Ask most people how they define the American Dream and chances are they'll say, "Success." The dream of individual opportunity has been at home in American since Europeans discovered a "new world" in the Western Hemisphere. Early immigrants like Hector St. Jean de Crevecoeur praised highly the freedom and opportunity to be found in this new land. His glowing descriptions of a classless society where anyone could attain success through honesty and hard work fired the imaginations of many European readers: in Letters from an American Farmer(1782)he wrote, "We are all excited at the spirit of an industry which is unfettered(无拘无束的)and unrestrained, because each person works for himself... We have no princes, for whom we toil(干苦力活), starve, and bleed: we are the most perfect society now existing in the world." The promise of a land where "the rewards of a man's industry follow with equal steps the progress of his labor" drew poor immigrants from Europe and fueled national expansion into the western territories. Our national mythology(神话)is full of illustrations of the American success story. There's Benjamin Franklin, the very model of the self-educated, self-made man, who rose from modest origins to become a well-known scientist, philosopher, and statesman. In the nineteenth century, Horatio Alger, a writer of fiction for young boys, became American's best-selling author with rags-to-riches tales. The notion of success haunts us: we spend millions every year reading about the rich and famous, learning how to "make a fortune in real estate with no money down," and "dressing for success." The myth of success has even invaded our personal relationships: today it's as important to be "successful" in marriage or parenthood as it is to come out on top in business. But dreams easily turn into nightmares. Every American who hopes to "make it" also knows the fear of failure, because the myth of success inevitably implies comparison between the haves and the have-nots, the stars and the anonymous crowd. Under pressure of the myth, we become indulged in status symbols: we try to live in the "right" neighborhoods, wear the "right" clothes, eat the "right" foods. These symbols of distinction assure us and others that we believe strongly in the fundamental equality of all, yet strive as hard as we can to separate ourselves from our fellow citizens.

