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明朝前期 (the early Ming Dynasty)，中国是世界上最发达的国家之一。1405年到1433年间，明政府七次派郑和率领大规模船队出使 西洋 (the Western Ocean)。郑和拜访了 东南亚 (Southeast Asia)、南亚和东非等地区的30多个国家和地区。他用珍贵的礼物表达中国与他们友好交往的愿望，得到了各国的热情回应。郑和下西洋传播了中国文明，加强了明政府与世界各国的联系，促进了中国与其他国家文化与经济的交流。

{{B}}Part Ⅳ Translation{{/B}}

Directions：For this part，you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay entitled Post-holiday Syndrome Among Students．You should write at least 120 words but no more than 180 words．Outlines are given below in Chinese：1．很多学生在开学伊始都会出现假期综合征；2．出现这一现象的原因；3．我的建议。

Topic It Pays to Focus One's Efforts For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay-entitled It Pays to Focus One's Efforts by commenting on the saying, "Person who chases two rabbits catches neither." You should write at least 120 words but no more than 180 words.

{{B}}Part III Reading Comprehension{{/B}}

For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay entitled Attitude Makes a Big Difference by commenting on the saying, "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty." You can cite examples to illustrate your point and then explain how people can be more optimistic. You should write at least 120 words but no more than 180 words.

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As food is to the body, so is learning to the mind. Our bodies grow and muscles develop with the【C1】______of adequate nutritious food. Likewise, we should keep learning day by day to maintain our keen mental power and expand our【C2】______capacity. Constant learning【C3】______us with inexhaustible fuel for driving us to sharpen our power of reasoning, analysis, and judgment. Learning incessantly is the surest way to keep【C4】______with the times in the information age, and an infallible【C5】______of success in times of uncertainty. Once learning stops, vegetation sets in. It is a common fallacy to regard school as the only workshop for the【C6】______of knowledge. On the contrary, learning should be a never-ending process, from the cradle to the【C7】______. With the world ever changing so fast, the cease from learning for just a few days will make a person lag behind. What's worse, the animalistic instinct dormant deep in our subconsciousness will come to life, weakening our will to【C8】______our noble ideal, sapping our determination to sweep away【C9】______to our success and strangling our desire for the refinement of our character. Lack of learning will inevitably lead to the stagnation of the mind, or even worse, its fossilization. Therefore, to stay mentally young, we have to take learning as a【C10】______career. A)grave B)supplies C)pursue D)paceE)acquisition F)difficult G)intake H)warrantI)decoration J)intellectual K)learn L)determinationM)mental N)lifelong O)obstacles

A recent global survey of 2,000 high-net-worth individuals found that 60% were not planning on a traditional retirement. Among US participants. 75% expected to continue working in some capacity even after stepping away from full time jobs. "Many of these people made their wealth by doing something they're passionate( 有激情的)about," says Daniel Egan, head of behavioral finance for Barclays Wealth Americas. "Given the choice, they prefer to continue working. "Barclays calls these people "nevertirees". Unlike many Americans compelled into early retirement by company restrictions, the average nevertiree often has no one forcing his hand. If 106-year-old investor Irving Kahn, head of his own family firm, wants to keep coming to work every day, who's going to stop him? Seventy-eight-year-old Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Cinsburg's job security is guaranteed in the Constitution. It may seem that these elderly people are trying to cheat death. In fact, they are. And it's working. Howard Friedman, a professor at UC Riverside, found in his research that those who work hardest and are successful in their careers often live the longest lives. " People are generally being given bad advice to slow down, take it easy, stop worrying, and retire to Florida," he says. He described one study participant, still working at the age of 100, who was recently disappointed to see his son retire. "We're beginning to see a change in how people view retirement," says George Leeson, co-director of the Institute of Population Ageing at Oxford. Where once retirement was seen as a brief reward after a long struggle through some miserable job, it is now akin(近似) to being cast aside. What Leeson terms "the Warren Buffett effect" is becoming more broadly appealing as individuals come to "view retirement as not simply being linked to economic productivity but also about contribution." Observers are split on whether this is a wholly good thing. On the one hand, companies and financial firms can benefit from the wisdom of a resilient (坚韧的) chief. On the other, the new generation can find it more difficult to advance—an argument that typically holds little sway to a nevertiree.

