单选题 Excess inventory, a massive problem for many businesses, has several causes, some of which are unavoidable. Overstocks may accumulate through production overruns or errors. Certain styles and colors prove unpopular. With some products— computers and software, toys, and books—last year's models are difficult to move even at huge discounts. Occasionally the competition introduces a better product. But in many cases the public's buying tastes simply change, leaving a manufacturer or distributor with thousands (or millions) of items that the fickle public no longer wants. One common way to dispose of this merchandise is to sell it to a liquidator, who buys as cheaply as possible and then resells the merchandise through catalogs, discount stores, and other outlets. However, liquidators may pay less for the merchandise than it cost to make it. Another way to dispose of excess inventory is to dump it. The corporation takes a straight cost write-off on its taxes and hauls the merchandise to a landfill. Although it is hard to believe, there is a sort of convoluted logic to this approach. It is perfectly legal, requires little time or preparation on the company's part, and solves the problem quickly. The drawback is the remote possibility of getting caught by the news media. Dumping perfectly useful products can turn into a public relations nightmare. Children living in poverty are freezing and XYZ Company has just sent 500 new snowsuits to the local dump. Parents of young children are barely getting by and QPS Company dumps 1,000 cases of disposable diapers because they have slight imperfections. The managers of these companies are not deliberately wasteful; they are simply unaware of all their alternatives. In 1976 the Internal Revenue Service provided a tangible incentive for businesses to contribute their products to charity. The new tax law allowed corporations to deduct the cost of the product donated plus half the difference between cost and fair market selling price, with the proviso that deductions cannot exceed twice cost. Thus, the federal government sanctions indeed, encourages an above-cost federal tax deduction for companies that donate inventory to charity.

单选题 Emily Dickinson was different from other women of her generation in that she led a reclusive life but her childhood was a very happy one. After the Civil War Dickinson withdrew from society and had few contacts outside of Amherst and wore only white in her adult life. She did however maintain active correspondence with friends outside of Amherst. It was only after her death that the magnitude of her writing was discovered. Her younger sister, Lavinia, discovered 1,775 poems bound in small packets tied with thread. Emily Dickinson was so concerned with the subject of nature partly due to the fact that her secluded life style could have given her more time to focus closely on the nature of things. Dickinson's writings are complex and for many years scholars have searched for romantic inspirations but have yet to understand her work. What is understood is that her work cannot simply be described as a narrative style. In fact, her style is of most interest to recent scholars. Dickinson, although given ample opportunity, refused to allow her work to be pubilished. This is also of great interest to those studying her work. A manuscript found demonstrates how Dickinson uses a punctuation of space and lineation as a visual expression of words to reinforce the poetic meaning. Without doubt, Dickinson's work has influenced and continues to influence modern poetry. For her time, her style was completely unique and included the use of dashes and capitalized nouns. None of her work rhymed and she incorporated unusual comparisons to events and situations. This unconventional method of writing has heralded her as being one of the most innovative poets in the 19th century. Her writings have a revolutionary nature, demonstrating a complex, multifaceted mind that often undermines popular conception. Her resistance to the male-dominated society set her apart from most women of her time. Dickinson defined herself as a person, not as an extension of the males in her life as most women of her time did. This resistance is well presented in her work and these have been studied by a group of researchers and many students after her death. Feminists have also emphasized her intellectual and artistic sophistication instead of describing her as a reclusive, eccentric figure.

单选题Pasta is no longer off the menu, after a new review of studies suggested that the carbohydrate can form part of a healthy diet, and even help people lose weight. For years, nutritionists have recommended that pasta be kept to a 26 , to cut calories, prevent fat build-up and stop blood sugar 27 up. The low-carbohydrate food movement gave birth to such diets as the Atkins, Paleo and Keto, which advised swapping foods like bread, pasta and potatoes for vegetables, fish and meat. More recently the trend of swapping spaghetti for vegetables has been 28 by clean-eating experts. But now a 29 review and analysis of 30 studies by Canadian researchers found that not only does pasta not cause weight gain, but three meals a week can help people drop more than half a kilogram over four months. The reviewers found that pasta had been unfairly demonized (妖魔化) because it had been 30 in with other, more fat-promoting carbohydrates. 'The study found that pasta didn't 31 to weight gain or increase in body fat,' said lead author Dr John Sievenpiper. 'In 32 the evidence, we can now say with some confidence that pasta does not have an 33 effect on body weight outcomes when it is consumed as part of a healthy dietary pattern.' In fact, analysis actually showed a small weight loss. So 34 to concerns, perhaps pasta can be part of a healthy diet. Those involved in the 35 trials on average ate 3.3 servings of pasta a week instead of other carbohydrates, one serving equaling around half a cup. They lost around half a kilogram over an average follow-up of 12 weeks. A. adverse F. intimate K. ration B. championed G. lumped L. shooting C. clinical H. magnified M. subscribe D. contrary I. minimum N. systematic E. contribute J. radiating O. weighing

单选题 Questions12-15 are based on the passage you have just heard.

