单选题 Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay entitled Modern Technology and Human Intimacy. You should write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words following the outline given below. 1．有人认为现代科技拉近了人们的距离 2．有的人则认为现代科技反而把人与人之间的距离拉开了 3．我的观点

单选题 Directions: For this part you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay commenting on the remark 'The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.' You can give examples to illustrate your point and then explain what you will do to make your life more meaningful. You should write at least 150 words but no more that 200 words.

单选题 Wal-Mart A. Wal-Mart is more than just the world's largest retailer. It is an economic force, a cultural phenomenon and a lightning rod for controversy. It all started with a simple philosophy from founder Sam Walton: offer shoppers lower prices than they get anywhere else. That basic strategy has shaped Wal-Mart's culture and driven the company's growth. B. Now that Wal-Mart is so huge, it has unprecedented power to shape labor markets globally and change the way entire industries operate. History of Wal-Mart C. Sam Walton opened his first five-and-dime in 1950. His vision was to keep prices as low as possible. Even if his margins weren't as fat as competitors, he figured he could make up for that in volume. He was right. D. In the early 1960s, Walton opened his first Wal-Mart in Rogers, Arkansas. The company continued to grow, going public in 1970 and adding more stores every year. In 1990, Wal-Mart surpassed key rival Kmart in size. Two years later, it surpassed Sears. E. Walton continued to drive an old pickup truck and share budget-hotel rooms with colleagues on business trips, even after War-Mart made him very rich. He demanded that his employees also keep expenses to a bare minimum—a mentality that is still at the heart of Wal-Mart culture more than decade after Walton's death. The company has continued to grow rapidly after his death in 1992 and now operates four retail divisions—Wal-Mart Super Centers, War-Mart Discount Stores, Neighborhood Market Stores and Sam's Club Warehouses. Wal-Mart Strategy F. Let's start with technology. Wal-Mart pushed the retail industry to establish the universal bar code, which forced manufacturers to adopt common labeling. The bar code allowed retailers to generate all kinds of information—creating a subtle shift of power from manufacturers to retailers. Wal-Mart became especially good at exploiting the information behind the bar code. And thus it is considered a pioneer in developing sophisticated technology to track its stock and cut the fat out of its supply chain. G. Recently, Wal-Mart became the first major retailer to demand manufacturers use radio frequency identification technology (RFID). The technology uses radio frequencies to transmit data stored on small tags attached to pallets (货盘) or individual products. RFID tags hold significantly more data than bar codes. H. The frugal culture, established by Walton, also plays into Wal-Mart's success. The company has been criticized for the relatively poor wages and health care plans that it offers to rank-and-file employees. It has also been accused of demanding that hourly workers put in overtime without pay. Store managers often work more than 70 hours per week. I. This culture is also present at the company's headquarters. Wal-Mart is headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas, instead of an expensive city like New York. The building is unattractive and dull. You won't catch executives in quality cars and you won't see them dragging into work at 9:30 a.m. Executives fly coach and often share hotel rooms with colleagues. They work long hours, typically arriving at work before 6:30 a.m. and working half-days on Saturdays. J. The central goal of Wal-Mart is to keep retail prices low—and the company has been very successful at this. Experts estimate that Wal-Mart saves shoppers at least 15 percent on a typical cart of groceries. Everything—including the technology and corporate culture—feeds into that ultimate goal of delivering the lowest prices possible. Wal-Mart also pushes its suppliers, some say cruelly, to cut prices. In The Wal-Mart Effect, author Charles Fishman discusses how the price of a four-pack of GE light bulbs decreased from $2.19 to 88 cents during a five-year period. The Power K. Because of Wal-Mart's massive size, it has incredible power. It has driven the smallest retailers out of business; forced manufacturers to be more efficient, often leading these suppliers to move manufacturing jobs overseas; and changed the way that even large and established industries do business. L. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that a new Wal-Mart in town spells doom for local pharmacies, grocery stores, sporting goods stores, etc. Economist Emek Basker, Ph.D., attempted to quantify the impact. Her study found that in a typical United States county, when a Wal-Mart opens, three other retailers close within two years and four close within five years. While the Wal-Mart might employ 300 people, another 250 people working in retail lose their jobs within five years in that county. M. Wal-Mart has life or death decisions over (almost) all the consumer goods industries that exist in the United State, because it is the number-one supplier-retailer of most of our consumer goods—not just clothes, shoes, toys, but home appliances, electronic products, sporting goods, bicycles, groceries, food. N. The stories of how Wal-Mart pushes manufacturers into selling the same product at lower and lower prices are legendary. One example is Lakewood Engineering Manufacturing Co. in Chicago, a fan manufacturer. In the early 1990s, a 20-inch box fan costs $20. Wal-Mart pushed the manufacturer to lower the price, and Lakewood responded by automating the production process, which meant layoffs. Lakewood also forced its own suppliers to knock down the prices of parts. Then, in 2000, Lakewood opened a factory in China, where workers earn 25 cents an hour. By 2003, the price on the fan in a Wal-Mart store had dropped to about $10. O. Wal-Mart's impact extends beyond just small suppliers. It also affects how even major, established companies like Coca-Cola and PepsiCo do business. At Wal-Mart's request, Coke and its largest bottler Coca-Cola Enterprises announced that they are changing the way they deliver PowerAde in the United States, altering a basic distribution method for drinks that has been in place for more than a century. Coke also now allows Wal-Mart in on the research and development process. In 2005, Coke planned to launch one new diet Cola called Coke Zero. At Wal-Mart's request, it changed the name to Diet Coke unheard of at Coke a decade ago, Pepsi also came up with a line of diet drinks, called Slice One, to initially be sold exclusively in Wal-Mart. The Controversy P. Wal-Mart is a polarizing force. The controversies have involved a broad range of topics from Wal-Mart selling guns, to the company's environmental policies, to the kind of health care Wal-Mart offers employees, to outsourcing of jobs. In this section, we will explore two of the biggest areas of controversies—labor practice at the company and Wal-Mart's impact on the American economy. Q. Wal-Mart has come under fire on a number of labor issues. There may be a dark side to the frugal culture. At the end of 2005, the company faced dozens of lawsuits across the country for allegedly not paying workers overtime. Women have also accused Wal-Mart of discrimination, and employees have said that it squashes efforts to unionize and doesn't provide decent healthcare. R. Not everyone is down on Wal-Mart. Andrew Young, a former United Nations ambassador and former mayor of Atlanta, heads up a group backed by Wal-Mart that is supposed to spread a positive message about the company. 'You need to look at who's complaining about Wal-Mart,' Young told USA Today in March 2006. 'If it's not 100 million people shopping there every week and it's not 8,000 people competing for 500 jobs (at a new Atlanta store), who is it? They're complaining because they're wrong and they don't understand that ending poverty means generating wealth and not just fighting to redistribute the existing wealth.' S. There is heated debate about whether Wal-Mart is good for the American economy, and well-respected economists come down firmly on both sides of this debate. Some experts say it is good for the economy because it keeps prices low, both at its stores and at other retailers. Other experts argue that Wal-Mart is bad for the economy because it drives competing retailers out of business and forces manufacturers to move jobs overseas to keep expenses down.