How Girls Can Win in Math and Science? A)Math is a cumulative subject, unlike say history, which can be learned in discrete units. College algebra(代数)is basically a course in the language of mathematics. Some might say that algebra is the mechanics of mathematics. The examples included at this level are simple, designed to reinforce that the student has learned the "how". The next layer of courses teaches how to use this language, or this set of tools, to describe and model the real world. Being able to do this should leave no doubt in the student's mind that they are mathematically competent. B)For years, feminists have lamented(悲叹)the sorry state of girls in math and science, as they lag behind their male peers in test scores and shy away from careers in engineering and technology. Yet perhaps the most frustrating recent development on the topic is that some of the very programs designed to help girls get ahead may be holding them back—or are simply misguided. Take single-sex math and science classes. While they seem like a logical way to give girls a jump-start in these subjects, new research suggests this initiative—championed over the past two decades as a possible solution—may backfire. C)In a study published last year, psychologist Howard Glasser at Bryn Mawr College examined teacher-student interaction in sex-segregated science classes. As it turned out, teachers behaved differently toward boys and girls in a way that gave boys an advantage in scientific thinking. While boys were encouraged to engage in back-and-forth questioning with the teacher and fellow students, girls had many fewer such experiences. Glasser suggests they didn't learn to argue in the same way as boys, and argument is the key to scientific thinking. Glasser points out that sex-segregated classrooms can construct differences between the sexes by giving them unequal experiences. Unfortunately, such differences can impact kids' choices about future courses and careers. It's worth noting that the girls and boys in these science classes had similar grades, which masked the uneven dynamic. It was only when researchers reviewed videotapes of the lessons that they got a deeper analysis of what was actually going on, and what the kids were really learning. D)Glasser's research got a boost last September when the journal Science published a scathing(严厉批评的)report on the larger issue of single-sex education, titled "The Pseudoscience of Single-Sex Schooling". In the article, eight leading psychologists and neuroscientists debunked(揭穿......的真相)research supporting single-sex education, and argued that sex segregation "increases gender stereotyping and legitimizes institutional sexism". E)Another misguided—or, mistimed—effort to improve girls' performance is the "you can do it" messaging directed toward girls in middle school, the period when their scores start lagging. New research shows that even when preteen girls say they believe this message, "stereotype threat"—when negative cultural stereotypes affect a group's behavior—has a dampening effect on their actual performance. F)In a 2009 study, psychologist Pascal Huguet of France's Aix-Marseille University found that middle-school girls scored highest on tests measuring visual-spatial abilities—which are key to success in engineering, chemistry, medicine, and architecture, fields that promise high-paying, prestigious jobs down the road—when they were led to believe that there were no gender differences on the tasks. Not surprisingly, when they were told that boys do better on these tasks, they did poorly. But curiously, when they were given no information, allowing cultural stereotypes to operate, they also did poorly. The stereotypes were already firmly established. The authors discovered: By middle school it's too little, too late. G)To disarm stereotypes, we must actively arm girls against them—starting at a very young age. By first or second grade, both girls and boys have the notion that math is a "boy thing". But a 2011 study by psychologist Anthony Greenwald of the University of Washington found that there's a window of opportunity during these early years in which, while girls do see math largely as a male preserve, they haven't yet made the connection that "because I am a girl, math is not for me". During this short period, girls are relatively open to the idea that they can enjoy and do well at math. H)One strategy? Researchers suggest we take gender out of the equation in teaching about occupations. Rather than saying "girls can be scientists", we should talk about what scientists do. For example, kids may be especially interested to know that scientists study how the world around them really works. Psychologists Rebecca Bigler of the University of Texas at Austin and Lynn Liben at Penn State say that when girls are encouraged to think this way, they're much more likely to retain what they're taught than they would be if they were just given the generic "girls can do science" message. I)Finally, while women teachers can lead the way for girls in math and science, acting as role models, parents should be on the lookout for teachers' math anxiety. A 2010 study of first- and second-graders led by psychologist Sian L. Beilock at the University of Chicago found that girls may learn to fear math from their earliest instructors—and that female elementary-school teachers who lack confidence in their own math skills could be passing their anxiety along to their students. The more anxious teachers were about their own skills, the more likely their female students were to agree that "boys are good at math and girls are good at reading". And according to Beilock, elementary-education majors at the college level have the highest math anxiety level of any major, and may be unwittingly passing along a virus of underachievement to girls. J)Parents can "vaccinate" girls against their teachers' math anxiety, according to new research. But there may be a silver lining to this story for parents. Even if your daughter has a teacher with high math anxiety, it's not inevitable that she's going to experience problems with math—it turns out that parents(or others)can "vaccinate" girls against their teachers' qualms(疑虑). Beilock found that teachers' anxiety alone didn't do the damage. If girls already had a belief that "girls aren't good at math", their achievement suffered. But the girls who didn't buy into that stereotype, who thought, of course I can be good at math, didn't tumble into an achievement gulf. K)Now that we have reason to believe that gender stereotyping starts much earlier than previously thought, we also need to accept that countering it requires more sophisticated approaches than those we now use. If girls continue to lag behind in math areas, our future economy and competitiveness could suffer. It's critical that we start our efforts in the primary grades and look beyond the obvious to succeed. If we look "under the hood" at what's really going on with girls, instead of just skimming the surface, we can provide more than mere cosmetic solutions.