单选题 The outcry over Internet firms' habit of secretly tracking web surfers' activities has clearly resonated inside the White House. On March 16th the Obama administration announced that it intends to work with Congress to produce a 'privacy bill of rights' giving American consumers greater control over how their information is collected and used by digital marketers. Those who have been lobbying for change agree with, but are unsympathetic to, Internet firms' worries that such a law could damage their advertising-driven business models, which rely on tracking and targeting consumers to maximize revenues. 'This is dimming the prospects of Google, Facebook and other digital ad companies,' says Jeffrey Chester of the Centre for Digital Democracy. Quite how dark things get for them will depend on the details of the bill. It will seek to lay down the basic principles of Internet privacy rights, broadly following recommendations published last December by the Department of Commerce. The department's report said consumers should be told more about why data are being collected about them and how they are used; and it called for stricter limits on what companies can do with information they collect. Whatever legislation finally emerges is likely to give a broader role to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC, which will almost certainly be charged with deciding how those principles are translated into practice and with policing their implementation. Among other things, the FTC is known to be keen on a formal 'do not track' system, which would allow users to block certain sites from monitoring their online activities. Keen to avoid this, the online-advertising industry has been working overtime to convince policymakers that it can police itself using systems such as icons on web pages that show surfers when they are being tracked. And it is telling anyone who will listen that consumers will suffer if tough do-not-track rules hit ad revenues, forcing web firms to charge for more content. With Mr Obama throwing his weight behind Internet privacy, this rearguard (无望取胜) action is less likely to be successful. Some ad firms have started talking of creating a do-not-track system of their own that would limit the damage to their digital activities. Microsoft and Mozilla, two tech giants, have recently said they are including do-not-track features in new versions of their respective web browsers. Although all this may dent their revenues, America's Internet giants could also benefit from the legislation if it helps them in their dealings with the European Union. The EU's already fairly strict rules on privacy are being tightened further. The time-consuming and expensive legal hoops the EU makes American Internet firms jump through, to be allowed to handle Europeans' online data, will become more demanding. If by passing its own online-privacy bill of rights, America can convince the EU to ease this legal burden, then it will be an important win for American companies, says Joel Reidenberg, a professor at Fordham University's law school. Google, Facebook and others will no doubt be tracking the progress of EU-American talks on this matter very closely.

单选题 It is encouraging that more than three years since the global financial crisis, a belated (迟到) process of soul-searching has begun in search of the right lessons to learn from it. There is a great difference, however, between being willing to talk about an issue and being ready to act. It is a difference between those who still believe that all governments can do is get out of the way and those who believe there is a real role for governments in first reviving our economies, and then setting the right rules for future success. If we learned anything from the 1930s, it was that governments cannot shrug their shoulders and watch as their own people are being laid off. Nor should we forget the causes of the current growth and debt crisis as we seek to put our economies on a more sustainable footing. Both the United States and Britain suffered because their economies were overly reliant on the financial sector's artificial profits; living standards for the many worsened while the economic re-wards went to the top 1 percent; a capitalist model encouraged short-term decision-making oriented toward quarterly profits rather than long-term health; and interest groups like giant banks were deemed too big to fail or too powerful to challenge. We need to recognize that the trickle-down promise (benefits given to the rich will eventually be passed on to the poor) of conservative theorists has turned into a gravity-defying reality in which wealth has flowed upward disproportionately and, too often, undeservedly. To address the problem requires fresh thinking from governments about how people train for their working lives and what a living wage should be. Governments can set better—not necessarily more—rules to encourage productive businesses that make and sell real products and services. We need rules that discourage the predatory(掠夺的) behavior of those seeking the fast buck through hostile takeovers and asset-stripping that do not have the interests of the shareholders, the employees or the economy at heart. And governments must remember they are elected to serve the people, not the powerful lobbies who can pay for access or influence. Too often the real enemies of market capitalism are some of the leading beneficiaries of the current model, which favors big monopolies and consumer exploitation. I believe that changing the rules of capitalism will require a change in what citizens expect and ask of politics. The question is not so much whether 20th-century capitalism is failing 21st-century society but whether politics can rise to the challenge of changing a flawed economic model.

