单选题 How many really suffer as a result of labor market problems? This is one of the most critical yet contentious social policy questions. In many ways, our social statistics exaggerate the degree of hardship. Unemployment does not have the same dire consequences today as it did in the 1930s, when most of the unemployed were primary bread winners, when income and earnings were usually much closer to the margin of subsistence, and when there were no countervailing social programs for those failing in the labor market. Increasing affluence, the rise of families with more than one wage earner, the growing predominance of secondary earners among the unemployed, and improved social welfare protection have unquestionably mitigated the consequences of joblessness. Earnings and income data also overstate the dimensions of hardship. Among the millions with hourly earnings at or below the minimum wage level, the over-whelming majority are from multiple-earner, relatively affluent families. Most of those counted by the poverty statistics are elderly or handicapped or have family responsibilities which keep them out of the labor force, so the poverty statistics are by no means an accurate indicator of labor market pathologies. Yet there are also many ways our social statistics underestimate the degree of labor-market-related hardship. The unemployment counts exclude the millions of fully employed workers whose wages are so low that their families remain in poverty. Low wages and repeated or prolonged unemployment frequently interact to undermine the capacity for self-support. Since the number experiencing joblessness at some time during the year is several times the number unemployed in any month, those who suffer as a result of forced idleness can equal or exceed average annual unemployment, even though only a minority of the jobless in any month really suffer. For every person counted in the monthly unemployment tallies, there is another working part-time because of the inability to find full-time work, or else outside the labor force but wanting a job. Finally, income transfers in our country have always focused on the elderly, disabled, and dependent, neglecting the needs of the working poor, so that the dramatic expansion of cash and inkind transfers does not necessarily mean that those failing in the labor market are adequately protected. As a result of such contradictory evidence, it is uncertain whether those suffering seriously as a result of thousands or the tens of millions, and, hence, whether high levels of joblessness can be tolerated or must be countered by job creation and economic stimulus. There is only one area of agreement in this debate—that the existing poverty, employment, and earnings statistics are inadequate for one their primary applications, measuring the consequences of labor market problems.

单选题Like many workers, Ivelisse Rivera, a physician at Community Health Center, Middletown, Conn., feels stressed-out by mounting workloads. And she didn't expect to get much help during her employer's 26 staff meeting last November—just the usual speeches on medical 27 . Instead, she got a big dose of something new: Happiness coaching. Keynote speaker Shawn Achor—a former Harvard University researcher and former co-teacher of one of the university's most popular courses, Positive Psychology—extolled (激励) 90 listening employees to 28 off dark moods at work by practicing such happiness—inducing 29 as meditation or expressing gratitude. To her surprise, Dr. Rivera says, she drove home filled with thoughts about cheering up, 'if I 30 a negative attitude and complain all the time, whoever is working with me is going to feel the same way.' Happiness coaching is seeping (渗入) into the workplace. A growing number of employers, including UBS, American Express, KPMG and the law firm Goodwin Procter, have hired trainers who 31 on psychological research, ancient religious traditions or both to inspire workers to take a more positive attitude—or at least a 32 one. Happiness-at-work coaching is the theme of a crop of new business books and a growing number of MBA-school courses. Critics say that pushing positive thinking is just a way for companies to improve morale while they continue to burden employees with the threat of 33 and an ever-increasing workload. In his book, Bright-sided, Barbara Ehrenreich blames 'positive thinking' for 34 it will lead people to avoid 35 a wide range of serious problems in the economy and workplace. A. annual I. issues B. assume J. layoffs C. assure K. neutral D. confer L. notorious E. confronting M. shake F. draw N. techniques G. inevitably O. technology H. invariably

单选题Directions:Forthispart,youareallowed30minutestowriteashortessayentitledNationalReadershipontheInternet.Youshouldstartyouressaywithabriefdescriptionofthechartandwriteatleast150wordsbutnomorethan200words.RecentNationalReadershipontheInternet(%)1．上图为近年来我国国民网上阅读率的变化情况，请描述其变化2．出现这种现象的原因3．这种现象可能产生的影响

单选题 Questions2-5 are based on the conversation you have just heard.