预计到2050年，全国将有三分之一的人口超过60岁。

There is no more fashionable solution to the current global recession than "green jobs." Many countries are all eagerly promoting clean-technology industries. It sounds like the ultimate win-win deal: create jobs, cut down on energy dependence, and save the planet from global warming. Ever since the recession began, governments, environmental groups, and even labor unions have been spinning out reports on just how many jobs might be created by these new industries—estimates that range from tens of thousands to millions. Those kinds of predictions, however, may be overoptimistic. As a new study from McKinsey points out, the clean-energy industry doesn't have much in common with old, labor-intensive manufacturing industries like steel and cars. A more accurate comparison would be to the semiconductor industry, which was also expected to create a boom in high-tech jobs but today employs mainly robots. Green-tech workers now make up only 0.6 percent of the American workforce. McKinsey figures that clean energy won't command much more of the total job market in the years ahead. On the other hand, a booming green sector could fuel job growth in other industries. Here, too, the story of the computer chip is instructive. Today the big chip makers like Intel employ only 0.4 percent of the U.S. workforce. But indirectly they helped create millions of jobs by making other industries more efficient. McKinsey says that the same process could play out today if governments focused less on building a clean-energy industry and more on greening every part of the existing economy. U.S. efforts to promote corn-based ethanol (乙醇), for instance, are incredibly counter-productive. The state is creating inefficient sectors, with jobs that are not likely to last. A better approach would be to push businesses and consumers to do the basics, such as to improve building insulation (绝缘材料) and replace outdated heating and cooling equipment. In places like California, 30 percent of the summer energy load is sucked up by air conditioning, so the state government now offers low-interest loans for consumers to replace old units with more efficient ones. Consumers pay back the loans through their taxes. When that money is spent, it drives demand and thus job growth in other areas.

剪纸(paper cutting)是中国最为流行的传统民间艺术形式之一。中国剪纸有一千五百多年的历史，在明朝和清朝时期(me Ming and Qing Dynasties)特别流行。人们常用剪纸美化居家环境。特别是在春节和婚庆期间，剪纸被用来装饰门窗和房间，以增加喜庆的气氛。剪纸最常用的颜色是红色，象征健康和兴旺。中国剪纸在世界各地很受欢迎，经常被用作馈赠外国人的礼物。