单选题 In general, our society is becoming one of giant enterprises directed by a bureaucratic management in which man becomes a small, well-oiled cog (齿轮) in the machinery. The oiling is done with higher wages, well-ventilated factories and piped music, and by psychologists and 'human-relations' experts; yet all this oiling does not alter the fact that man has become powerless, that he does not wholeheartedly participate in his work and that he is bored with it. In fact, the blue and the white collar workers have become economic puppets (木偶) who dance to the tune of automated machines and bureaucratic management. The worker and employee are anxious, not only because they might find themselves out of a job; they are anxious also because they are unable to acquire any real satisfaction or interest in life. They live and die without ever having confronted the fundamental realities of human existence as emotionally and intellectually independent and productive human beings. Those higher up on the social ladder are no less anxious. Their lives are no less empty than those of their subordinates. They are even more insecure in some respects. They are in a highly competitive race. To be promoted or to fall behind is not a matter of salary but even more a matter of self-respect. When they apply for their first job, they are tested for intelligence as well as for the right mixture of submissiveness and independence. From that moment on they are tested again and again by the psychologists, for whom testing is a big business, and by their superiors, who judge their behavior, sociability, capacity to get along, etc. This constant need to prove that one is as good as or better than one's fellow-competitor creates constant anxiety and stress, the very causes of unhappiness and illness. Am I suggesting that we should return to the pre-industrial mode of production or to nineteenth-century 'free enterprise' capitalism (资本主义)? Certainly not. Problems are not solved by returning to a stage which one has already outgrown. I suggest transforming our social system from a bureaucratically managed industrialism in which maximal production and consumption are ends in themselves into a humanist industrialism (工业制度) in which man and full development of his potentialities—those of love and of reason—are the aims of social arrangements. Production and consumption should serve only as means to this end, and should be prevented from ruling man.

