For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay. Suppose there are two views on the key to becoming a talented person: One is the personal ability and the other the opportunity. You are to make a choice between the two. Write an essay to explain the reasons for your choice. You should write at least 120 words but no more than 180 words.

What Your iPad Knows About You[A] You've finally finished the book your co-worker recommended, so what to read next? If it is 5 a,m., chances are that you're reaching for a romance novel—especially if you're in Texas or Georgia. By early morning, thrillers might start to look more appealing. And if Philip K. Dick is your favorite author, books about beer are probably more up your taste than anything about wine or liquor.[B] These are some of the insights from Scribd Inc. and Oyster, two startups that offer unlimited e-book rentals for a monthly subscription fee. Scribd, Oyster and Entitle Books—which just launched in December—are tracking reader behavior in hopes of figuring out recommendations of exactly what you'll want to pick up next.[C] About 50% of the U.S. population owns a dedicated e-reader, according to a Pew Research study released last month. In addition, 28% read an e-book last year, up from 23% the previous year. The services are expanding. Scribd, a San Francisco-based site that started selling monthly e-book subscriptions last October, announced this month that its app is available on Amazon's Kindle Fire and Kindle Paperwhite. After running exclusively on Apple's operating system, New York-based Oyster plans to expand to Android later this year. And Entitle is considering adding an all-you-can-read feature to complement its current "book of the month"-style subscription service. Subscription services are popular because they "reduce the emotional burden" of purchasing, says Julie Haddon, Scribd vice president of marketing. Buying a book creates pressure to finish and get your money's worth, she adds. In addition, people might try to save money by buying a cheaper book instead of the one they really want.[D] Brian Konash, 34, who works at Web startup Squarespace in Manhattan, joined Oyster two months ago because it didn't cause the buyers' sense of guilty he experienced when purchasing Kindle e-books. "You've already paid for the service, so you can read as much as you want," he says. "With other models, there's that little financial bite each time you want to buy a book and you worry that it's going to be worthless." Mr. Konash, who has been picking books based on the site's suggestions, predicts he'll read up to 10 more books a year beyond his usual 25.[E] An all-access subscription "lowers the activation energy for reading," says Oyster CEO Eric Stromberg. Reading often has a high "activation energy" because there's a time gap between wanting to read a book and then actually getting your hands on it, he says. "When you can order a book and instantly get it on your tablet, you can hear about the book and then read it right there," says Willem van Lancker, Oyster's chief product officer.[F] "From the publishing perspective, the biggest problem is how to get people to care about a new book," says Otis Chandler, CEO of Goodreads, a site where people share what they're reading and post recommendations. Goodreads, which was acquired by Amazon in March, uses an algorithm (运算法则 ) that recommends books that users with similar taste have enjoyed.[G] Oyster and Scribd ask readers to rate books, what they call an "active signal." They also track "passive signals," such as the percentage of a book that a reader finishes and the click rate, or how many people who are shown a book click through to learn more. The companies use that information among other factors to recommend books. Active signals represent what we wish we read, while passive signals are more honest, says Jared Friedman, Scribd chief technology officer. A lot of people give a 5-star rating to "The Great Gatsby," while they read greedily, but don't necessarily rate, thrillers like "The Da Vinci Code," for example.[H] Other findings: Self-help might be a popular market, yet only about 20% of people who start such a book finish it. More than 80% of people who crack the pages of a mystery novel will find out who did it. People read through biographies at 20 pages per hour, while they read at three times that speed for erotica (色情作品). And higher "acceleration factor"—or how much readers speed up as they get closer to finishing—correlates with higher average rating for a book. One of the highest acceleration factors comes from Kurt Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle," which readers start speeding through at the halfway mark, Mr. Friedman says. All three companies allow users to hide their reading behavior from other customers, but users can't opt out of their behavior being collected by the company itself. Entitle, however, says it keeps track of browsing and download information only.[I] Personalized recommendations drive 10 times more browsing traffic than lists based on themes such as "globe-trotting memoirs" or "bad role models" that copy racks at the front of bookstores, Scribd's Mr. Friedman says. The company is interested in combining algorithms with lists to create a list of best sellers that someone would, based on past reading behavior, find interesting. Another possible approach is to suggest different books or genres depending on time of day to take advantage of what the company knows about time-based preferences.[J] The algorithm doesn't just analyze behavior signals, but "reads" through a book's text to pull out different topics, genres and subjects, says Bryan Batten, chief executive of Entitle. There's also a patent-pending (申请专利中的) service called "if these books had a baby," where users can input two books and find a third with similar themes. For example, the "baby" of Joseph Heller's "Catch-22" and Leo Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" is Fyodor Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov" but the product of "Catch-22" and Steve Jobs biography is a book called "Dealers of Lightning," about engineers at Xerox Corp.[K] Entitle operates on a tiered model: two books for $9.99 a month (the most popular plan), three for $14.99, and so on. For customers, the upside is being able to keep the e-books, even if they cancel the service. The services, of course, compete with the library. But libraries have had limited e-book offerings and there are often waits for the books. Robert Wolven, co-chair of the American Library Association's Digital Content Working Group, says demand has increased significantly in the past 18 months. He says he doesn't see the startups as a threat.[L] While libraries' budget for e-books has been growing, licensing restrictions mean that popular titles often aren't available, says Laura Girmscheid, research manager for the trade publication Library Journal, which recently released its fourth annual report on e-books in libraries. This, combined with holds on e-books, is the largest hurdle preventing people from using library e-books more. "It's just not convenient for instant access," Ms. Girmscheid says.