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Education Study Finds U. S. Falling Behind[A] Teachers in the United States earn less relative to national income than their counterparts in many industrialized countries, yet they spend far more hours in front of the classroom, according to a major new international study.[B] The salary differentials are part of a pattern of relatively low public investment in education in the United States compared with other member nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group in Paris that compiled the report. Total government spending on educational institutions in the United States slipped to 4. 8 percent of gross domestic product in 1998, falling under the international average—5 percent—for the first time.[C] "The whole economy has grown faster than the education system, " Andreas Schleicher, one of the report's authors, explained. "The economy has done very well, but teachers have not fully benefit. " The report, due out today, is the sixth on education published since 1991 by the organization of 30 nations, founded in 1960, and now covering much of Europe, North America, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.[D] In addition to the teacher pay gap, the report shows the other countries have begun to catch up with the United States in higher education; college enrollment has grown by 20 percent since 1995 across the group, with one in four young people now earning degrees. For the first time, the United States' college graduation rate, now at 33 percent, is not the world's highest. Finland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Britain have surpassed it.[E] The United States is also producing fewer mathematics and science graduates than most of the other member states. And, the report says, a college degree produces a greater boost in income here while the lack of a high school diploma imposes a bigger income penalty. "The number of graduates is increasing, but that stimulates even more of a demand—there is no end in sight," Mr. Schleicher said. "The demand for skill, clearly, is growing faster than the supply that is coming from schools and colleges."[F] The report lists the salary for a high school teacher in the United States with 15 years experience as $36,219, above the international average of $31,887 but behind seven other countries and less than 60 percent of Switzerland's $62,052. Because teachers in the Unites States have a heavier classroom load—teaching almost a third more hours than their counterparts abroad—their salary per hour of actual teaching is $ 35 , less than the international average of $41 (Denmark, Spain and Germany pay more than $50 per teaching hour, South Korea $77). In 1994, such a veteran teacher in the United States earned 1. 2 times the average per capita income whereas in 1999 the salary was just under the national average. Only the Czech Republic, Hungary, Iceland and Norway pay their teachers less relative to national income; in South Korea, teachers actually earn 2. 5 times the national average. Teacher pay accounts for 56 percent of what the United States spends on education, well below the 67 percent average among the group of countries.[G] The new data come as the United States faces a shortage of two million teachers over the next decade, with questions of training, professionalism and salaries being debated by politicians local and national. Joost Yff, an international expert at the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education, said training for teachers is comparable among most of the nations in the study, and that they are all dealing with similar issues of raising standards and increasing professionalism.[H] Though the United States lags behind in scores on standardized tests in science and mathematics, students here get more instruction in those subjects, the report shows. The average 14-year-old American spent 295 hours in math and science classes in 1999, far more than the 229 international average; only Austria (370 hours), Mexico (367) and New Zealand (320) have more instruction in those subjects. Middle-schoolers here spend less time than their international counterparts studying foreign languages and technology, but far more hours working on physical education and vocational skills. High school students in the United States are far more likely to have part-time jobs: 64 percent of Americans ages 15 to 19 worked while in school, compared with an international average of 31 percent (only Canada and the Netherlands, with 69 percent, and Denmark, with 75 percent, were higher).[I] One place the United States spends more money is on special services for the disabled and the poor. More than one in four children here are in programs based on income—only five other countries serve even 1 in 10—and nearly 6 percent get additional resources based on physical or mental handicaps, twice or three times the rate in other countries.[J] The report shows a continuing shift in which the United States is losing its status as the most highly educated among the nations. The United States has the highest level of high school graduates ages 55 to 64, but falls to fifth, behind Norway, Japan, South Korea, the Czech Republic and Switzerland, among ages 25 to 34. Among college graduates, it leads in the older generation but is third behind Canada and Japan in the younger cohort (一群). While the portion of Americans with high school diplomas remains at 88 percent across age groups, the average age among member countries is rising. It has gone from 58 percent of those ages 45 to 54, to 66 percent of those ages 35 to 44 and 72 percent of those ages 25 to 34. A higher percentage of young people in Norway, Japan, South Korea, the Czech Republic and Switzerland have degrees than in the United States.[K] "The U. S. has led the development in college education and making education sort of accessible for everyone," Mr. Schleicher said. "It's now becoming the norm.

As medical evidence mounts that we are indeed what we eat, consuming a healthier diet has become almost a national passion in the United States. The food-for-fitness phenomenon began in the late 70s when a U.S. Senate committee on nutrition reached grim conclusion that six out of the ten leading causes of death—such as heart disease, cancer, and stroke—might be linked to diet. The government issued dietary guidelines advising Americans to eat a variety of foods, maintain proper weight, and limit intake of fat, salt, sugar, and alcohol. For most Americans, what to eat is a matter of personal choice, rather than one of supply. An excellent nationwide food distribution system assures that fresh produce is readily available in all parts of the country, regardless of the season. Taking advantage of this abundance, many people are forsaking traditional meat-and-potatoes and in favor of lighter meals of salads, fruits, and vegetables. The single most dramatic change in the American diet has been a reduction in consumption of animal fat, which is thought to increase the risk of heart disease and may contribute to the high U.S. incidence of breast and colon cancer. Margarine and vegetable oils have replace butter and lard in many homes, and half of all milk now drunk in the United States is low-fat. Fish and poultry are increasingly popular sources of protein as consumption of red meat declines. The food industry has responded to concern about fat by producing leaner cuts of meat and cholesterol-free substitutes for eggs. One of the most significant trends in the American way of eating is the healthful change in restaurant food. "One of every two meals in the United States is eaten outside the home," says Donna Watson, President of the American Dietetic Association. "Restaurants are making special efforts to provide low-fat, low-salt, and low-calorie items." Salad bars, loaded with fresh greens and raw fruits and vegetables, are found everywhere, even along-side the burgers and French fries in fast-food restaurants. Most important, the focus on prudent diet has led to an unprecedented national quest for a healthier life style. Americans are smoking less, exercising more, and experimenting with new ways to conquer stress. Eating sensibly, they have discovered, is only one important route to good health.

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