单选题 Coming to An Office Near You The effect of today's technology on tomorrow's jobs will be immense—and no country is ready for it. [A] Innovation, the elixir (灵丹妙药) of progress, has always cost people their jobs. In the Industrial Revolution artisan (工匠) weavers were swept aside by the mechanical loom. Over the past 30 years the digital revolution has displaced many of the mid-skill jobs that supported 20th-century middle-class life. Typists, ticket agents, bank tellers and many production-line jobs have been dispensed with, just as the weavers were. [B] For those, including this newspaper, who believe that technological progress has made the world a better place, such churn (搅动) is a natural part of rising prosperity. Although innovation kills some jobs, it creates new and better ones, as a more productive society becomes richer and its wealthier inhabitants demand more goods and services. A hundred years ago one in three American workers was employed on a farm. Today less than 2% of them produce far more food. The millions freed from the land were not consigned to joblessness, but found better-paid work as the economy grew more sophisticated. Today the pool of secretaries has shrunk, but there are ever more computer programmers and web designers. Remember Ironbridge [C] Optimism remains the right starting-point, hut for workers the dislocating (扰乱) effects of technology may make themselves evident faster than its benefits. Even if new jobs and wonderful products emerge, in the short term income gaps will widen, causing huge social dislocation and perhaps even changing politics. Technology's impact will feel like a tornado (龙卷风), hitting the rich world first, but eventually sweeping through poorer countries too. No government is prepared for it. [D] Why be worried? It is partly just a matter of history repeating itself. In the early part of the Industrial Revolution the rewards of increasing productivity went disproportionately to capital; later on, labour reaped most of the benefits. The pattern today is similar. The prosperity unleashed by the digital revolution has gone overwhelmingly to the owners of capital and the highest-skilled workers. Over the past three decades, labour's share of output has shrunk globally from 64% to 59%. Meanwhile, the share of income going to the top 1% in America has risen from around 9% in the 1970s to 22% today. Unemployment is at alarming levels in much of the rich world, and not just for cyclical reasons. In 2000, 65% of working-age Americans were in work; since then the proportion has fallen, during good years as well as bad, to the current level of 59%. [E] Worse, it seems likely that this wave of technological disruption to the job market has only just started. From driverless cars to clever household gadgets, innovations that already exist could destroy lots of jobs that have hitherto (迄今) been untouched. The public sector is one obvious target: it has proved singularly resistant to tech-driven reinvention. But the step change in what computers can do will have a powerful effect on middle-class jobs in the private sector too. [F] Until now the jobs most vulnerable to machines were those that involved routine, repetitive tasks. But thanks to the rise in processing power and the ubiquity (无处不在) of digitised information ('big data'), computers are increasingly able to perform complicated tasks more cheaply and effectively than people. Clever industrial robots can quickly 'learn' a set of human actions. Services may be even more vulnerable. Computers can already detect intruders in a closed-circuit camera picture more reliably than a human can. By comparing reams of financial or biometric data, they can often diagnose fraud or illness more accurately than any number of accountants or doctors. One recent study by academics at Oxford University suggests that 47% of today's jobs could be automated in the next two decades. [G] At the same time, the digital revolution is transforming the process of innovation itself, as our special report explains. Thanks to off-the-shelf code from the Internet and platforms that host services (such as Amazon's cloud computing), provide distribution (Apple's app store) and offer marketing (Facebook), the number of digital start-ups has exploded. Just as computer-games designers invented a product that humanity never knew it needed but now cannot do without, so these firms will no doubt dream up new goods and services to employ millions. But for now they are singularly light on workers. When Instagram, a popular photo-sharing site, was sold to Facebook for about $1 billion in 2012, it had 30m customers and employed 13 people. Kodak, which filed for bankruptcy a few months earlier, employed 145,000 people in its heyday. [H] The problem is one of timing as much as anything. Google now employs 46,000 people. But it takes years for new industries to grow, whereas the disruption a startup causes to incumbents (现任者) is felt sooner. Airbnb may turn homeowners with spare rooms into entrepreneurs, but it poses a direct threat to the lower end of the hotel business—a massive employer. No time to be timid [I] If this analysis is halfway correct, the social