Google must be the most ambitious company in the world. Its stated goal, "to organize the world' s information and make it universally accessible and useful," deliberately omits the word "web" to indicate that the company is reaching for absolutely all information everywhere and in every form. From books to health records and videos, from your friendships to your click patterns and physical location, Google wants to know. To some people this sounds uplifting, with promises of free access to knowledge and help in managing our daily lives. To others, it is somewhat like another Big Brother, no less frightening than its totalitarian(极权主义的)ancestors for being in the private information. Randall Stross, a journalist at the New York Times, does a good job of analyzing this unbounded ambition in his book "Planet Google". One chapter is about the huge data centers that Google is building with a view to storing all that information, another about the sets of rules at the heart of its web search and advertising technology, another about its approach to information bound in books, its vision for geographical information and so forth. He is at his best when explaining how Google's mission casually but fatally smashes into long-existing institutions such as, say, copyright law or privacy norms. And yet, it's puzzling that he mostly omits the most fascinating component of Google, its people. Google is what it is because of its two founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who see themselves as kindly elites and embody the limitless optimism about science, technology and human nature that is native to Silicon Valley. The world is perfectible, and they are the ones who will do much of the perfecting, provided you let them. Brin and Page set out to create a company and an entire culture in their image. From the start, they professed that they would innovate as much in managing—rewarding, feeding, motivating, entertaining and even transporting(via Wi-Fi-enabled free shuttle buses)their employees—as they do in internet technology. If Google is in danger of becoming a caricature(讽刺画), this is first apparent here—in the over-engineered day-care centers, the Shiatsu massages and kombucha teas(康普茶). In reality Googlers are as prone to power struggle and office politics as anyone else. None of that makes it into Mr Stross' account, which at times reads like a diligent summary of news articles. At those moments, "Planet Google" takes a risk similar to trying to board a speeding train: the Google story changes so fast that no book can stay up to date for long. Even so, a sober description of this moment in Google's quest is welcome. Especially since Google fully expects, as its chief executive, Eric Schmidt, says at the end of the book, to take 300 years completing it.

BSection B/B

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It was going to have roughly the effect of a neutron bomb attack on high streets and shopping malls. The buildings would be left standing but the people would vanish. Such was the superior efficiency of selling things via the Internet that brick-and-mortar stores would be unable to compete on price, choice or even service. Book and music sellers had already been "Amazoned". Soon web-based "category-killers", in everything from toys to pet supplies, would overwhelm their physical-world competitors. Shoppers would never be more than a mouse-click from the best deals. Traditional retailers, terrified of cannibalizing (同类相食 ) sales and destroying the value of their expensive properties, were already too late to meet the challenge. "In some categories," said Mary Meeker, a seer (预言家) of the Internet at Morgan Stanley, "it's already game over." These are convenient beliefs for anyone justifying some e-commerce share prices, but they are already mostly wrong. The reasons should surprise no one. The Internet is not a dominant technology but rather a network of people. It is a rich and highly flexible means of communicating that is rapidly achieving pervasiveness because more and more people find it easy and convenient to use. But it is those people's preferences that will count; and for most people, shopping is more than just a means to an end. Even if the Internet provided a perfectly efficient way to shop it would not provide a satisfactory alternative to the physical enjoyment of sniffing a ripe melon, say, or trying on a cashmere sweater. Of course, some products, such as music and banking, can be distributed electronically with success and cost saving. But most purchases cannot be reduced to digital code. And distributing physical goods is cumbersome (笨重的) and expensive. Behind even the most exciting user interface there are old-fashioned warehouses and lorries, customers who decline to sit at home waiting for purchases to arrive, and goods that must be re-wrapped and expensively returned. No wonder that the cost of getting goods to customers' homes so often soaks up the notional price advantages of e-commerce. What Internet shoppers have quickly realized is that the web is an addition to, and not a substitute for, their shopping habits. It is wonderful for gathering up-to-date information about products and prices. Cyber Dialogue, a research firm, estimates that in 1998 23m Americans sought information online, but then made their purchases offline, compared with only 17.7m who did the whole thing online.

Forthispart,youareallowed30minutestowriteanessaybasedonthepicturebelow.Youshouldstartyouressaywithabriefdescriptionofthepictureandthendiscusstherelationshipbetweentechnologyandtheelderly.Youshouldgivesoundargumentstosupportyourviewsandwriteatleast150wordsbutnomorethan200words.

