单选题 All societies have distinct role expectations for men and for women. In the United States, these expectations have been undergoing change for many decades. Today Americans live in a world of diverse family patterns and conflicting images of ideal life styles for men and women. The conventional norms of the first half century defined a successful woman as a wife and mother who stayed home to carry out a full array of household duties. The husband and father was expected to stay away from the home most of the day, earning enough money to pay the bills. Many adults still live by these expectations, but the traditional pattern is no longer held up as an ideal to be followed by everyone. Times have changed; there is no return to yesterday. Although the women's movement and political controversies about such issues and the Equal Rights Amendment and sexual harassment (骚扰) suggest that changing sex roles is a recent issue, this is far from the case. Broad trends can be identified over the past hundred years. Women have increased their participation in the labor force from 18% in 1900 to over 50% today, and they give birth to fewer children than women did in the past. In 1910 the birth rate was 30 per 1,000 population; by the 1900s it had declined to 16 per 1,000. These two trends—increasing participation in the labor force and decreasing family size—suggest that major long-term changes have restructured the role expectations of men and women. These changes are complex. The fact that more women are joining the labor force as full-time workers does not mean that a single sex role pattern is emerging. On the contrary, we are living in a period of diverse family patterns. According to Kathleen Gerson, 'the domestic woman who builds her life around children and homemaking persists, hut she now coexists with a growing number of working mothers and permanently childless women.' Women today face hard choices as they make decisions about work, career, and motherhood. Despite women's liberation, women still earn less than men in the work place and are still expected to do most of the work in the home. Women work substantially more hours each week in the home and at the workplace than men do. Women are working harder than ever, yet many do not enjoy the benefits of full equality.

单选题Children are natural-born scientists, They have 29 minds, and they aren't afraid to admit they don't know something. Most of them, 30 , lose this as they get older. They become self-conscious and don't want to appear stupid. Instead of finding things out for themselves they make 31 that often turn out to be wrong. So it's not a case of getting kids interested in science. You just have to avoid killing the 32 for learning that they were born with. It's no coincidence that kids start deserting science once it becomes formalised. Children naturally have a blurred approach to 33 knowledge. They see learning about science or biology or cooking as all part of the same act—it's all learning. It's only because of the practicalities of education that you have to start breaking down the curriculum into specialist subjects. You need to have specialist teachers who 34 what they know. Thus once they enter school, children begin to define subjects and erect boundaries that needn't otherwise exist. Dividing subjects into science, maths, English, etc, is something that we do for 35 . In the end it's all learning, but many children today 36 themselves from a scientific education. They think science is for scientists, not for them. Of course we need to specialise 37 . Each of us has only so much time on Earth, so we can't study anything. At 5 years old, our field of knowledge and 38 is broad, covering any-thing from learning to walk to learning to count. Gradually it narrows down so that by the time we are 45, it might be one tiny little comer within science. A. accidentally B. acquiring C. assumptions D. convenience E. eventually F. exclude G. exertion H. exploration I. formulas J. ignite K. impart L. inquiring M. passion N. provoking O. unfortunately

单选题Of all the 28 of a good night's sleep, dreams seem to be least within our control. In dreams, a window opens into a world where logic is suspended and dead people speak. A century ago, Freud formulated his revolutionary theory that dreams were the 29 shadows of our unconscious desires and fears; by the late 1970s, neurologists had 30 to thinking of them as just 'mental noise'—the random byproducts of the neural-repair work that goes on during sleep. Now researchers suspect that dreams are part of the mind's emotional thermostat, 31 moods while the brain is 'off-line'. And one leading authority says that these 32 powerful mental events can be not only harnessed but actually brought under conscious control, to help us sleep and feel better, 'It's your dream,' says Rosalind Cartwright, chair of 33 at Chicago's Medical Centre. 'If you don't like it, change it.' The 34 between dreams and emotions show up among the patients in Cartwright's clinic. Most people seem to have more bad dreams early in the night, progressing toward happier ones before 35 , suggesting that they are working through 36 feelings generated during the day. Because our conscious mind is 37 with daily life we don't always think about the emotional significance of the day's events—until, it appears, we begin to dream. A. intensely B. psychology C. link D. disguised E. unconscious F. positive G. recurring H. nightmares I. components J. occupied K. regulating L. negative M. awakening N. persistent O. switched