effects will be huge. Many of the jobs most at risk are lower down the ladder (logistics, haulage), whereas the skills that are least vulnerable to automation (creativity, managerial expertise) tend to be higher up, so median wages are likely to remain stagnant for some time and income gaps are likely to widen. [J] Anger about rising inequality is bound to grow, but politicians will find it hard to address the problem. Shunning (避开) progress would be as useless now as the Luddites' protests against mechanised looms were in the 1810s, because any country that tried to stop would be left behind by competitors eager to embrace new technology. The freedom to raise taxes on the rich to punitive levels will be similarly constrained by the mobility of capital and highly skilled labour. [K] The main way in which governments can help their people through this dislocation is through education systems. One of the reasons for the improvement in workers' fortunes in the latter part of the Industrial Revolution was because schools were built to educate them—a dramatic change at the time. Now those schools themselves need to be changed, to foster the creativity that humans will need to set them apart from computers. There should be less rote-learning and more critical thinking. Technology itself will help, whether through MOOCs (massive open online courses) or even video games that simulate the skills needed for work. [L] The definition of 'a state education' may also change. Far more money should be spent on pre-schooling, since the cognitive abilities and social skills that children learn in their first few years define much of their future potential. And adults will need continuous education. State education may well involve a year of study to be taken later in life, perhaps in stages. [M] Yet however well people are taught, their abilities will remain unequal, and in a world which is increasingly polarized (两极化) economically, many will find their job prospects dimmed and wages squeezed. The best way of helping them is not, as many on the left seem to think, to push up minimum wages. Jacking up the floor too far would accelerate the shift from human workers to computers. Better to top up low wages with public money so that anyone who works has a reasonable income, through a bold expansion of the tax credits that countries such as America and Britain use. [N] Innovation has brought great benefits to humanity. Nobody in their right mind would want to return to the world of handloom weavers. But the benefits of technological progress are unevenly distributed, especially in the early stages of each new wave, and it is up to governments to spread them. In the 19th century it took the threat of revolution to bring about progressive reforms. Today's governments would do well to start making the changes needed before their people get angry.

单选题 Old stereotypes die hard. Picture a video-game player and you will likely imagine a teenage boy, by himself, compulsively hammering away at a game involving rayguns and aliens that splatter when blasted. Ten years ago that might have borne some relation to reality. But today a garner is as likely to be a middle-aged commuter playing 'Angry Birds' on her smartphone. In America, the biggest market, the average game-player is 37 years old. Two-fifths are female. Over the past ten years the video-game industry has grown from a small business to a huge, mainstream one. With global sales of $ 56 billion in 2010, it is more than twice the size of the recorded-music industry. Despite the downturn, it is growing by almost 9% a year. Is this success due to luck or skill? The answer matters, because the rest of the entertainment industry has tended to treat gaming as being a lucky beneficiary of broader technological changes. Video gaming, unlike music, film or television, had the luck to be born digital. In fact, there is plenty for old media to learn. Video games have certainly been swept along by two forces: demography and technology. The first gaming generation—the children of the 1970s and early 1980s—is now over 30. Many still love gaming, and can afford to spend far more on it now. Meanwhile rapid improvements in computing power have allowed game designers to offer experiences that are now often more cinematic than the cinema. But even granted this good fortune, the game-makers have been clever. They have reached out to new customers with new methods. They have branched out into education, corporate training and even warfare, and have embraced digital downloads and mobile devices with enthusiasm. Though big-budget games are still popular, much of the growth now comes from 'casual' games that are simple, cheap and playable in short bursts on mobile phones or in web browsers. The industry has excelled in a particular area—pricing. In an era when people are disinclined to pay for content on the web, games publishers were quick to develop 'freemium' models, where you rely on non-paying customers to build an audience and then extract cash only from a fanatical few. As gaming comes to be seen as just another medium, its tech-savvy approach could provide a welcome shot in the arm for existing media groups.

