单选题Directions:Forthispart,youareallowed30minutestowriteashortessaybasedonthepicturebelow.Youshouldstartyouressaywithabriefdescriptionoftheimpactoffloodingappsofsmartphonesontheirusersandthenexplaintheadvantagesanddisadvantagesofnumeroussmartphoneapps.Youshouldwriteatleast150wordsbutnomorethan200words.

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 1985 graduated 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. 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. I. '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.' J. 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. K. 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). '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.' L. 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.' M. 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. N. 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 5.3 million 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. O. 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. P. 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. R. '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 Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay entitled Skepticism Is a Precious Academic Spirit. You should write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words following the outline given below. 1．中国学生在课堂上往往缺乏怀疑精神 2．怀疑精神是一种可贵的学术精神 3．我的观点

单选题 Questions10-12 are based on the passage you have just heard.

单选题 Questions9-11 are based on the passage you have just heard.

单选题 Now and again I have had horrible dreams, but not enough of them to make me lose my delight in dreams. To begin with, I like the idea of dreaming, of going to bed and lying still and then, by some queer magic, wandering into another kind of existence. As a child I could never understand why grown-ups took dreaming so calmly when they could make such a fuss about any holiday. This still puzzles me. I am mystified (迷惑的) by people who say they never dream and appear to have no interest in the subject. It is much more astonishing than if they said they never went out for a walk. Most people or at least more Western Europeans do not seem to accept dreaming as part of their lives. They appear to see it as an irritating little habit, like sneezing or yawning. I have never understood this. My dream life does not seem as important as my waking life, if only because there is far less of it, but to me it is important. As if there were at least two extra continents added to the word, and lightning excursions running to them at any moment between midnight and breakfast. Then again, the dream life, though queer and confusing and unsatisfactory in many respects, has its own advantages. The dead are there, smiling and talking. The part is there, sometimes all broken and confused but occasionally as fresh as a daisy. And perhaps, as Mr. Dunne tells us, the future is there too, winking at us. This dream life is often overshadowed (蒙上阴影) by huge mysterious anxieties, with luggage that cannot be packed and trains that refuse to be caught; and both persons and scenes there are not as dependable and solid as they are in waking life, so that Brown and Smith merge into one person while Robinson splits into two, and there are thick woods outside the bathroom door and the dining room is somehow part of a theatre balcony; and there are moments of loneliness or terror in the dream world that are worse than anything we have known under the sun. Yet this other life has its interests, its happiness, its satisfactions, and at certain rare interval's, a serene glow or a sudden joy, like glimpses of another form of existence altogether, that we cannot match with open eyes. Silly or wise, terrible or excellent, it is a further helping of experience, a bonus after dark, another slice of life cut differently, for which, it seems to me, we are never sufficiently grateful. Only a dream! Why only? It was there and you had it. 'If there were dreams to sell, ' Beddoes inquires, 'What would you pay?' I cannot say off hand, but certainly the price would be rather more than I could afford.

单选题 传统的中国婚俗被视为中国传统文化礼仪的基础。通常，婚礼是隆重场合，有很多的礼节。婚礼有八大程序，包括求婚、生辰匹配、合婚(marriage divination)，下聘(betrothal gifts presenting)、确定婚期、置办嫁妆(dowry urging)、迎娶新娘、举行正式的结婚仪式。在中国传统的婚礼中，新娘由新郎牵着。她头顶红盖头，全程都垂在肩上。传统的中国婚俗已经实行了几千年。它们可能会因时间和地点而异，但在中国人的生活中一直占据着重要地位，对中国人的生活方式产生着深远的影响。

单选题 长城是世界一大奇迹。现在，每年都有几百万人到长城游览。在旺季，几处最著名的景点总是让成群结队的游客挤得水泄不通。中国人修筑长城的历史久远，可以追溯到战国时期(Warring States period)。历史上，中国共修过大约20座长城。在所有这些长城中，明长城最长，达到6700公里。当时，中国的技术在世界上处于领先地位，因此明长城的结构也是最复杂的。明长城的修筑是为了抵御北方游牧民族的入侵。

单选题 希望工程 希望工程(Project Hope)是于1989年发起的一项公益事业，以救助贫困地区失学儿童(young dropouts)为目的。帮助建设希望小学与资助贫困学生是希望工程实施的两大主要任务。中国仍然是一个发展中国家，贫困地区缺乏教育经费的问题依旧严峻。有超过3000万6～14岁的少年儿童因贫困而不能上学或者被迫辍学。希望工程的实施，改变了一大批失学儿童的命运，改善了贫困地区的学校设施，极大地促进了基础教育的发展，弘扬了助人为乐的优良传统。

单选题 吃年夜饭是春节期间家家户户最热闹的时刻。除夕夜，丰盛的年夜菜摆满一大桌，一家人团聚在一起，围坐桌旁，欢声笑语，共享美餐。年夜饭可谓一年里最为丰盛的一顿大餐，为准备年夜饭，人们往往要提前忙上好几天，配备各种各样的食材。年夜饭上的菜肴各式各样，五花八门。一些地方一般少不了两样东西：一是火锅，二是鱼。火锅沸煮，热气腾腾，说明红红火火；“鱼”和“余”谐音，象征“吉庆有余”，也喻示“年年有余”。

单选题 Barter (易货贸易), the exchange of goods and services without the use of money, is not a new idea, but over the past decade, this type of transaction has been transformed into a sophisticated business practice. Today, the barter industry is composed of several thousand independent barter exchanges representing an estimated 100000 businesses worldwide turning over US $9 billion per annum. Through bartering, businesses in Asia, US, Australia and Europe have saved millions of dollars and were consistently able to move as much extra inventory (存货) as they want. But why is barter system back in style? There are many good reasons, but underlying them all is one fundamental business motivation: profit. Businesses can use barter to conserve cash, generate new business, and turn excess and idle inventory into useful products and services. Moreover, the rising inflation, job losses and the slowing economy have prompted an explosion of bartering where businesses as well as individuals can get what they want without spending any of their precious cash. The barter system enables traders to find new buyers of their products and services from the targeted universe of participants trading within a particular exchange. Barter exchanges are done by using a trade currency to measure the exchange of goods and services between businesses and individuals. Barter currency give people the ability to purchase a future good or service that equals the amount of barter currency they own. This method allows businesses as well as individuals to get the things they need without having to expend additional money. Instead, they can use the things they no longer need or want to get the things they do need. Bartering can also be used by businesses that are seasonal in nature such as resort hotels. A bartered hotel room is more cost effective than an empty one. Bartering thus allows businesses to capitalize on unproductive assets and spare capacity. With a large exchange, it is possible to barter pretty much anything. There are exchange markets and online auctions that allow businesses to sell or trade their inventory or to purchase items that they want such as: barterplant.com, a free online community for trading items, services, and knowledge; swaptree.com, which specializes in trading books, video games, DVDs, and music and swapstyle.com, which allows members to swap clothes, shoes, cosmetics, and accessories. Although cash still in control, barter industry experts think, there is more room for barter. They predict that the globalization of barter over the next decade will be powered by a universal barter currency. Having a barter currency, which does not go up and down depending on the stability or instability of the world markets, means that the future prospects of the barter industry look pretty bright.