单选题 For most of us, work is the central, dominating fact of life. We spend more than half our conscious hours at work, preparing for work, traveling to and from work. What we do there largely determines our standard of living and to a considerable extent the status we are accorded by our fellow citizens as well. It is sometimes said that because leisure has become more important, the indignities and injustices of work can be pushed into a comer, that because most work is pretty intolerable, the people who do it should compensate for its boredom, frustrations and humiliations (羞耻) by concentrating their hopes on the other parts of their lives. I reject that as a counsel of despair. For the foreseeable future the material and psychological rewards which work can provide, and the conditions in which work is done, will continue to play a vital part in determining the satisfaction that life can offer. Yet only a small minority can control the pace at which they work or the conditions in which their work is done; only for a small minority does work offer scope for creativity, imagination, or initiative. Inequality (不平等) at work and in work is still one of the cruelest and most glaring forms of inequality in our society. We cannot hope to solve the more obvious problems of industrial life, many of which arise directly or indirectly from the frustrations created by inequality at work, unless we tackle it head-on (迎面地). Still less can we hope to create a decent and humane society. The most glaring inequality is that between managers and the rest. For most managers, work is an opportunity and a challenge. Their jobs engage their interest and allow them to develop their abilities. They are constantly learning; they are able to exercise responsibility; they have a considerable degree of control over their own—and others'—working lives. Most important of all, they have opportunity to initiate. By contrast, for most manual workers, and for a growing number of white-collar workers, work is a boring, dull even painful experience. They spend all their working lives in conditions which would be regarded as intolerable for themselves—by those who make the decisions which let such conditions continue. The majority has little control over their work; it provides them with no opportunity for personal development. Often production is so designed that workers are simply part of the technology. In offices, many jobs are so routine that workers justifiably feel themselves to be mere cogs in the bureaucratic (官僚的) machine. As a direct consequence of their work experience, many workers feel alienated from their work and their firm, whether it is in public or in private ownership.

单选题Executive managers' pay is still determined by simplistic measures of performance that bear little relation to long-term drivers of companies' value, according to an analysis of pay at FTSE (Financial Times Stock Exchange) 100 companies over the past decade. The research 26 executive remuneration (报酬) over the 10 years from 2003-2013 at 30 FTSE 100 companies, and found there was 27 correlation between the key performance indicators that companies highlighted to shareholders and the measures used to incentivize and reward senior staff. 'Much of the discussion around executive compensation focuses on the 28 of bonus payments,' said Natalie Winter Frost, chairwoman of CFA UK. 'The more important question centers around the way that performance is measured and consequently incentivized.' The research found that chief executives' pay showed a low level of correlation with company performance, regardless of the specific measure of performance used. 'A large 29 of CEO pay appears unrelated to periodic value creation,' said the report's authors. Relatively simplistic performance measures such as earnings per share and total shareholder return continued to 30 the criteria which were used to measure executives' performance over the period. Value-based metrics that 31 performances to the cost of capital were rarely used. Earnings per share can be boosted by, for example, MA activity that does not 32 enhance profitability. The report said the dangers of over-reliance on such measures of executives' performance were well documented and included: 'investment myopia (目光短浅), earnings manipulation, excessive risk-taking, and 33 to organizational culture'. 'There are 34 flaws in current remuneration policies and whilst our report highlights that compensation practices have improved, the journey is far from 35 ,' said Ms Winter Frost. A. ambiguous B. complete C. consensus D. dominate E. evident F. examined G. extract H. fraction I. magnitude J. necessarily K. overworked L. related M. resources N. scant O. threats

单选题 'Usually when we walk through the rain forest we hear a soft sound from all the moist leaves and organic debris on the forest floor, ' says ecologist Daniel Nepstad. 'Now we increasingly get rustle and crunch. That's the sound of a dying forest.' Predictions of the collapse of the tropical rain forests have been around for years. Yet until recently the worst forecasts were almost exclusively linked to direct human activity, such as clear-cutting and burning for pastures or farms. Left alone, it was assumed, the world's rain forests would not only flourish but might even rescue us from disaster by absorbing the excess carbon dioxide and other planet-warming greenhouse gases. Now it turns out that may be wishful thinking. Some scientists believe that the rise in carbon levels means that the Amazon and other rain forests in Asia and Africa may go from being assets in the battle against rising temperatures to liabilities. Amazon plants, for instance, hold more than 100billion metric tons of carbon, equal to 15 years of tailpipe and chimney emissions. If the collapse of the rain forests speeds up dramatically, it could eventually release 3.5-5 billion metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year—making forests the leading source of greenhouse gases, Uncommonly severe droughts brought on by global climate changes have led to forest-eating wildfires from Australia to Indonesia, but nowhere more acutely than in the Amazon. Some experts say that the rain forest is already at the brink of collapse. Extreme weather and reckless development are plotting against the rain forest in ways that scientists have never seen. Trees need more water as temperatures rise, but the prolonged droughts have robbed them of moisture, making whole forests easily cleared of trees and turned into farmland. The picture worsens with each round of El Ni?o, the unusually warm currents in the Pacific Ocean that drive up temperatures and invariably presage (预示) droughts and fires in the rain forest. Runaway fires pour even more carbon into the air, which increases temperatures, starting the whole vicious cycle all over again. More than paradise lost, a perishing rain forest could trigger a domino effect—sending winds and rains kilometers off course and loading the skies with even greater levels of greenhouse gases—that will be felt far beyond the Amazon basin. In a sense, we are already getting a glimpse of what's to come. Each burning season in the Amazon, fires deliberately set by frontier settlers and developers hurl up almost half a billion metric tons of carbon a year, placing Brazil among the top five contributors to greenhouse gases in the world.

单选题 Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay commenting on the saying 'Knowledge makes humble, ignorance makes proud.' You can give an example or two to illustrate your point of view. You should write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words.

单选题 Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay entitled My View on Plastic Surgery. You should write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words according to the outline given below in Chinese.