单选题Nearly two-thirds of businesses in the UK want to 32 staff with foreign language skills. French is still the most highly prized language, but Spanish and Mandarin speakers are more in 33 than in the past. Katja Hall, deputy director-general of Confederation of British Industry (CBI), said that, given the EU was the UK's largest export market, it was no surprise to see European languages so 34 valued. 'But with China and Latin America seeing solid growth, ambitious firms want the language skills that can 35 the path into new markets,' she said. The 2014 annual education and skills survey by the CBI and Pearson, the educational publisher that owns the Financial Times, found that 41 percent of the 291 companies surveyed across the UK believed knowledge of a foreign language was 36 to their business. European languages—French, German and Spanish—still topped the list in 37 of desirability, but these were closely followed by Mandarin and Arabic. However, the number of students studying foreign languages has 38 in the past decade. Ms Hall said it was unclear whether recent government 39 to encourage language learning in schools would have any impact. 'It has been a worry to see foreign language study in our schools under pressure with one in five schools having a 40 low take-up of languages,' she said. 'Young people considering their future subject choices should be made more 41 of the benefits to their careers that can come from studying a foreign language.' A. slumped B. risen C. initiatives D. highly E. agencies F. demand G. pressure H. accidentally I. aware J. persistently K. harmful L. beneficial M. recruit N. smooth O. terms

单选题 The idea of public works projects as a device to prevent or control depression was designed as means of creating job opportunities for unemployed workers and as a 'pump priming' device to aid business to revive. It was conceived during the early year as of the New Deal Era (1933-1937). By 1933, the number of unemployed workers had reached about 13 million. This meant that about 50 million people—about one third of the nation—were without means of support. At first, direct relief in the form of cash or food was provided for these people. This made them recipients (接受者) of government charity. In order to remove this stigma (耻辱) and restore to the unemployed some measure of respectability and human dignity, a plan was devised to create governmentally sponsored work projects that private industry would not or could not provide. This would also stimulate production and revive business activity. The best way to explain how this procedure is expected to work is to explain how it actually worked when it was first tried. The first experiment with it was the creation of the Works Project Administration (WPA). This agency set up work projects in various fields in which there were many unemployed. For example, unemployed actors were organized into theater projects; orchestras were organized for unemployed musicians, teaching projects for unemployed teachers, and even writers' projects for unemployed writers. Unemployed laborers were put to building work or maintaining roads, parks, playgrounds, or public buildings. These were all temporary 'work relief' projects rather than permanent work opportunities. More substantial work projects of a permanent nature were organized by another agency, the Public Works Administration (PWA). This agency undertook the planning of construction of schools, houses, post offices, dams, and other public structures. It entered into contracts with private construction firms to erect them, or it loaned money to local or state governments which undertook their construction. This created many jobs in the factories producing the material as well as in the projects themselves, and greatly reduced the number of the unemployed. Still another agency which provided work projects for the unemployed was the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). This agency provided job opportunities for youths aged 16 to 20 to work in national parks or forests clearing land, guarding against fires, building roads, or doing other conservation work. In the event of a future depression, the federal government might revive any or all of the above methods to relieve unemployment and stimulate business.

单选题 Elite Math Competitions Struggle to Diversify Their Talent Pool A. Interest in elite high school math competitions has grown in recent years, and in light of last summer's U.S. win at the International Math Olympiad (IMO)—the first for an American team in more than two decades-the trend is likely to continue. B. But will such contests, which are overwhelmingly dominated by Asian and white students from middle-class and affluent families, become any more diverse? Many social and cultural factors play roles in determining which promising students get on the path toward international math recognition. But efforts are in place to expose more black, Hispanic, and low-income students to advanced math, in the hope that the demographic pool of high-level contenders will eventually begin to shift and become less exclusive. C. 'The challenge is if certain types of people are doing something, it's difficult for other people to break into it,' said Po-Shen Loh, the head coach of last year's winning U.S. Math Olympiad team. Participation grows through friends and networks and if 'you realize that's how they're growing, you can start to take action' and bring in other students, he said. D. Most of the training for advanced-math competitions happens outside the confines of the normal school day. Students attend after-school clubs, summer camps, online forums and classes, and university-based 'math circles,' to prepare for the competitions. E. One of the largest feeders for high school math competitions—including those that eventually lead to the IMO—is a middle school program called MathCounts. About 100,000 students around the country participate in the program's competition series, which culminates in a national game-show-style contest held each May. The most recent one took place last week in Washington, D.C. Students join a team through their schools, which provide a volunteer coach and pay a nominal fee to send students to regional and state competitions. The 224 students who make it to the national competition get an all-expenses-paid trip. F. Nearly all members of last year's winning U.S. IMO team took part in MathCounts as middle school students, as did Loh, the coach. 