单选题As the economy continues to 27 , a growing number of employers are once again hiring. What's more, the gains aren't limited to certain sectors. Rather, a broad swath of companies within the Fortune 500—from health care providers to retailers to defense contractors to insurers—are looking to fill 60,000 28 . The uptick is being 29 in part by better-than-expected profits that are helping to fill corporate coffers. Among big banks, many of which laid off thousands of workers after the 2008 financial crisis, JP Morgan Chase (JPM), the nation's second-largest bank, has 30 plans to hire nearly 9,000 new employees. Another sector showing signs of much improved hiring is 31 . Challenger points to Intel (INTC), the world's largest chip maker, which plans to 32 up to 2,000 positions in manufacturing, and research and development. And the sector is expected to see more growth. Amid the recession, many finns halted spending. If the job picture appears more 33 than just a few weeks, that's because it's human to be 34 pessimistic during and immediately after a recession, Challenger says. 'Especially in this recession (衰退) . It's been a long and difficult and slow moving recession' that really struck at core sectors of the economy. That's way different from dot-com bubble that burst about a decade ago. While there has been some job growth in manufacturing, Challenger says there haven't been 35 gains. Still, that's better than bleeding jobs. A cheaper dollar on world markets is helping by making US-made goods cheaper abroad, but still the sector faces big challenges, such as foreign competition and the 36 effects of the recession. A. announced B. brighten C. substantial D. advised E. driven F. add G. exaggeratedly H. lingering I. openings J. employees K. technology L. science M. develop N. overly O. robust

