Forthispart,youareallowed30minutestowriteanessaybasedonthepicturebelow.Youshouldstartyouressaywithabriefdescriptionofthepictureandthencommentonpeople'sseekingforhappinessendlessly.Youshouldwriteatleast120wordsbutnomorethan180words.
在中国，赠送礼物应考虑具体情况和场合。礼物常用红色或其他喜庆的颜色(festive color)来包装，但白色或黑色不适宜用于此。当你将礼物递出去时，收礼者(recipient)可能会礼貌谢绝。在这种情况下，你可以试着将礼物再一次送出去。通常收礼者在客人离开之后才打开礼物。此外，送礼还有一些禁忌(taboo)，如给夫妻送伞就不合适，因为中文里“伞”与“散”同音。
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For many people in the U.S., sports are not just for fun. They are almost a religion. Thousands of sports fans buy expensive tickets to watch their favorite teams and athletes play in【C1】______. Other fans watch the games at home, not leaving their TV sets a minute. The most【C2】______sports fans never miss a game. Many a wife becomes a "sports widow" during her husband's favorite season. America's devotion to athletics has created a new class of【C3】______people: professional athletes. Sports stars often receive million-dollar salaries. Some even make big money appearing in【C4】______for soft drinks, shoes and so on. Not all Americans【C5】______sports, but athletics are an important part of their culture. Throughout their school life, Americans learn to play many sports. All students take physical education classes in school. Athletic events at universities attract many fans and【C6】______the whole community. Many people also enjoy non-competitive【C7】______like hiking, biking, horseback riding, camping or hunting. To communicate with American, it helps if you can talk sports. Sports in America represent the international【C8】______of the people who play. Many sports were【C9】______from other countries. European immigrants (移民) brought tennis, golf, bowling and boxing to America. Football and baseball came from other Old World games. Only basketball has a truly American origin. Even today some【C10】______"foreign" sports like soccer are gaining American fans. In 1994 the U.S. hosted the World Cup for the first time ever. A. wealthy B. benefit C. duration D. constant E. imported F. activities G. devoted H. necessarily I. worship J. person K. comprised L. advertisements M. heritage N. sufficient O. formerly
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这天，家人团聚在一起，也会纪念家族的祖先。
信用卡(credit card)在1985年引入中国。此后，信用卡的发卡量以惊人的速度增长，到2011年达到了2．85亿张。信用卡给消费者带来诸多好处。用卡付账时，持卡人不需要携带大量现金，还会经常得到一些额外的奖励。而且，持卡人还可以从发卡机构获得一定数额的贷款。然而，信用卡也常常使持卡人过度消费，购买一些他们并不真正需要的商品。
皮影戏
(shadow play)是中国的一种民间艺术，拥有悠久的历史。皮影戏所需要的演员是用牛皮做的皮影人形，由一个或几个人控制着，并用光将它们反射到幕布上。皮影戏在陕西和甘肃地区最为流行，经常在庙会、婚礼和葬礼等场合演出。皮影戏是用来驱邪的，人们希望皮影戏的演出能给他们带来好运。精致生动的皮影人形已经成为一种收藏品，深受外国人的喜爱。
{{B}}Part II Listening Comprehension{{/B}}
李白是
唐朝
(the Tang Dynasty)的著名诗人。他和他的朋友杜甫是唐代中期中国诗歌繁盛时期最杰出的两位人物。他一生四处游历，写下了大约1000首诗篇。这些诗堪称是赞美友情、享受大自然和饮酒作乐的模板。他的诗浪漫、豪迈，想象力丰富。作为一个浪漫主义天才，李白把中国的传统诗歌形式推向了一个新的高度，对后世的诗歌产生了深远的影响。
BPart Ⅳ Translation/B
它位于浙江省省会杭州，水域面积约6平方公里。
中国是一个多民族国家，具有经济发展不平衡的特点。在这块辽阔的土地上，人们使用多种语言和
方言
(dialects)。几十年来，尽管政府一直号召推广
普通话
(Mandarin)作为标准汉语，但在相当多的人口中，普通话还未能成为日常使用的交流工具。这显然阻碍了经济发展与社会进步。毫无疑问，推广和提倡普通话对加快中国改革开放的步伐是举足轻重的。
BSection B/B
In times of economic crisis, Americans turn to their families for support. If the Great Depression is any guide, we may see a drop in our skyhigh divorce rate. But this won't necessarily represent an increase in happy marriages. In the long run, the Depression weakened American families, and the current crisis will probably do the same. We tend to think of the Depression as a time when families pulled together to survive huge job losses. By 1932, when nearly one-quarter of the workforce was unemployed, the divorce rate had declined by around 25% from 1929. But this doesn't mean people were suddenly happier with their marriages. Rather, with incomes decreasing and insecure jobs, unhappy couples often couldn't afford to divorce. They feared neither spouse could manage alone. Today, given the job losses of the past year, fewer unhappy couples will risk starting separate households. Furthermore, the housing market meltdown will make it more difficult for them to finance their separations by selling their homes. After financial disasters family members also tend to do whatever they can to help each other and their communities. A 1940 book, The Unemployed Man and His Family, described a family in which the husband initially reacted to losing his job "with tireless search for work. " He was always active, looking for odd jobs to do. The problem is that such an impulse is hard to sustain. Across the country, many similar families were unable to maintain die initial boost in morale (士气). For some, the hardships of life without steady work eventually overwhelmed their attempts to keep their families together. The divorce rate rose again during the rest of the decade as the recovery took hold. Millions of American families may now be in the initial stage of their responses to the current crisis, working together and supporting one another through the early months of unemployment. Today's economic crisis could well generate a similar number of couples whose relationships have been irreparably (无法弥补地) ruined. So it's only when the economy is healthy again that we'll begin to see just how many broken families have been created.