'Middle school is an important age because students have enough math capability to solve advanced problems, but they haven't really decided what they want to do with their lives,' said Loh. 'They often get hooked then.' G. Another influential feeder for advanced-math students is an online school called Art of Problem Solving, which began about 13 years ago and now has 15,000 users. Students use forums to chat, play games, and solve problems together at no cost, or they can pay a few hundred dollars to take courses with trained teachers. According to Richard Rusczyk, the company founder, the six U.S. team members who competed at the IMO last year collectively took more than 40 courses on the site. Parents of advanced-math students and MathCounts coaches say the children are on the website constantly. H. There are also dozens of summer camps—many attached to universities—that aim to prepare elite math students. Some are pricey—a three-week intensive program can cost $4,5000r more—but most offer scholarships. The Math Olympiad Summer Training Program is a three-week math camp held by the Mathematical Association of America that leads straight to the international championship and is free for those who make it. Only about 50 students are invited based on their performance on written tests and at the USA Math Olympiad. I. Students in university towns may also have access to another lever for involvement in accelerated math: math circles. In these groups, which came out of an Eastern European tradition of developing young talent, professors teach promising K-12 students advanced mathematics for several hours after school or on weekends. The Los Angeles Math Circle, held at the University of California, Los Angeles, began in 2007 with 20 students and now has more than 250. 'These math circles cost nothing, or they're very cheap for students to get involved in, but you have to know about them,' said Rusczyk. 'Most people would love to get students from more underserved populations, but they just can't get them in the door. Part of it is communication; part of it is transportation.' J. It's no secret in the advanced-math community that diversity is a problem. According to Mark Saul, the director of competitions for the Mathematical Association of America, not a single African-American or Hispanic student—and only a handful of girls—has ever made it to the Math Olympiad team in its 50 years of existence. Many schools simply don't prioritize academic competitions. 'Do you know who we have to beat?' asked Saul. 'The football team, the basketball team—that's our competition for resources, student time, attention, school dollars, parent efforts, school enthusiasm.' K. Teachers in low-income urban and rural areas with no history of participating in math competitions may not know about advanced-math opportunities like MathCounts—and those who do may not have support or feel trained to lead them. L. But there are initiatives in place to try to get more underrepresented students involved in accelerated math. A New York City-based nonprofit called Bridge to Enter Mathematics runs a residential summer program aimed at getting underserved students, mostly black and Hispanic, working toward math and science careers. The summer after 7th grade, students spend three weeks on a college campus studying advanced math for seven hours a day. Over the next five years, the group helps the students get into other elite summer math programs, high-performing high schools, and eventually college. About 250 students so far have gone through the program, which receives funding from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation. M. 'If you look at a lot of low-income communities in the United States, there are programs that are serving them, but they're primarily centered around 'Let's get these kids' grades up,' and not around 'let's get these kids access to the same kinds of opportunities as more-affluent kids,'' said Daniel Zaharopol, the founder and executive director of the program. 'We're trying to create that pathway.' Students apply to the program directly through their schools. 'We want to reach parents who are not plugged into the system,' said Zaharopol. N. In the past few years, MathCounts added two new middle school programs to try to diversify its participant pool—the National Math Club and the Math Video Challenge. Schools or teachers who sign up for the National Math Club receive a kit full of activities and resources, but there's no special teacher training and no competition attached. O. The Math Video Challenge is a competition, but a collaborative one. Teams of four students make a video illustrating a math problem and its real-world application. After the high-pressure Countdown round at this year's national MathCounts competition, in which the top 12 students went head to head solving complex problems in rapid fire, the finalists for the Math Video Challenge took the stage to show their videos. The demographics of that group looked quite different from those in the competition round—of the 16 video finalists, 13 were girls and eight were African-American students. The video challenge does not put individual students on the hot seat—so it's less intimidating by design. It also adds the element of artistic creativity to attract a new pool of students who may not see themselves as 'math people.'