BSection B/B

Reebok executives do not like to hear their stylish athletic shoes called "footwear for yuppies(雅皮士，少壮高薪职业人士)". They contend that Reebok shoes appeal to diverse market segments, especially now that the company offers basketball and children's shoes for the under-18 set and walking shoes for older customers not interested in aerobics(健身操)or running. The executives also point out that through recent acquisitions they have added hiking boots, dress and casual shoes, and high-performance athletic footwear to their product lines, all of which should attract new and varied groups of customers. Still, despite its emphasis on new markets, Reebok plans few changes in the upmarket(高档消费人群的)retailing network that helped push sales to $1 billion annually, ahead of all other sports shoe marketers. Reebok shoes, which are priced from $27 to $85, will continue to be sold only in better specialty, sporting goods, and department stores, in accordance with the company's view that consumers judge the quality of the brand by the quality of its distribution. In the past few years, the Massachusetts-based company has imposed limits on the number of its distributors(and the number of shoes supplied to stores), partly out of necessity. At times the unexpected demand for Reeboks exceeded supply, and the company could barely keep up with orders from the dealers it already had. These fulfillment problems seem to be under control now, but the company is still selective about its distributors. At present, Reebok shoes are available in about five thousand retail stores in the United States. Reebok has already anticipated that walking shoes will be the next fitness-related craze, replacing aerobics shoes the same way its brightly colored, soft leather exercise footwear replaced conventional running shoes. Through product diversification and careful market research, Reebok hopes to avoid the distribution problems Nike came across several years ago, when Nike misjudged the strength of the aerobics shoe craze and was forced to unload huge inventories of running shoes through discount stores.

For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay on the smartphone addiction. Your essay should include the negative influence of the smartphone addiction and measures to be taken to get rid of the smartphone addiction. You are required to write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words.

Most of us know to stay low to the floor if we're caught in a fire, or head to the basement if a storm's coming, or board up the windows in a hurricane. But because relatively few of us live along fault lines, the massive earthquake that hit Haiti was a reminder that we're far less experienced in what to do when the ground below us shakes. If we're in a house or building, for example, our first impulse might be to run outside—but, counterintuitive (与直觉相反的) as it might sound, experts warn against that since people are too often killed by falling or fallen objects as they try to escape. Of course, just as the best way to survive car crashes is to make safer cars, the best way to reduce the risk of being killed in an earthquake is to enact stronger building codes. But given how many of us travel in quake-prone regions today—including, tragically, the four students and two professors from Lynn University in Florida who perished in the Haiti quake—even folks who don't reside in California should know how to survive an earthquake. But there are two different, and at times competing, schools of thought on the matter—both of which are considered valid but perhaps not always in the same situations. The most conventional and widely accepted practice by the disaster-response community is the "drop, cover and hold on" approach, which urges people to take cover beneath something like a heavy table to avoid falling objects. The newer method—and less researched—is known as the "triangle of life." It recommends lying down in a fetal position not under but next to furniture; as roofs and walls collapse on the top of those sofas and desks, buffer (缓冲) spaces are created that protect people from being crushed. Over the past decade, a consensus has been building that "drop, cover and hold on" is a more appropriate method for developed countries like the U.S., where improved construction has greatly reduced the likelihood of structures collapsing inwards. The triangle of life is thought to be more suitable in developing nations like Haiti, where inferior building codes make finding a "survivable void" inside collapsed buildings more important than shielding yourself from falling pieces. "You have to think about the hazard level of the area you're in," says Gary Patterson, a geologist and director of education and outreach at the Center for Earthquake Research & Information at the University of Memphis in Tennessee. "If you're going to play the odds, drop and cover may be the best way to go, but a lot of emergency responders might say triangle of life because they're the ones who see the fatalities in buildings that do collapse."

中国 吉祥图案 (auspicious pattern)指一些在中国广为流传的、蕴含吉祥意义的图案，如龙、 凤 (phoenix)、鱼、桃、松树等。在一些节日或喜庆的日子，人们都喜欢用这些图案装饰自己的房间和物品，以表示对幸福生活的向往。中国的吉祥图案内容非常广泛，有“吉祥”“幸运” “长寿” (longlevous)”“喜庆”等内涵。吉祥图案是中国吉祥文化的典型代表，追求美好事物和前景是吉祥文化永恒的主题。中国吉祥图案丰富多样，已成为中国人生活中不可缺少的组成部分。