单选题 When fisheries have sunk or collapsed, one approach to fix the situation is to set up a marine reserve where fishing is banned. The idea is to provide relief to stressed fish stocks by providing safe living environment where fish can reproduce, and then spread out. Jennifer Caselle, a biologist from University of California, provided a local example of success. In 2003, the state of California set up a network of 12 marine reserves near Los Angeles and banned fishing in more than 488 square kilometers. By monitoring the area before and after, Caselle and her colleagues found that over 5 years there were 50% more blue rockfish and other species targeted by fishing inside reserves than outside. There was no change in species that people don't eat, suggesting that fishing restrictions were responsible for the recovery. Another success story comes from Australia, which created the first large marine reserve in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park in 1975. After a major die-off of coral (珊瑚), the government decided in 2003 to rezone the park and increased the proportion of no-take areas from less than 5% to 32%. Many fish species quickly doubled in sire and numbers. The new reserves also seemed to improve ecosystem health in general, as outbreaks of coral-eating starfish were nearly 4 times more frequent on the reefs where fishing was still permitted. What makes a marine reserve successful? Taking a broad look at 56 marine reserves around the world, Joshua Cinner of James Cook University examined the social and economic factors. The number of people living near the reserves played a big role in some cases. In the Caribbean, reserves near large populations tended to have less fish relative to unprotected areas than did reserves that were more remote. But the opposite was true In the Western Indian Ocean. It's not clear why, but one reason could be that people tend to move to places with healthy marine reserves so that they can fish nearby. Another factor related to successful marine reserves was, as expected, compliance (遵从) with fishing restrictions. And that tended to be associated not just with enforcement, but more complicated social dynamics such as how well people work together and participate In research and management. 'In areas where people work together to invest in their resources, we saw less people illegally catching fish inside marine reserves,' Cinner said in a statement. 'To get high levels of compliance with reserve rules, managers need to foster the conditions that enable participation in reserve activities, rather than just focusing on patrols.'

单选题 Trying too Hard Can Slow New Language Development A. Neuroscientists have long observed that learning a language presents a different set of opportunities and challenges for adults and children. B. Adults easily grasp the vocabulary needed to navigate a grocery store or order food in a restaurant, but children have an innate ability to pick up on subtle nuances of language that often elude adults. For example, within months of living in a foreign country, a young child may speak a second language like a native speaker. C. Experts believe that brain structure plays an important role in this 'sensitive period' for learning language, which is believed to end around adolescence. The young brain is equipped with neural circuits that can analyze sounds and build a coherent set of rules for constructing words and sentences out of those sounds. Once these language structures are established, it's difficult to build another one for a new language. D. In a new study, a team of neuroscientists and psychologists from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) discovered another factor that contributes to adults' language difficulties: When learning certain elements of language, adults' more highly developed cognitive skills actually get in the way. E. The researchers discovered that the harder adults tried to learn an artificial language, the worse they were at deciphering the language's morphology—the structure and deployment of linguistic units such as root words, suffixes, and prefixes. F. 'We found that effort helps you in most situations, for things like figuring out what the units of language that you need to know are, and basic ordering of elements. But when trying to learn morphology, at least in this artificial language we created, it's actually worse when you try,' said Amy Flynn a postdoc at MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research. G. Finn and colleagues from the University of California at Santa Barbara, Stanford University, and the University of British Columbia describe their findings in journal PLOS ONE. H. Linguists have known for decades that children are skilled at absorbing certain tricky elements of language, such as irregular past participles (examples of which, in English, include 'gone' and 'been') or complicated verb tenses like the subjunctive. 'Children will ultimately perform better than adults in terms of their command of the grammar and the structural components of language—some of the more idiosyncratic, difficult-to-articulate aspects of language that even most native speakers don't have conscious awareness of,' Finn says. I. In 1990, linguist Elissa Newport hypothesized that adults have trouble learning those nuances because they try to analyze too much information at once. Adults have a much more highly developed prefrontal cortex than children, and they tend to throw all of that brainpower at learning a second language. J. This high-powered processing may actually interfere with certain elements of learning language. 'It's an idea that's been around for a long time, but there hasn't been any data that experimentally show that it's true,' Finn says. Finn and her colleagues designed an experiment to test whether exerting more effort would help or hinder success. The study K. First, they created nine nonsense words, each with two syllables. Each word fell into one of three categories (A, B, and C), defined by the order of consonant and vowel sounds. Study subjects listened to the artificial language for about 10 minutes. One group of subjects was told not to overanalyze what they heard, but not to tune it out either. L. To help them not overthink the language, they were given the option of completing a puzzle or colouring while they listened. The other group was told to try to identify the words they were hearing. Each group heard the same recording, which was a series of three-word sequences—first a word from category A, then one from category B, then category C—with no pauses between words. M. Previous studies have shown that adults, babies, and even monkeys can parse this kind of information into word units, a task known as word segmentation. Subjects from both groups were successful at word segmentation, although the group that tried harder performed a little better. Both groups also performed well in a task called word ordering, which required subjects to choose between a correct word sequence (ABC) and an incorrect sequence (such as ACB) of words they had previously heard. N. The final test measured skill in identifying the language's morphology. The researchers played a three-word sequence that included a word the subjects had not heard before, but which fit into one of the three categories. O. When asked to judge whether this new word was in the correct location, the subjects who had been asked to pay closer attention to the original word stream performed much worse than those who had listened more passively. The findings support a theory of language acquisition that suggests that some parts of language are learned through procedural memory, while others are learned through declarative memory. P. Under this theory, declarative memory, which stores knowledge and facts, would be more useful for learning vocabulary and certain rules of grammar. Procedural memory, which guides tasks we perform without conscious awareness of how we learned them, would be more useful for learning subtle rules related to language morphology. Q. 'It's likely to be the procedural memory system that's really important for learning these difficult morphological aspects of language. In fact, when you use the declarative memory system, it doesn't help you, it harms you,' Finn says. Still unresolved is the question of whether adults can overcome this language-learning obstacle. Finn says she does not have a good answer yet but she is now testing the effects of 'turning off' the adult prefrontal cortex using a technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation. R. Other interventions she plans to study include distracting the prefrontal cortex by forcing it to perform other tasks while language is heard, and treating subjects with drugs that impair activity in that brain region.