京剧是我国最高雅(exquisite)，表现力最强，因而也是最受欢迎的剧种。京剧还赢得了很多外国戏迷的青睐，被看做是东方艺术的杰出代表。 京剧同西方歌剧的相似之处在于它们都有唱段(aria)和道白(dialogue)，有悲剧，也有喜剧。但它们毕竟是很不一样的戏剧。西方歌剧的表现手法一般比较现实主义，而京剧则大量采用象征手法，对时空变化的表现极其自由。 京剧的另一个特色是脸谱。京剧脸谱象征着人物的性格，不同颜色表示不同的性格。例如，黑色代表刚直，白色表示背叛和狡诈，红色则常用来表示忠诚。

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人们用它来辟邪。

Forthispart,youareallowed30minutestowriteanessaybasedonthePicturebelow.Youshouldstartyouressaywithabriefdescriptionofthepictureandthencommentonpayingwithphone.Youshouldwriteatleast120wordsbutnomorethan180words.

道教(Taoism)是中国土生土长的宗教，已经影响了中国人两千多年。

月饼是我国各族人民喜爱的传统节日 特色食品 (specialty)。中秋节那天，人们一边赏月，一边吃月饼。一个圆圆的月饼全家分着吃，代表着家人团圆。吃月饼的习俗始于 唐代 (the Tang Dynasty)。当时，月饼作为皇家祭品于中秋节所食，至 明清时期 (the Ming and Qing Dynasties)成为全民共同的饮食习俗。时至今日，月饼的品种繁多，风味也因地各异，其中 广式月饼 (Cantonese-style mooncake)和京式月饼广受欢迎。

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So-called "green roofs"—urban rooftops covered with grasses, plants and other types of greenery—are becoming increasingly popular around the world. In France, newly built commercial rooftops must have either greenery or solar panels, according to a recent law. The logic is obvious: Green roofs can reduce the retention(滞留)of【C1】______in urban areas, help to cool down buildings and thereby lower their energy use, and even pull some carbon dioxide from the air and【C2】______it back into plant growth. Plus, they look cool. But the psychological benefits of green roofs to busy office workers may also be【C3】______, according to new research. In a study published in the journal Environmental Psychology, the University of Melbourne's Kate Lee and a group of colleagues found that interrupting a tedious, attention-demanding task with a 40-second "microbreak"—in which one【C4】______looks at a computerized image of a green roof—improved focus as well as subsequent【C5】______on the task. The research adds to a growing scientific【C6】______on the health advantages—psychological and otherwise—of being exposed to views of nature in urban settings, for instance through the presence of parks or trees. Research in this area is so far along, in fact, that researchers are considering whether it might be possible to【C7】______the right "dose" of nature that people need to receive in order to actually【C8】______significant health benefits. Other psychological benefits of nature views have also been【C9】______in recent literature. In one study, research subjects who viewed a 12-minute nature documentary before playing a game that involved managing a fishery resource engaged in more【C10】______behavior. A)accidentally F)feed K)performance B)appearance G)give L)reap C)captured H)heat M)simply D)different I)identify N)substantial E)easily J)literature O)sustainable