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"The world's environment is surprisingly healthy. Discuss." If that were an examination topic, most students would tear it apart, offering a long list of complaints: from local smog(烟雾)to global climate change, from the felling(砍伐)of forests to the extinction of species. The list would largely be accurate, the concern legitimate. Yet the students who should be given the highest marks would actually be those who agreed with the statement. The surprise is how good things are, not how bad. After all, the world's population has more than tripled during this century, and world output has risen hugely, so you would expect the earth itself to have been affected. Indeed, if people lived, consumed and produced things in the same way as they did in 1900(or 1950, or indeed 1980), the world by now would be a pretty disgusting place: smelly, dirty, toxic and dangerous. But they don't. The reasons why they don't, and why the environment has not been ruined, have to do with prices, technological innovation, social change and government regulation in response to popular pressure. That is why today's environmental problems in the poor countries ought, in principle, to be solvable. Raw materials have not run out, and show no sign of doing so. Logically, one day they must: the planet is a finite place. Yet it is also very big, and man is very ingenious. What has happened is that every time a material seems to be running short, the price has risen and, in response, people have looked for new sources of supply, tried to find ways to use less of the material, or looked for a new substitute. For this reason prices for energy and for minerals have fallen in real terms during the century. The same is true for food. Prices fluctuate, in response to harvests, natural disasters and political instability; and when they rise, it takes some time before new sources of supply become available. But they always do, assisted by new farming and crop technology. The long-term trend has been downwards. It is where prices and markets do not operate properly that this benign(良性的)trend begins to stumble, and the genuine problems arise. Markets cannot always keep the environment healthy. If no one owns the resource concerned, no one has an interest in conserving it or fostering it: fish is the best example of this.

For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay on how to improve college students' diet. Your essay should focus on the measures of improving college students' diet. You are required to write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words.

北京大学于1898年成立，原名为 师大学堂 (the Imperial University of Peking)。该大学的成立标志着中国近代史上高等教育的开始。在中国近代史上，它是进步思想的中心，对中国新文化运动、五四运动及其他重要事件的发生颇有影响。今天，国内不少高校排行榜将北京大学放入国内顶尖大学之列。该校重视教学和科学研究。为提高本科生教育和研究生教育质量、保持其领先研究机构的地位。学校已做出很大努力。此外，学校尤以其校园环境及优美的中国传统建筑而闻名。

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For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay based on the picture below. You should focus on the impact of social networking websites on reading. You are required to write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words. "I love reading. I read about 3 hours a day. My favorite book is Facebook."

Car makers have long used sex to sell their products. Recently, however, both BMW and Renault have based their latest European marketing campaigns around the icon of modern biology. BMW's campaign, which launches its new 3-series sports saloon in Britain and Ireland, shows the new creation and four of its earlier versions zigzagging around a landscape made up of giant DNA sequences, with a brief explanation that DNA is the molecule responsible for the inheritance of such features as strength, power and intelligence. The Renault offering, which promotes its existing Laguna model, employs evolutionary theory even more explicitly. The company's television commercials intersperse(点缀)clips of the car with scenes from a lecture by Steve Jones, a professor of genetics at University College London. BMWs campaign is intended to convey the idea of development allied to heritage. The latest product, in other words, should be viewed as the new and improved scion(后代)of a long line of good cars. Renault's message is more subtle. It is that evolution works by gradual improvements rather than sudden leaps and in this, Renault is aligning itself with(与……保持一致)biological orthodoxy. So, although the new car in the advertisement may look like the old one, the external form conceals a number of significant changes to the engine. While these alterations are almost invisible to the average driver, Renault hopes they will improve the car's performance, and ultimately its survival in the marketplace. Whether they actually do so will depend, in part, on whether marketers have read the public mood correctly. For, even if genetics really does offer a useful metaphor for automobiles, employing it in advertising is not without its dangers. That is because DNA's public image is ambiguous. In one context, people may see it as the cornerstone of modern medical progress. In another, it will bring to mind such controversial issues as abortion, genetically modified food-stuffs, and the sinister subject of eugenics(优生学). Car makers are probably standing on safer ground than biologists. But even they can make mistakes. Though it would not be obvious to the casual observer, some of the DNA which features in BMWs ads for its nice, new car once belonged to a woolly mammoth—a beast that has been extinct for 10,000 years. Not, presumably, quite the message that the marketing department was trying to convey.