单选题 A Nation That's Losing Its Toolbox A. The scene inside the Home Depot on Weyman Avenue here would give the old-time American craftsman pause. In Aisle 34 is precut plastic flooring, the glue already in place. In Aisle 26 are prefabricated windows. Stacked near the checkout counters, and as colorful as a Fisher-Price toy, is a not-so-serious-looking power tool: a battery-operated saw-and-drill combination. And if you don't want to do it yourself, head to Aisle 23 or Aisle 35, where a help desk will arrange for an installer. B. It's all very handy stuff, I guess, a convenient way to be a do-it-yourselfer without being all that good with tools. But at a time when the American factory seems to be a shrinking presence, and when good manufacturing jobs have Vanished, perhaps never to return, there is something deeply troubling about this dilution of American craftsmanship. C. This isn't a lament (伤感)—or not merely a lament—for bygone times. It's a social and cultural issue, as well as an economic one. The Home Depot approach to craftsmanship—simplify it, dumb it down, hire a contractor—is one signal that mastering tools and working with one's hands is receding in America as a hobby, as a valued skill, as a cultural influence that shaped thinking and behavior in vast sections of the country. D. That should be a matter of concern in a presidential election year. Yet neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney promotes himself as tool-savvy (使用工具很在行的) presidential timber, in the mold of a Jimmy Carter, a skilled carpenter and cabinet maker. E. The Obama administration does worry publicly about manufacturing, a first cousin of craftsmanship. When the Ford Motor Company, for example, recently announced that it was bringing some production home, the White House cheered. 'When you see things like Ford moving new production from Mexico to Detroit, instead of the other way around, you know things are changing, ' says Gene Sperling, director of the National Economic Council. F. Ask the administration or the Republicans or most academics why America needs more manufacturing, and they respond that manufacturing gives birth to innovation, brings down the trade deficit, strengthens the dollar, generates jobs, arms the military and brings about a recovery from recession. But rarely, if ever, do they publicly take the argument a step further, asserting that a growing manufacturing sector encourages craftsmanship and that craftsmanship is, if not a birthright, then a vital ingredient of the American self-image as a can-do, inventive, we-can-make-anything people. G. Traditional vocational training in public high schools is gradually declining, stranding thousands of young people who seek training for a craft without going to college. Colleges, for their part, have since 1985graduated fewer chemical, mechanical, industrial and metallurgical (冶金的) engineers, partly in response to the reduced role of manufacturing, a big employer of them. H. The decline started in the 1950s, when manufacturing generated a sturdy 28% of the national income, or gross domestic product, and employed one-third of the workforce. Today, factory output generates just 12% of G. D.P. and employs barely 9% of the nation's workers. I. Mass layoffs and plant closings have drawn plenty of headlines and public debate over the years, and they still occasionally do. But the damage to skill and craftsmanship—what's needed to build a complex airliner or a tractor, or for a worker to move up from assembler to machinist to supervisor—went largely unnoticed. J. 'In an earlier generation, we lost our connection to the land, and now we are losing our connection to the machinery we depend on, ' says Michael Hout, a sociologist at the University of California, Berkeley.' People who work with their hands, ' he went on, 'are doing things today that we call service jobs, in restaurants and laundries, or in medical technology and the like.' K. That's one explanation for the decline in traditional craftsmanship. Lack of interest is another. The big money is in fields like finance. Starting in the 1980s, skill in finance grew in importance, and, as depicted in the news media and the movies, became a more appealing source of income. By last year, Wall Street traders, bankers and those who deal in real estate generated 21% of the national income, double their share in the 1950s. And Warren Buffett, the good-natured financier, became a homespun folk hero, without the tools and overalls (工作服). L. 'Young people grow up without developing the skills to fix things around the house, ' says Richard Curtin, director of the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers. 'They know about computers, of course, but they don't know how to build them.' M. Manufacturing's shrinking presence undoubtedly helps explain the decline in craftsmanship, if only because many of the nation's assembly line workers were skilled in craft work, if not on the job then in their spare time. In a late 1990s study of blue-collar employees at a General Motors plant (now closed) in Linden, N.J., the sociologist Ruth Milkman of City University of New York found that many line workers, in their off-hours, did home renovation and other skilled work. 'I have often thought, 'Ms. Milkman says, 'that these extracurricular jobs were an effort on the part of the workers to regain their dignity after suffering the degradation of repetitive assembly line work in the factory.' N. Craft work has higher status in nations like Germany, which invests in apprenticeship (学徒) programs for high school students. 'Corporations in Germany realized that there was an interest to be served economically and patriotically in building up a skilled labor force at home; we never had that ethos (风气), ' says Richard Sennett, a New York University sociologist who has written about the connection of craft and culture. O. The damage to American craftsmanship seems to parallel the steep slide in manufacturing employment. Though the decline started in the 1970s, it became much steeper beginning in 2000. Since then, some 5.3million jobs, or one-third of the workforce in manufacturing, have been lost. A stated goal of the Obama administration is to restore a big chunk of this employment, along with the multitude of skills that many of the jobs required. P. As for craftsmanship itself, the issue is how to preserve it as a valued skill in the general population. Ms. Milkman, the sociologist, argues that American craftsmanship isn't disappearing as quickly as some would argue—that it has instead shifted to immigrants. 'Pride in craft, it is alive in the immigrant world, ' she says. Sol Axelrod, 37, the manager of the Home Depot here, fittingly learned to fix his own car as a teenager, even changing the brakes. Now he finds immigrant craftsmen gathered in abundance outside his store in the early morning, waiting for it to open so they can buy supplies for the day's work as contractors. Skilled day laborers, also mostly immigrants, wait quietly in hopes of being hired by the contractors. Q. Mr. Axelrod also says the recession and persistently high unemployment have forced many people to try to save money by doing more themselves, and Home Depot in response offers classes in fixing water taps and other simple repairs. The teachers are store employees, many of them older and semi-retired from a skilled trade, or laid off. 'Our customers may not be building cabinets or outdoor decks; we try to do that for them, ' Mr. Axelrod says, 'but some are trying to build up skill so they can do more for themselves in these hard times.'

单选题 二十四节气 二十四节气(24 solar terms)是统称，包括十二节气(12 major solar terms)和十二中气(12 minor solar terms)，它们彼此之间相互关联。二十四节气反映了天气变化，可以指导农业耕作，也影响着人们的生活。春秋战国时期，人们开始使用节气作为补充历法。公元前104年，二十四节气最终确立。众所周知，中国是一个有着悠久农业发展史的国家。农业生产受自然规律影响极大。在古代，农民根据太阳的运动安排农业生产活动。二十四节气考虑到了太阳的位置，这就是我们重视它的原因。

