单选题 What our society suffers from most today is the absence of consensus about what it and life in it ought to be. Such consensus cannot be gained from society's present stage, or from fantasies about what it ought to be. For that the present is too close and too diversified, and the future too uncertain, to make believable claims about it. A consensus in the present hence can be achieved only through a shared understanding of the past, as Homer's epics (荷马史诗) informed those who lived centuries later what it meant to be Greek, and by what images and ideals they were to live their lives and organize their societies. Most societies derive consensus from a long history, a language all their own, a common religion, common ancestry. The myths by which they live are based on all of these. But the United States is a country of immigrants, coming from a great variety of nations. Lately, it has been emphasized that an asocial, narcissistic (自我陶醉的) personality has become characteristic of Americans, and that it is this type of personality that makes for the lack of well-being, because it prevents us from achieving consensus that would counteract a tendency to withdraw into private worlds. In his study of narcissism, Christopher Lasch says that modern man, 'tortured by self-consciousness, turns to new therapies not to free himself of his personal worries but to find meaning and purpose in life, to find something to live for'. There is widespread distress because national morale has declined, and we have lost an earlier sense of national vision and purpose. Contrary to rigid religions or political beliefs, as are found in totalitarian (极权主义的) societies, our culture is one of great individual differences, at least in principle and in theory. But this leads to disunity, even chaos. Americans believe in the value of diversity, but just because ours is a society based on individual diversity, it needs consensus about some dominating ideas more than societies based on uniform origin of their citizens. Hence, if we are to have consensus, it must be based on a myth—a vision—about a common experience, a conquest that made us Americans, as the myth about the conquest of Troy formed the Greeks. Only a common myth can offer relief from the fear that life is without meaning or purpose. Myths permit us to examine our place in the world by comparing it to a shared idea. Myths are shared fantasies that form the tie that binds the individual to other members of his group. Such myths help to ward off feelings of isolation, guilt, anxiety, and purposelessness—in short; they combat isolation and the breakdown of social standards and values.

单选题 Whatever happened to the death of newspapers? A year ago the end seemed near. The recession threatened to remove the advertising and readers that had not already fled to the Internet. Newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle were chronicling their own doom. America's Federal Trade Commission launched talks about how to save newspapers. Should they become charitable corporations? Should the state subsidise (补贴) them? It will hold another meeting soon. But the discussions now seem out of date. In much of the world there is little sign of crisis. German and Brazilian papers shrugged off the recession. Even American newspapers, which inhabit the most troubled comer of the global industry, have not only survived but often returned to profit. Not the 20% profit margins that were routine a few years ago, but profit all the same. It has not been much fun. Many papers stayed out of debt or difficulties by laying journalists off. The American Society of News Editors reckons that 13,500 newsroom jobs have gone since 2007. Readers are paying more for slimmer products. Some papers even had the nerve to refuse delivery to distant suburbs. Yet these desperate measures have proved the right ones and, sadly for many journalists, they can be pushed further. Newspapers are becoming more balanced businesses, with a healthier mix of revenues from readers and advertisers. American papers have long been highly unusual in their reliance on ads. Fully 87% of their revenues came from advertising in 2008, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation Development (OECD). In Japan the proportion is 35%. Not surprisingly, Japanese newspapers are much more stable. The whirlwind that swept through newsrooms harmed everybody, but much of the damage has been concentrated in areas where newspapers are least distinctive. Car and film reviewers have gone. So have science and general business reporters. Foreign bureaus have been savagely cut off. Newspapers are less complete as a result. But completeness is no longer a virtue in the newspaper business. It is grim to forecast still more writers losing their jobs. But whether newspapers are thrown onto doorsteps or distributed digitally, they need to deliver something that is distinctive. New technologies like Apple's iPad only make this more true. The mere acquisition of a smooth block of metal and glass does not magically persuade people that they should start paying for news. They will pay for news if they think it has value. Newspapers need to focus relentlessly (持续地) on that.

单选题 Questions10-13 are based on the passage you have just heard.

