BPart III Reading Comprehension/B

Every so often, late at night, David Woodland steals away to the den of his home in Aberdeen, Washington, so that he can check stock prices on the Internet Mr. Woodland, a 78-year-old retired insurance salesman, delights at how with the click of a mouse, he can tap into the facts and fortunes of Wall Street. "If I get a bright idea late at night," Mr. Woodland said, "I go into the office, fire up the computer and put a buy or sell order in." While online trading is popularly regarded as the province of any traders in their 20s and 30s, jumping in and out of the market to make quick profits, it is now being invaded by millions of people like Mr. Woodland—senior investors who bring much larger accounts and more stability to this fast-growing corner of the markets. The low cost of doing business online—now as little as $7 a trade—and the excitement of riding a bull market are the lures (诱惑) for many older investors—just as they are for the young. They are dismissing their full-service brokers, who offer research and advice but often charge more than $100 a trade, and instead are picking their own stocks, after downloading companies' annual reports and other research basics. "These things are incredible tools, now in the hands of an individual investor," said Carol Potts, 56, a retired crafts designer in Santa Barbara, California. "There's no reason for me to have financial advisers. I am very analytical, and I like to get involved in research." According to a survey this fall of 630 people over 50 by Charles Schwab & Co., many older investors say the Internet has made them more confident about their investments and more willing to trust their own judgment. But such confidence may also cause some to gamble away their retirement nest eggs, financial experts warn. "If stocks enter a bear market, it could prove disastrous for retirees, who are so dependent on their savings."