单选题 That Louis Nevelson is believed by many critics to be the greatest twentieth-century sculptor (雕刻家) is all the more remarkable because the greatest resistance to women artists has been, until recently, in the field of sculpture. Since Neolithic (新石器是时代的) times, sculpture has been considered the privilege of men, partly, perhaps, for purely physical reasons: it was faultily assumed that women were not suited for the hard manual labor required in sculpting stone, carving wood, or working in metal. It has been only during the twentieth-century that women sculptors have been recognized as major artists, and it has been in the United States, especially since the decades of the fifties and sixties, that women sculptors have shown the greatest originality and creative power. Their rise to prominence (声望) parallels the development of sculpture itself in the United Sates: while there had been a few talented sculptors in the United States before the 1940's, it was only after 1945—when New York was rapidly becoming the capital of the world—that major sculpture was produced in the United States. Some of the best was the work of women. By far the most outstanding of these women is Louis Nevelson, who in the eyes of many critics is the most original female artist alive today. One famous and influential critic Hilton Kramer, said of her work, 'For myself, I think Ms. Nevelson succeeds where the painters often fail.' Her works have been compared to the Cubist (立体主义的) constructions of Picasso, the surrealistic (超现实主义的) objects of Miro and the Merzhau of Schwitters. Nevelson would be the first to admit that she has been influenced by all of these, as well as by African sculpture, and by Native American and pre-Columbian art, but she has absorbed all these influences and still created a distinctive art that expresses the urban landscape and the aesthetic (审美的) sensibility of the twentieth century. Nevelson says, 'I have always wanted to show the world that art is everywhere, except that it has to pass through a creative mind.' Using mostly discarded wooden objects like packing crates (板条箱) , broken pieces of furniture, and abandoned architectural ornaments, all of which she has collected for years, she assembles architectural constructions of great beauty and power, creating very freely with no sketches, she glues and nails objects together, paints them black, or more rarely white or gold, and places them in boxes. These assemblages, walls, even entire environments create a mysterious, almost awe-inspiring atmosphere. Although she has denied any symbolic or religious intent in her works, their three-dimensional grandeur and even their titles, such as Sky Cathedral and Night Cathedral, suggest such connotations (涵义). In some ways, her most ambitious works are closer to architecture than to traditional sculpture, but then neither Louis Nevelson nor her art fits into any neat category.

单选题The first way we can approach language is concerned with describing and explaining it as a matter of human behavior. People speak and write; read and understand what they hear. Not everybody seems to develop them to the same degree. People may suffer accidents or diseases, which 27 their performance. Language is thus seen as a particular sort of behavior. The trouble with the term 'behavior' is that it is often taken to refer only to more or less 28 signs. Yet part of language behavior— that of understanding spoken or written language—has little or no observable signs. It is true we can sometimes infer that understanding by the changes that take place in the other person's behavior. When someone has been 29 from doing something, we may infer that he has understood the prohibition by observing that thereafter he never behaves in that way. We cannot, of course, be 30 sure that his subsequent behavior is a result of his 31 ; it might be due to a loss of interest. So behavior must include 32 activity, only to be inferred from other observable behavior. Once we admit that the study of language behavior involves describing and explaining the unobservable, the situation becomes much more complicated; because we have to 33 some set of processes, some internal mechanism, which operates when we speak and understand. We have to presume something we can call a mind. The study of language from this point of view can then be seen as a study of the specific properties, processes and states of the mind whose outward 34 are observable behavior; which we have to know in order to perform linguistically. This approach to language is thus principally concerned with explaining how we acquire language, and its relation to general human 35 systems, and with the psychological mechanisms 36 the comprehension and production of speech. A. cognitive B. understanding C. manifestations D. inhibit E. absolutely F. mistake G. overt H. confidential I. underlying J. unobservable K. applied L. presume M. prohibited N. impair O. invariably