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

单选题Colombia is renowned for its fine Arabica coffee beans all over the world. Oddly, few Colombians appear keen on the stuff. Each 25 just 1.5kg of coffee per year on average. A typical Brazilian, by 26 , drinks 6kg-worth. Americans knock back less—around 4kg—but a lot of it comes from Colombia, which is the world's fourth-biggest producer. The bulk of the country's yearly production of 462000 tonnes is 27 for export. Lesser-quality imports from Ecuador and Peru 28 for 90% of internal consumption. But for the past decade Juan Valdez coffee shops, owned by the powerful National Coffee Federation, which represents growers, have tried to 29 Colombians to the pleasures of high-end coffee. Modelled on Starbucks, the Seattle-based barista (咖啡师) giant, Juan Valdez is now bracing for 30 competition from it. Last week the American firm announced that it will open its first store in Colombia next year. Starbucks' entry into Colombia follows Juan Valdez's own foray (突袭) into the American company's home turf in Seattle, where it opened three shops in 2005. Indeed, Juan Valdez thinks it has learned so much from Starbucks that it does not fear competition. And it believes stressing its local roots give it an 31 —though it remains to be seen whether invoking tradition will work in a country 32 uninterested in coffee. Starbucks isn't taking any chances. The American chain says it will 33 only locally grown beans at the 50 stores it hopes to open in the next five years. This is good news for coffee growers, who have been hurt by low international coffee prices and an overvalued peso. Increased 34 sales, even to an international chain, would be a better pick-me-up even than a cup of Colombia's choicest blend. A. account F. destined K. external B. amount G. direct L. privately C. comparison H. domestic M. processes D. consumes I. dominant N. serve E. convert J. edge O. traditionally

单选题 The Three-Year Solution A．Hartwick College, a small liberal-arts school in upstate New York, makes this offer to well-prepared students: earn your undergraduate degree in three years instead of four, and save about $43,000—the amount of one year's tuition and fees. A number of innovative colleges are making the same offer to students anxious about saving time and money. That's both an opportunity and a warning for the best higher-education system in the world. B．The United States has almost all of the world's best universities. A recent Chinese survey ranks 35 American universities among the top 50, eight among the top 10. Our research universities have been the key to developing the competitive advantages that help Americans produce 25% of all the world's wealth. In 2007, 623805 of the world's brightest students were attracted to American universities. C．Yet, there are signs of peril (危险) within American higher education. US colleges have to compete in the marketplace. Students may choose among 6,000 public, private, nonprofit, for-profit, or religious institutions of higher learning. In addition, almost all of the $32 billion the federal government provides for university research is awarded competitively. D．But many colleges and universities are stuck in the past. For instance, the idea of the fall-to-spring 'school year' hasn't changed much since before the American Revolution, when we were a nation of farmers and students put their books away to work the soil during the summer. That long summer stretch no longer makes sense. Former George Washington University president Stephen Trachtenberg estimates that a typical college uses its facilities for academic purposes a little more than half the calendar year. 'While college facilities sit idle, they continue to generate maintenance expenses that contribute to the high cost of running a college,' he has written. E．Within academic departments, tenure (终身职位), combined with age-discrimination laws, makes faculty turnover—critical for a university to remain current in changing times—difficult. Instead of protecting speech and encouraging diversity and innovative thinking, the tenure system often stifles (压制) them: younger professors must win the approval of established colleagues for tenure, encouraging like mindedness and sometimes inhibiting the free flow of ideas. F．Meanwhile, tuition has soared, leaving graduating students with unprecedented loan debt. Strong campus presidents to manage these problems are becoming harder to find, and to keep. In fact, students now stay on campus almost as long as their presidents. The average amount of time students now take to complete an undergraduate degree has stretched to six years and seven months as students interrupted by work, inconvenienced by unavailable classes, or lured by one more football season find it hard to graduate. Congress has tried to help students with college costs through Pell Grants and other forms of tuition support. But some of their fixes have made the problem worse. The stack of congressional regulations governing federal student grants and loans now stands twice as tall as I do. Filling out these forms consumes 7% of every tuition dollar. G．