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Due Attention Should Be Paid to Internet Safety 1．很多网民的利益及隐私受到侵犯和威胁 2．造成这种现象的原因是…… 3．为了提高网络安全，我认为……

Energy independence. It has a nice ring to it. Doesn't it? If you think so, you're not alone, because energy independence has been the dream of American president for decades, and never more so than in the past few years, when the most recent oil price shock has been partly responsible for kicking off the great recession. "Energy independence" and its rhetorical(修辞的)companion "energy security" are, however, slippery concepts that are rarely thought through. What is it we want independence from, exactly?Most people would probably say that they want to be independent from imported oil. But there are reasons that we buy all that oil from elsewhere. The first reason is that we need it to keep our economy running. Yes, there is a trickle(涓涓细流)of biofuel(生物燃料)available, and more may become available , but most biofuels cause economic waste and environmental destruction. Second, Americans have basically decided that they don't really want to produce all their own oil. They value the environmental quality they preserve over their oil imports from abroad. Vast areas of the United States are off-limits to oil exploration and production in the name of environmental protection. To what extent are Americans really willing to endure the environmental impacts of domestic energy production in order to cut back imports? Third, there are benefits to trade. It allows for economic efficiency, and when we buy things from places that have lower production costs than we do, we benefit. And although you don't read about this much, the United States is also a large exporter of oil products, selling about 2 million barrels of petroleum products per day to about 90 countries. There is no question that the United States imports a great deal of energy and, in fact, relies on that steady flow to maintain its economy. When that flow is interrupted, we feel the pain in short supplies and higher prices. At the same time, we derive massive economic benefits when we buy the most affordable energy on the world market and when we engage in energy trade around the world.

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As an opportunity to highlight women's contributions, International Women's Day has always served to commemorate (纪念) the cutting edge of the global women's movement, from demanding better working conditions in US sweatshop factories of the early 1900s, to voting rights, pay equality and, more recently, promoting women's leadership in politics and business. Recent years have featured women's economic contributions, ranging from women producing nearly 90% of the food in Africa, to 7.8 million women-owned businesses in the U.S. with $1.2 trillion in total receipts. Yet qualified women are continually held back in their efforts to contribute at the highest levels of economic and financial leadership, while global policies and companies abandon the benefits. The disappointing numbers of women participating at the World Economic Forum in January was one highly visible and public demonstration of the challenge: While we are well into the 21st century, many participants and observers at Davos this year expressed astonishment, and even anger, at the extremely low representation of women. In this era, there are many outstanding examples of women's representation at the highest levels of political and corporate leadership, including Christine Lagarde, Sheryl Sandberg, and President Park Geun Hye. Yet even after the absence of women had been duly noted at the Forum last year, women's representation at Davos this year actually dropped, from 17% to 16%. Likewise, despite numerous studies that show the financial and governance benefits of mixed gender boards, global corporate boardrooms remain male-dominated, with women accounting for less than 15% of public company corporate board positions. For years, the explanation given for minimal board diversity has been a lack of qualified and experienced candidates. The solution offered was patience: Improvement was promised because of the rapidly growing number of women with middle and upper management experience. In fact, since the 1970s women's graduation rates from the most famous universities around the world have climbed to equal those of their male counterparts. Since then, many have gained equivalent skills and experience in the private and public sectors.