单选题 How Babbling to Babies Can Boost Their Brains A. The more parents talk to their children, the faster those children's vocabularies grow and the better their intelligence develops. That might seem obvious, but it took until 1995 for science to show just how early in life the difference begins to matter. In that year Betty Hart and Todd Risley of the University of Kansas published the results of a decade-long study in which they had looked at how, and how much, 42 families in Kansas City conversed at home. Dr Hart and Dr Risley found a close correlation between the number of words a child's parents had spoken to him by the time he was three and his academic success at the age of nine. At three, children born into professional families had heard 30 millions more words than those from a poorer background. B. This observation has profound implications for policies about babies and their parents. It suggests that sending children to 'pre-school' (nurseries or kindergartens) at the age of four—a favoured step among policymakers—comes too late to compensate for educational shortcomings at home. Happily, understanding of how children's vocabularies develop is growing, as several presentations at this year's meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science showed. C. One of the most striking revelations came from Anne Fernald of Stanford University, who has found that the disparity (差异) appears well before a child is three. Even at the tender age of 18 months, when most toddlers (刚学走路的小孩) speak only a dozen words, those from disadvantaged families are several months behind other, more favoured children. Indeed, Dr Fernald thinks the differentiation starts at birth. D. She measures how quickly toddlers process language by sitting them on their mothers' laps and showing them two images: a dog and a ball, say. A recorded voice tells the toddler to look at the ball while a camera records his reaction. This lets Dr Fernald note the moment the child's gaze begins shifting towards the correct image. At 18 months, toddlers from better-off backgrounds can identify the correct object in 750 milliseconds—200 milliseconds faster than those from poorer families. This, says Dr Fernald, is a huge difference. E. The problem seems to be cumulative. By the time children are two, there is a six-month gap in the language-processing skills and vocabulary of the two groups. It is easy to see how this might happen. Toddlers learn new words from their context, so the faster a child understands the words he already knows, the easier it is for him to attend to those he does not. F. It is also now clear from Dr Fernald's work that words spoken directly to a child, rather than those simply heard in the home, are what builds vocabulary. Putting children in front of the television does not have the same effect. Neither does letting them sit at the feet of academic parents while the grown-ups converse about Plato. G. The effects can be seen directly in the brain. Kimberly Noble of Columbia University told the meeting how linguistic disparities are reflected in the structure of the parts of the brain involved in processing language. Although she cannot yet prove that hearing speech causes the brain to grow, it would fit with existing theories of how experience shapes the brain. Babies are born with about 100 billion neurons, and connections between these form at an exponentially rising rate in the first years of life. It is the pattern of these connections which determines how well the brain works, and what it learns. By the time a child is three there will be about 1000 trillion connections in his brain, and that child's experiences continuously determine which are strengthened and which pruned. This process, gradual and more-or-less irreversible, shapes the trajectory (发展轨迹) of the child's life. H. Fortunately, taciturnity (沉默寡言) can be easily fixed. Telling parents is the first step: Many who volunteered themselves and their children for study did not know they could help their babies do well simply by speaking to them. I. There are tools that can help, as well. One such is a Language Environment Analysis (LENA) device. It is like a pedometer (计步器), but keeps track of words, not steps, by analysing the speech children hear. It was originally developed as a tool for research, but parents kept asking for the data it recorded and researchers thus realised it could also serve as a spur. Parents use it to monitor, and improve, their patterns of speech, much as a pedometer-wearing couch potato might try to reach 10000 steps a day, say. J. A recent study by Dana Suskind shows how promising this approach is. Dr Suskind is a paediatric surgeon in Chicago. She got interested in the field while monitoring children whom she