单选题As many people 27 middle age, they often start to notice that their memory and mental clarity are not what they used to be. We suddenly can't remember where we put the keys just a moment ago, or an old acquaintance's name, or the name of an old band we used to love. As the brain fades, we refer to these 28 as 'senior moments'. While seemingly 29 , this loss of mental focus can 30 have a detrimental impact on our professional, social, and personal well-being. Neuroscientists are increasingly showing that there's actually a lot that can be done. It turns that the brain needs exercise in much the same way our muscles do, and the right mental workouts can significantly improve our basic cognitive 31 . Thinking is essentially a process of making neural connections in the brain. To a certain extent, our ability to excel in making the neural connections that drive intelligence is 32 . However, because these connections are made through effort and practice, scientists believe that intelligence can expand according to mental effort. Now, a new San Francisco Web-based company has taken it a step further and developed the first 'brain training program' 33 to actually help people improve and regain their mental sharpness. It is called Lumosity. Lumosity, is far more than an online place to exercise your mental skills. That's because they have 34 these exercises into a Web-based program that allows you to systematically improve your memory and attention skills. Also, the program keeps track of your progress and provides 35 feedback on your performance and improvement. Most importantly, it constantly modifies and 36 the games you play to build on the strengths you are developing. A. arrive B. enhances C. complex D. definitely E. detailed F. functions G. hit H. incidents I. inherited J. innocent K. integrated L. intended M. occurrences N. potentially O. designed

单选题 当下人们倡导更健康的生活方式，自行车已再度回归人们的生活，重新成为人们重要的出行工具。

单选题 The Impact of Wilderness Tourism A. The market for tourism in remote areas is booming as never before. Countries all across the world are actively promoting their 'wilderness' regions—such as mountains, Arctic lands, deserts, small islands and wetlands—to high-spending tourists. The attraction of these areas is obvious: by definition, wilderness tourism requires little or no initial investment. But that does not mean that there is no cost. As the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development recognized, these regions are fragile (i.e. highly vulnerable to abnormal pressures) not just in terms of their ecology, but also in terms of the culture of their inhabitants. B. The three most significant types of fragile environment in these respects, and also in terms of the proportion of the Earth's surface they cover, are deserts, mountains and Arctic areas. An important characteristic is their marked seasonality, with harsh conditions prevailing for many months each year. Consequently, most human activities, including tourism, are limited to quite clearly defined parts of the year. C. Tourists are drawn to these regions by their natural landscape beauty and the unique cultures of their indigenous people. And poor governments in these isolated areas have welcomed the new breed of 'adventure tourist', grateful for the hard currency they bring. For several years now, tourism has been the prime source of foreign exchange in Nepal and Bhutan. Tourism is also a key element in the economies of Arctic zones such as Lapland and Alaska and in desert areas such as Ayers Rock in Australia and Arizona's Monument Valley. D. Once a location is established as a main tourist destination, the effects on the local community are profound. When hill-farmers, for example, can make more money in a few weeks working as porters for foreign trekkers than they can in a year working in their fields, it is not surprising that many of them give up their farm-work, which is thus left to other members of the family. E. In some hill-regions, this has led to a serious decline in farm output and a change in the local diet, because there is insufficient labour to maintain terraces and irrigation systems and tend to crops. The result has been that many people in these regions have turned to outside supplies of rice and other foods. F. In Arctic and desert societies, year-round survival has traditionally depended on hunting animals and fish and collecting fruit over a relatively short season. However, as some inhabitants become involved in tourism, they no longer have time to collect wild food; this has led to increasing dependence on bought food and stores. G. Tourism is not always the culprit behind such changes. All kinds of wage labour, or government handouts, tend to undermine traditional survival systems. Whatever the cause, the dilemma is always the same: what happens if these new, external sources of income dry up? H. The physical impact of visitors is another serious problem associated with the growth in adventure tourism. Much attention has focused on erosion along major trails, but perhaps more important are the deforestation and impacts on water supplies arising from the need to provide tourists with cooked food and hot showers. In both mountains and deserts, slow-growing trees are often the main sources of fuel and water supplies may be limited or vulnerable to degradation through heavy use. I. Stories about the problems of tourism have become legion in the last few years. Yet it does not have to be a problem. Although tourism inevitably affects the region in which it takes place, the costs to these fragile environments and their local cultures can be minimized. Indeed, it can even be a vehicle for reinvigorating local cultures, as has happened with the Sherpas of Nepal's Khumbu Valley and in some Alpine villages. And a growing number of adventure tourism operators are trying to ensure that their activities benefit the local population and environment over the long term. J. In the Swiss Alps, communities have decided that their future depends on integrating tourism more effectively with the local economy. Local concern about the rising number of second home developments in the Swiss Pays d'Enhaut resulted in limits being imposed on their growth. There has also been a renaissance in communal cheese production in the area, providing the locals with a reliable source of income that does not depend on outside visitors. K. Many of the Arctic tourist destinations have been exploited by outside companies, who employ transient workers and repatriate most of the profits to their home base. But some Arctic communities are now operating tour businesses themselves, thereby ensuring that the benefits accrue locally. For instance, a native corporation in Alaska, employing local people, is running an air tour from Anchorage to Kotzebue, where tourists eat Arctic food, walk on the tundra and watch local musicians and dancers. L. Native people in the desert regions of the American Southwest have followed similar strategies, encouraging tourists to visit their pueblos and reservations to purchase high-quality handicrafts and artwork. The Acoma and San Ildefonso pueblos have established highly profitable pottery businesses, while the Navajo and Hopi groups have been similarly successful with jewellery. M. Too many people living in fragile environments have lost control over their economies, their culture and their environment when tourism has penetrated their homelands. Merely restricting tourism cannot be the solution to the imbalance, because people's desire to see new places will not just disappear. Instead, communities in fragile environments must achieve greater control over tourism ventures in their regions in order to balance their needs and aspirations with the demands of tourism. A growing number of communities are demonstrating that, with firm communal decision-making, this is possible. The critical question now is whether this can become the norm, rather than the exception.