For all of these reasons, some colleges like Hartwick are rethinking the old way of doing things and questioning decades-old assumptions about what a college degree means. For instance, why does it have to take four years to earn a diploma? This fall, 16 first-year students and four second-year students at Hartwick enrolled in the school's new three-year degree program. According to the college, the plan is designed for high-ability, highly motivated students who wish to save money or to move along more rapidly toward advanced degrees. H．By eliminating that extra year, three-year degree students save 25% in costs. Instead of taking 30 credits a year, these students take 40. During January, Hartwick runs a four-week course during which students may earn three to four credits on or off campus, including a number of international sites. Summer courses are not required, but a student may enroll in them--and pay extra. Three-year students get first crack at course registration. There are no changes in the number of courses professors teach or in their pay. I．The three-year degree isn't a new idea. Geniuses have always breezed through. Judson College, a 350-student institution in Alabama, has offered students a three-year option for 40 years. Students attend 'short terms' in May and June to earn the credits required for graduation. Bates College in Maine and Ball State University in Indiana are among other colleges offering three-year options. J．Changes at the high-school level are also helping to make it easier for many students to earn their undergraduate degrees in less time. One of five students arrives at college today with Advanced Placement (AP) credits amounting to a semester or more of college-level work. Many universities, including large schools like the University of Texas, make it easy for these AP students to graduate faster. K．For students who don't plan to stop with an undergraduate degree, the three-year plan may have an even greater appeal. Dr. John Sergent, head of Vanderbilt University Medical School's residency (住院医生) program, enrolled in Vanderbilt's undergraduate college in 1959. He entered medical school after only three years as did four or five of his classmates. 'My first year of medical school counted as my senior year, which meant I had to take three to four labs a week to get all my sciences in. I basically skipped my senior year,' says Sergent. He still had time to be a student senator and meet his wife. L．There are, however, drawbacks to moving through school at such a brisk pace. For one, it deprives students of the luxury of time to roam (遨游) intellectually. Compressing everything into three years also leaves less time for growing up, engaging in extracurricular activities, and studying abroad. On crowded campuses it could mean fewer opportunities to get into a prized professor's class. Iowa's Waldorf College has graduated several hundred students in its three-year degree programs, but is now phasing out the option. Most Waldorf students wanted the full four-year experience—academically, socially, and athletically. And faculty members will be wary of any change that threatens the core curriculum in the name of moving students into the workforce. M．'Most high governmental officials seem to conceive of education in this light—as a way to ensure economic competitiveness and continued economic growth,' Derek Bok, former president of Harvard, told The Washington Post. 'I strongly disagree with this approach.' Another risk: the new campus schedules might eventually produce less revenue for the institution and longer working hours for faculty members. N．Adopting a three-year option will not come easily to most schools. Those that wish to tackle tradition and make American campuses more cost-conscious may find it easier to take Trachtenberg's advice: open campuses year-round. 'You could run two complete colleges, with two complete faculties,' he says. 'That's without cutting the length of students' vacations, increasing class sizes, or requiring faculty to teach more.' O．Whether they experiment with three-year degrees, offer year-round classes, challenge the tenure system—or all of the above—universities are slowly realizing that to stay competitive and relevant they must adapt to a rapidly changing world. Expanding the three-year option may be difficult, but it may be less difficult than asking Congress for additional financial help, asking legislators for more state support, or asking students for even higher tuition payments. Campuses willing to adopt convenient schedules along with more-focused, less-expensive degrees may find that they have a competitive advantage in attracting bright, motivated students. These sorts of innovations can help American universities avoid the perils of success.