had fitted with artificial cochleas (耳蜗), to treat deafness. K. Her new study shows that the use of a LENA device, combined with a one-off home visit to give parents advice, produces a 32% increase in the number of words a child hears per hour after six weeks. Dr Suskind's Thirty Million Words Initiative (named after Dr Hart's and Dr Risley's original finding) is now using LENA devices and weekly home visits to improve the linguistic diet of children in Chicago. Parents are taught to make the words they serve up more enriching. For example, instead of telling a child, 'Put your shoes on,' one might say instead, 'It is time to go out. What do we have to do?' L. Other groups are trying similar approaches. In Providence, Rhode Island, Angel Taveras, the mayor, has started a project that uses LENA devices to improve the vocabularies of children in pre-school. Meanwhile, in Chicago and several other places, nurses who visit mothers' homes to give them advice on health and nutrition also encourage them to chat to their children and read to them aloud. Such interventions are effective and not particularly expensive. M. In January Barack Obama urged Congress and state governments to make high-quality preschools available to every four-year-old. He is knocking on an open door. This financial year 30 states and the District of Columbia have increased spending on pre-schools. Nationally, this amounts to an increase of 6.9%. N. That is a good thing. Pre-school programmes are known to develop children's numeracy, social skills and (as the term 'pre-school' suggests) readiness for school. But they do not deal with the gap in much earlier development that Dr Fernald, Dr Noble, Dr Suskind and others have identified. And it is this gap, more than a year's pre-schooling at the age of four, which seems to determine a child's chances for the rest of his life.

单选题 Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay on the topic College Students Joining the Army: A Win-Win Choice. You can illustrate your point: why college students' taking part in the army is a win-win choice and finally encourage them to be a serviceman. You should write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words. Write your essay on Answer Sheet 1.

单选题England's highest main-line railway station hangs on to life by a thread: deserted and unmanned (无人的)since it was officially closed in 1970. Dent 27 high in the hills of Yorkshire, wakes up on six summer weekends each year, when a special charter train unloads walkers, sightseers and people who 28 want to catch a train from the highest station, on to its platform. But even this limited existence may soon be brought to an end. Dent station is situated on the Settle to Carlisle railway line, said, to be the most 29 in the country. But no amount of scenic beauty can save the line from British Rail's cash problems. This year, for the 30 of economy, the express trains which used to pass through Dent station have been put on to another route. It is now an open secret that British Rail sees no future for this railway line. Most of its trains disappeared some time ago. Its bridge, built on a grand 31 a century ago, is falling down. It is not alone. Half-a-dozen railway routes in the north of England are facing a similar threat. The problem is a worn-out system and an almost 32 lack of cash to repair it. Bridges and tunnels are showing their age, the wooden supports for the tracks are rotting and engines and coaches are getting old. On 33 lines between large cities, the problem is not too bad. These lines still make a profit and cash can be found to 34 them. But on the country branch line, the story is different. As track wears out, it is not replaced. Instead speed limits are introduced, making journeys longer than necessary and discouraging customers. If a bridge is dangerous, there is often only one thing for British Rail to do: go out and find money from another 35 . This is exactly what it did a few months ago when a bridge at Bridlington station was threatening to fail down. Repairs were 36 at 200, 000—just for one bridge—and British Rail was delighted, and rather surprised, when two local councils offered half that amount between them. A. maintain B. scenic C. transcend D. source E. estimated F. sake G. complex H. simply I. consolidation J. situated K. respectively L. total M. major N. restrained O. scale

单选题 在指南针发明以前，人们在茫茫大海上航行，只能靠太阳和星星的位置辨认方向，如果遇上阴雨天，就会迷失方向。是中国人发明的指南针帮助解决了这个难题。指南针是指示方向的仪器。早在战国时期(the Warring States Period)(475 BC-221 BC)，中国人就发现了磁石能够指示南北的特性，并根据这种特性制成了指示方向的仪器——司南(sinan)。到了宋代，人们制成了“罗盘”(luopan)。指南针的发明，给航海事业带来了划时代的影响，世界航运史也由此翻开了新的一页。

单选题 Questions17-19 are based on the recording you have just heard.

单选题 Questions12-14 are based on the passage you have just heard.