单选题 Shopping and the Internet, Making It Click A. Terry Lundgren and Kevin Ryan know and like each other. But when it comes to the future of retailing the boss of Macy's, an American department-store giant, and the chief executive of Gilt Groupe, an online retailer, disagree wildly. Mr. Lundgren remains a firm believer in an empire of bricks and mortar (实体店). Mr. Ryan is betting big on online-only selling. B. 'It used to be mail-order catalogues killing physical stores, then it was TV shopping and now it is online retail,' says Mr. Lundgren. Although he will not be pinned down on whether the Internet is a threat to shopkeepers or an opportunity for them, he is convinced that his chain is on the right path. Macy's is embracing 'omnichannel' integration, that is, selling stuff on television, through mail-order catalogues and online, as well as keeping its department stores. The company runs 810 shops across America under the mid-price, mid-market Macy's brand and 38 more luxurious Bloomingdale's outlets. Mr. Ryan argues that bricks-and-mortar shops are gravely threatened by Amazon and other online-only retailers, and says he can see 'no evidence that there are big opportunities for traditional retailers in online retail.' C. Overall, retail sales in America are pretty flat, so the double-digit growth of online sellers is coming at the expense of physical shops. Amazon's sales in the past year were $48 billion, compared with Macy's $26 billion. Last year online sales in America reached $188 billion, about 8% of total retail sales. They are forecast to reach $270 billion by 2015. So far, Mr. Lundgren has good reason not to worry that the sky is falling. Most relevant for Mr. Lundgren's debate with his friendly rival, online sales from the websites of Macy's and Bloomingdale's jumped by 40%. This reflects Macy's efforts to expand its online business. It is building a new logistics (物流) center for online sales in West Virginia and expanding an existing one in Tennessee. And it is fixing a glaring flaw in its Internet-sales operation: until now online shoppers have only been able to buy goods in Macy's warehouses; soon they will be able to order items from the stock of its stores. Magic mirrors and Facebook friends D. Mr. Lundgren is keen to continue experimenting with ways to use the Internet. In 2010 Macy's introduced a virtual fitting room where customers tried on digital representations of clothes through their reflection in a 'magic mirror' and shared them with their friends on Facebook. 'It didn't work,' admits Mr. Lundgren. So Macy's is now trying out virtual models. With its thriving Internet business, Macy's is ahead of many other retailers. E. Walmart, the world's biggest, waited for a long time and hesitated over its online strategy until it finally decided to 'make winning of e-commerce a key priority', as Mike Duke, its chief executive, puts it. Like an increasing number of store chains, Walmart is inviting online shoppers to pick up their purchases from its physical stores if that suits them. Since last June they have been able to do so on the day they place their order. Now, says Joel Anderson, who runs the company's online business, more than half of Internet orders are collected from stores. The company claims this is saving shoppers millions of dollars in delivery charges. In spite of these recent improvements, Walmart is not yet reaping big profits from its online business. It does not break out its Internet sales from the total, but they are still tiny for its size. F. There are some retailers, in particular those at the extremes of the market, that can safely ignore the threat from shoppers' migration to the Internet. At the luxury end, Yves Saint Laurent is unlikely to start selling its ball gowns over the net; at the cost-conscious end, dollar stores will continue 'piling it high and selling it cheap'. But the vast majority of retailers in between may have little choice but to counter the rise of online-only rivals by creating strong Internet operations of their own. The biggest threat to most of them is Amazon, the undisputed