Here comes the e-book revolution A) At what temperature do electronic books catch fire? We're going to find out sometime this year. E-book sales are about to ignite. On Monday, Amazon.com is expected to unveil a new version of its Kindle reader. It will probably be a lot better and a little cheaper than the first version. But the real news already broke this week: A company spokesman announced that Amazon plans to offer Kindle books on Cell Phones. This news countered Google's announcement that the 1.5 million public domain books available on its Google Book Search offering will soon be available (free, of course) via a new Cell Phone application. B) I believe that Cell Phones will quickly outpace the dedicated e-book readers, including the Kindle, as the platform of choice for e-book readers. Leading the pack? The iPhone, ironically. It's worth noting that Amazon.com sold more Kindles (at least 500,000) in its first year of sales than Apple sold iPods in its first year (378,000). Apple may not understand the value of e-books, but iPhone users will embrace them anyway. The reason is simple: The iPhone has a huge, high-quality screen. And its user base includes millions of people who love to do everything on their iPhones, including reading, which they're already doing with online content. I (and others) have been predicting for some time that Apple will ship a killer tablet at some point. This device, I believe, will have the iPhone user interface and a super high-quality screen. It will be ideal for reading e-books as well. C) Just because e-books are available on better (the new Kindle) and more (all Cell Phones) devices doesn't mean people will read them. But mark my words, read them they will. Six trends will conspire (共同促成) over the next year to drive e-book reading to levels that will surprise just about everybody. D) The economy is in the tank, and people are looking to cut costs any way they can. An Amazon Kindle pays for itself after the purchase of 20 or 30 books, then starts paying dividends. You save big on books, magazines and newspapers. These savings will grow even more attractive as the recession deepens. E) Interest in protecting the environment just keeps growing and growing. The idea of getting a daily newspaper or a weekly or monthly magazine on paper seems incredibly wasteful to the point of decadence. Environmental consciousness will drive e-book acceptance. F) The book publishing industry is one of the most backward, musty, out-of-date businesses in our economy. While every other kind of information moves at the speed of light, the process of publishing a book is like something from the Middle Ages. For authors, it can take months to even find a literary agent willing to represent their work. Then the agent takes months to find a publisher. Then it takes ages for the publishing company to get the book out there. People are already circumventing (设法回避) all this by self-publishing. The self-publishing industry is the only area of paper-book publishing that's thriving right now. Soon enough, a huge number of authors are finally going to get fed up with the publishing industry and just self-publish electronically. They'll hire their own freelance editors, and do the marketing themselves. The publication of a finished manuscript will take minutes, rather than months. G) Old-school thinkers in the publishing industry will lament (悲叹) the slap-dash nature of self-published e-books, and sniff that books are no longer published with the quality and care that they used to. (Never mind that book publishers abandoned high standards years ago in previous cost-cutting initiatives.) The world will pass them by as the book industry undergoes the same transition that happened with the media and blogs. First, the media didn't understand blogs. Then they invalidated them. Then they accepted them. And now blogs are where the credibility is. Every columnist and reporter has a blog, and now major TV news programs are built around the opinions of blog-gers. A similar transformation will take place about the credibility of self-published and electronic books. H) Like the move from silent pictures to "talkies," the transition to electronic publishing will prove fatal to laggards. Those aggressively pursuing and developing e-books will rise to take control of the publishing industry. Part of this revolution will happen in e-book marketing. The new generation of e-book publishers will leverage social media, contextual advertising and other innovations. For anyone who spends time online, specific e-book titles will increasingly be advertised and marketed and integrated into other content. E-books, now mostly invisible, will soon be everywhere. I) The shift from print to electronic will change the nature of the book itself. Many books will be shorter. They'll be more timely and culturally relevant. They'll be more colorfully and engagingly written. And they'll go after young readers like nothing before. As in Japan, this will spark a new cultural phenomenon of young people not just reading, but also writing novels and other book types on their mobile devices. The idea that "people don't read anymore," especially young people, will be revealed as false. Young people today read more, and write a lot more, than any generation in history. To date, they've been unexcited about books, magazines and newspapers because they grew up with social networking and social media. Once books are electronic, relevant and social, too, they'll start reading and writing books like crazy. J) And, finally, the newspaper industry is dying. The old method of physically delivering blog entries on dead tree pulp is out-of-date. It's very simple. Newspapers that embrace e-books will survive. Those that don't, won't. If you'd like to get a stark view of the relative economics of electronic vs. paper newspapers, check out a blog post on the Silicon Valley Insider. The blog did the math and determined that the New York Times could buy every single subscriber an Amazon Kindle e-book reader, and it would still cost them half as much as it will cost them to send paper newspapers for just one year. After decades of false starts, the e-book revolution is finally upon us. By this time next year, e-books will be totally mainstream.
{{B}}Section B{{/B}}
{{B}}Part Ⅳ Translation{{/B}}
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