单选题Directions:Forthispart,youareallowed30minutestowriteashortessayentitledTheComparisonofSpare-timeInterestsAmongUniversityStudents.Youshouldstartyouressaywithabriefdescriptionofthepiechartandwriteatleast150wordsbutnomorethan200words.1．大学生业余时间爱好比例对比2．产生这种现象的原因3．大学生应注意业余爱好不能占用太多学习时间

单选题 What's the one word of advice a well-meaning professional would give to a recent college graduate? China? India? Brazil'? How about trade? When the Commerce Department reported last week that the trade deficit in June approached $50 billion, it set off a new round of economic doomsaying. Imports, which soared to $200. 3 billion in the month, are subtracted in the calculation of gross domestic product. The larger the trade deficit, the smaller the GDP. Should such imbalances continue, pessimists say, they could contribute to slower growth. But there's another way of looking at the trade data. Over the past two years, the figures on imports and exports seem not to signal a double-dip recession—a renewed decline in the broad level of economic activity in the United States—but an economic expansion. The rising volume of trade—more goods and services shuttling in and out of the United States—is good news for many sectors. Companies engaged in shipping, tracking, rail freight, delivery, and logistics (物流) have all been reporting better than expected results. The rising numbers signify growing vitality in foreign markets—when we import more stuff, it puts more cash in the hands of people around the world, and U. S. exports are rising because more foreigners have the ability to buy the things we produce and market. The rising tide of trade is also good news for people who work in trade-sensitive businesses, especially those that produce commodities for which global demand sets the price—agricultural goods, mining, metals, oil. And while exports always seem to lag, U. S. companies are becoming more involved in the global economy with each passing month. General Motors sells as many cars in China as in America each month. While that may not do much for imports, it does help GM's balance sheet—and hence makes the jobs of U. S. -based executives more stable. One great challenge for the U. S. economy is slack domestic consumer demand. Americans are paying down debt, saving more, and spending more carefully. That's to be expected, given what we've been through. But there's a bigger challenge. Can U. S. -based businesses, large and small, figure out how to get a piece of growing global demand? Unless you want to pick up and move to India, or Brazil, or China, the best way to do that is through trade. It may seem obvious, but it's no longer enough simply to do business with our friends and neighbors here at home. Companies and individuals who don't have a strategy to export more, or to get more involved in foreign markets, or to play a role in global trade, are shutting themselves out of the lion's share of economic opportunity in our world.

单选题 Questions14-16 are based on the passage you have just heard.