单选题 All Change A. The basic model of the electricity industry was to send high voltages over long distances to passive customers. Power stations were big and costly, built next to coal mines, ports, oil refineries or—for hydroelectric generation—reservoirs. Many of these places were a long way from the industrial and population centers that used the power. The companies' main concern was to supply the juice, and particularly to meet peaks in demand. B. That model, though simple and profitable for utilities and generators, was costly for consumers. But it is now changing to a 'much more colorful picture', says Michael Weinhold of Siemens. Not only are renewables playing a far bigger role; thanks to new technology, demand can also be tweaked (进行改进) to match supply, not the other way round. Traditional power stations and grids still play a role in this world, but not a dominant one. They have to compete with new entrants, and with existing participants doing new things. Flattening the peaks C. The most expensive electricity in any power system is that consumed at peak time, so instead of cranking up (启动) a costly and probably dirty power station, the idea is to pay consumers to switch off instead. For someone running a large cooling, heating or pumping system, for example, turning the power off for a short period will not necessarily cause any disruption. But for the grid operator the spare power gained is very useful. D. This has been tried before: in France, a heat wave in 2003 hit the cooling systems of nuclear power stations and led to power shortages. In response, big energy consumers agreed to cut their power consumption at peak times, in exchange for generous rebates (部分退款). The Japanese have installed 200,000 home energy-management systems that do something similar on a domestic scale. But new technology takes it to another level, allowing a lot of small power savings from a large number of consumers to be bundled together. E. Nest is selling its programmes all over North America, and more recently in Britain, too. Customers of its 'Rush Hour Rewards' programme can choose between being given notice a day in advance of a two-to four-hour 'event' (meaning their thermostat will be turned down or up automatically) or being told ten minutes ahead of a 30-minute one. This can cut the peak load by as much as 55%. F. NRG, America's biggest independent power company, is also moving into the market. David Crane, its chief executive, admits that some consumers find the idea of saving power 'un-American', but thinks that for companies like his the 'mindless pursuit of megawatts' is a dead end. In 2013 NRG bought a demand-response provider, Energy Curtailment Specialists, which controls 2GW of 'negawatts'. G. The big question for demand-response companies is the terms on which they compete with traditional generators, which argue that markets such as PJM are starving the power system of badly needed investment. For example, FirstEnergy, a company in Ohio, suspended modernization plans at a coal-fired plant which failed to win any megawatts in the auction for 2017-2018. Such plants are viable only if utilities are paying top dollars for peak electricity—a cost which is eventually passed on to the consumer. Companies like FirstEnergy hope that the Supreme Court will overturn a ruling by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that negawatts be treated like megawatts in capacity auctions. These worries are already spooking the market. EnerNOC, which bundles together small energy savings from many different customers to offer negawatts, has seen its share price fall by half since May. H. In any case, the days of the vertically integrated model of energy supply are numbered, observes Dieter Helm. Thanks to abundant solar power, he argues, the energy market increasingly resembles the economics of the Internet, where marginal costs are zero. That 'undermines the very idea of wholesale electricity markets'. The future model will be much more fragmented. Independent generators, plus new entrants, are already 'revolutionizing the way electricity is sold and used'; new technologies will make the 21st-century model even more different. 'No wonder many of the energy giants of the past are already in such trouble,' he says. No longer so useful I. The combination of distributed and intermittent generation, ever cheaper storage and increasingly intelligent consumption has created a perfect storm for utilities, particularly those in Europe, says Eduard Sala de Vedruna of IHS, a consultancy. They are stuck with the costs of maintaining the grid and meeting peak demand, but without the means to make customers pay for it properly. Their expensively built generating capacity is oversized; spare capacity in Europe this winter is 100GW, or 19% of the constituent countries' combined peak loads. Much of that is mothballed (检修好存置备用的) and may have to be written off. Yet at the same time new investment is urgently needed to keep the grid reliable, and especially to make sure it can cope with new kinds of power flow—from 'prosumers' back to the grid, for example. J. To general surprise, demand is declining as power is used more efficiently. Politicians and regulators are unsympathetic, making the utilities pay for electricity generated by other peopled assets, such as rooftop solar, to keep the greens happy. At the same time barriers to entry have collapsed. New energy companies do not need to own lots of infrastructure. Their competitive advantage rests on algorithms (算法), sensors, processing power and good marketing—not usually the strong points of traditional utilities. All the services offered by these new entrants—demand response, supply, storage and energy efficiency—eat into the utilities, business model. K. The problem for the stated electricity utilities is that they still have to provide a reliable supply when the sun is not shining. But consumers, thanks to 'net metering', may have an electricity bill of zero. That means the utilities, revenues suffer, and consumers without solar power cross-subsidize those with it. Rows about this are flaring across America. Many utilities are asking regulators to impose a fixed monthly charge on consumers, rather than just let them pay variable tariffs. Since going completely off-grid still involves buying a large amount of expensive storage, the betting is that consumers will be willing to pay a monthly fee so they can fall back on the utilities when they need to. L. Consumers, understandably, are resisting such efforts. In Arizona the utilities wanted a $ 50 fixed monthly charge; the regulator allowed $ 5. In Wisconsin they asked for $ 25 and got $ 19. Even these more modest sums may help the utilities a bit. But the bigger threat is that larger consumers (and small ones willing to join forces) can go their own way and combine generation, storage and demand response to run their own energy systems, often called 'microgrids'. They may maintain a single high-capacity gas or electricity connection to the outside world for safety's sake, but still run everything downstream from themselves. M. Some organizations, such as military bases, may have specific reasons to want to be independent of outside suppliers, but for most of them the main motive is to save money. Places like University of California, San Diego (UCSD) not only save money with their microgrids but advance research as well. A server analyses 84,000 data streams every second. A company called ZBB Energy has installed innovative zinc-bromide batteries; another company is trying out a 28kW supercapacitor (超级电容器)—a storage device far faster and more powerful than any chemical battery. N. In one sense, UCSD is not a good customer for the local utility, San Diego Gas Electric. The microgrid imports only 8% of its power from the utility. But it can help out when demand elsewhere is tight, cutting its own consumption by turning down air-conditioners and other power-thirsty devices and sending the spare electricity to the grid. UCSD is one of scores of such microgrids pioneering new ways of using electricity efficiently and cheaply through better design, data-processing technology and changes in behavior. The IEA reckons that this approach could cut peak demand for power in industrialized countries by 20%. That would be good for both consumers and the planet.

单选题 周庄 周庄是极少数可供人们体验典型的中国水乡(water town)生活的地方之一。这座毗邻苏州的江苏小镇有“东方威尼斯”之美誉，古建筑保存良好，河网密布(crisscross)，风景如画，常年游客不断。这美丽的风景中最引人注目的当属桥，有的是石桥，有的是木桥，形状各异，大小不一。建于明朝的双桥被视为该镇的标志，是游客不可错过的风景。它的一个桥拱(arch)呈圆形，而另一个呈长方形，样子很像古代的钥匙。所以当地人也将它称为“钥匙桥”。

单选题 Questions6-9 are based on the conversation you have just heard.