champion of online selling. Other online-only retailers have little chance of felling this giant. Their best bet is to be distinctive. G. Mr. Ryan's Gilt Groupe is modeled on France's Vente Privée, an online shopping club for expensive branded stuff at reduced prices. The customers' average age for Mr. Ryan's business is 34. Consumers aged 24 to 35 already do about a quarter of their shopping online, says John Deighton of Harvard Business School. In Mr. Deighton's view the Internet-retail revolution is over, in that online buying is well established and will only keep growing. However, he says it is unclear how important a sales tool social networks like Facebook and Twitter, to which some online retailers are pinning their hopes, will turn out to be. H. Some bricks-and-mortar retailers have already had disappointing experiences trying to sell through social media. Over the past year GAP, J. C. Penney and Nordstrom have opened and closed storefronts on Facebook. The social-networking site, which this month filed for an IPO (首次公开募股), is trying hard to be a top shopping destination for its 845m members. Yet so far people still tend to visit Facebook to socialize with their friends. Shopping by smartphone I. What does seem clear is that as personal computing goes mobile people are buying more via smart phones. Four years ago hardly anyone bought things on their mobile devices but today nearly one-quarter of Gilt Groupe's revenue comes from smart phone shoppers; on some weekends the proportion reaches 40%. Nearly one third of people living in America own a smart phone, and 70% of these use it to do searches while they are inside a shop, usually to compare prices. 'By 2014 mobile Internet will overtake desktop Internet usage for shopping,' predicts Nigel Morris, chief executive of Aegis Media Americas. Order online, pay cash in store J. The most clued-up shopkeepers realize that they must make the most of such advantages over online rivals, and that to do so they must make their stores more enjoyable places to visit. In 2010 Macy's company launched a training programme for its more than 130,000 sales people, 'MAGIC Selling', which coached them to be more helpful and friendlier with customers. It is tailoring the merchandise stocked in its stores more closely to local tastes. Retailers with lavishly furnished stores and helpful assistants will increasingly have to put up with free-riders who come into the shop to check out the products and get some advice, before sneaking away to buy them for less online. Have you got this in my size? K. However, there is no single recipe for retailing success in the Internet age. Retailers will need to balance their investment between staff, locations, inventory and online operations, says José Alvarez of Harvard Business School. For some expensive products it makes sense to have a low inventory, a big investment in showrooms, elaborate online operations and well qualified sales people. For more commoditized items it is more important to have a big inventory than a flashy display. Things that are increasingly being bought online must be swept off the shelves to make way for products that people still want to examine and compare before buying. L. Whatever priorities retailers set, their physical stores are likely to shrink as the share of sales made online keeps rising. The retailers who want to survive the drift online are the ones 'listening to the dynamic demands of customers,' says Walmart's Mr. Anderson. (选自The Economist)

单选题 Now listen to the following recording and answer questions16-19.

单选题Directions:Forthispart,youareallowed30minutestowriteanessaybasedonthechartbelow.YoushouldstartyouressaywithabriefdescriptionofthechartandcommentonthechangeofthenumberofcollegegraduatesinChina.Youshouldwriteatleast150wordsbutnomorethan200words.

单选题 赵州桥坐落在洨河上，距离赵县南部约2.5公里。这座桥是在公元605年-公元616年建造的。它是由中国著名的匠师(mason)李春设计的。赵州桥是用石头建造的，长50.82米，宽10米，还有一个不可思议的弧形桥洞，高7.23米，跨度(span)为37.35米。桥上的石头栏杆(railing)和柱子(column)上雕刻着美丽的龙凤(dragon phoenix)图案。这座桥是一座空腹式的(open-spandrel)圆弧形石拱桥，两边有两个小拱，这是中国最早的拱桥(arch bridge)之一，在中国桥梁建筑史上占有重要的地位，让游客和工程师们都很感兴趣。