单选题 What If Middle-Class Jobs Disappear? A. The most recent recession in the United States began in December of 2007 and ended in June 2009, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. However, two years after the official end of the recession, few Americans would say that economic troubles are behind us. The unemployment rate, in particular, remains above 9%. Some labor market indicators, such as the proportion of long-term unemployed, are worse now than for any postwar recession. B. There are two widely circulated narratives to explain what's going on. The Keynesian narrative is that there has been a major drop in aggregate demand. According to this narrative, the slump can be largely cured by using monetary and fiscal (财政的) stimulus. The main anti-Keynesian narrative is that businesses are suffering from uncertainty and over-regulation. According to this narrative, the slump can be cured by having the government commit to and follow a more hands-off approach. C. I want to suggest a third interpretation. Without ruling out a role for aggregate demand or for the regulatory environment, I wish to suggest that structural change is an important factor in the current rate of high unemployment. The economy is in a state of transition, in which the middle-class jobs that emerged after World War Ⅱ have begun to decline. As Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee put it in a recent e-book Race Against the Machine .'The root of our problems is not that we're in a great recession, or a great stagnation (停滞), but rather that we are in the early throes (阵痛) of a great restructuring.' D. In fact, I believe the Great Depression of the 1930s can also be interpreted in part as an economic transition. The impact of the internal combustion engine (内燃机) and the small electric motor on farming and manufacturing reduced the value of uneducated laborers. Instead, by the 1950s, a middle class of largely clerical (从事文秘工作的) workers was the most significant part of the labor force. Between 1930 and 1950, the United States economy underwent a great transition. Demand fell for human effort such as lifting, squeezing, and hammering, Demand increased for workers who could read and follow directions. The evolutionary process eventually changed us from a nation of laborers to a nation of clerks. E. The proportion of employment classified as 'clerical workers' grew from 5.2% in 1910 to a peak of 19.3% in 1980. (However, by 2000 this proportion had edged down to 17.4%.) Overall, workers classified as clerical workers, technical workers, managers and officials exceeded 50% of the labor force by 2000. Corresponding declines took place in the manual occupations. Workers classified as laborers, other than farm hands or miners, peaked at 11.4% of the labor force in 1920 but were barely 6% by 1950 and less than 4% by 2000. Farmers and farm laborers fell from 33% of the labor force in 1910 to less than 15% by 1950 and only 1.2% in 2000. F. The introduction of the tractor and improvements in the factory rapidly reduced the demand for uneducated workers. By the 1930s, a marginal farm hand could not produce enough to justify his employment. Sharecropping, never much better than a subsistence occupation, was no longer viable (可行的). Meanwhile, machines were replacing manufacturing occupations like cigar roiling and glass blowing for light bulbs. G. The structural-transition interpretation of the unemployment problem of the 1930s would be that the demand for uneducated workers in the United States had fallen, but the supply remained high. The high school graduation rate was only 8.8% in 1912 and still just 29% in 1931. By 1950, it had reached 59%.With a new generation of workers who had completed high school, the mismatch between skills and jobs had been greatly reduced. H. What took place after World War Ⅱ was not the revival of a 1920s economy, with its small farming units, urban manufacturing, and plurality of laborers. Instead, the 1950s saw the creation of a new suburban' economy, with a plurality of white-collar workers. With an expanded transportation and communications infrastructure (基础设施), businesses needed telephone operators, shipping clerks and similar occupations. If you could read, follow simple instructions, and settle into a routine, you could find a job in the post-war economy. I. The trend away from manual labor has continued. Even within the manufacturing sector, the share of production and non-supervisory workers in manufacturing employment went from over 85% just after World War Ⅱ to less than 70% in more recent years. To put this another way, the proportion of white-collar work in manufacturing has doubled over the past 50 years. On the factory floor itself, work has become less physically demanding. Instead, it requires more cognitive skills and the ability to understand and carry out well-defined procedures. J. As noted earlier, the proportion of clerical workers in the economy peaked in 1980. By that date, computers and advanced communications equipment had already begun to affect telephone operations and banking. The rise of the personal computer and the Internet has widened the impact of these technologies to include nearly every business and industry. K. The economy today differs from that of a generation ago. Mortgage and consumer loan underwriters (风险评估人) have been replaced by credit scoring. Record stores have been replaced by music downloads. Book stores are closing, while sales of books on electronic readers have increased. Data entry has been moved off shore. Routine customer support also has been outsourced (外包) overseas. L. These trends serve to limit the availability of well-defined jobs. If a job can be characterized by a precise set of instructions, then that job is a candidate to be automated or outsourced to modestly educated workers in developing countries. The result is what David Autor calls the polarization of the American job market. M. Using the latest Census Bureau data, Matthew Slaughter found that from 2000 to 2010 the real earnings of college graduates (with no advanced degree) fell by more in percentage terms than the earnings of high school graduates. In fact, over this period the only education category to show an increase in earnings was those with advanced degrees. N. The outlook for mid-skill jobs would not appear to be bright. Communications technology and computer intelligence continue to improve, putting more occupations at risk. For example, many people earn a living as drivers, including trucks and taxicabs. However, the age of driverless vehicles appears to be moving closer. Another example is in the field of education. In the fall of 2011, an experiment with an online course in artificial intelligence conducted by two Stanford professors drew tens of thousands of registrants (报名者). This increases the student-teacher ratio by a factor of close to a thousand. Imagine the number of teaching jobs that might be eliminated if this could be done for math, economics, chemistry, and so on. O. It's important to bear in mind that when we offer a structural interpretation of unemployment, a 'loss of jobs' means an increase in productivity. Traditionally, economists have argued that productivity increases are a good thing, even though they may cause unemployment for some workers in the short run. In the long run, the economy does not run out of jobs. Rather, new jobs emerge as old jobs disappear. The story we tell is that average well-being rises, and the more people are able to adapt, the more widespread the improvement becomes.

单选题 In the early 20th century, few things were more appealing than the promise of scientific knowledge. In a world struggling with rapid industrialization, science and technology seemed to offer solutions to almost every problem. Newly created state colleges and universities devoted themselves almost entirely to scientific, technological, and engineering fields. Many Americans came to believe that scientific certainty could not only solve scientific problems, but also reform politics, government, and business. Two world wars and a Great Depression rocked the confidence of many people that scientific expertise alone could create a prosperous and ordered world. After World War II, the academic world turned with new enthusiasm to humanistic studies, which seemed to many scholars the best way to ensure the survival of democracy. American scholars fanned out across much of the world—with support from the Ford Foundation, the Fulbright program, etc. —to promote the teaching of literature and the arts in an effort to make the case for democratic freedoms. In the America of our own time, the great educational challenge has become an effort to strengthen the teaching of what is now known as the STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering, and math). There is considerable and justified concern that the United States is falling behind much of the rest of the developed world in these essential disciplines. India, China, Japan, and other regions seem to be seizing technological leadership. At the same time, perhaps inevitably, the humanities—while still popular in elite colleges and universities—have experienced a significant decline. Humanistic disciplines are seriously underfunded, not just by the government and the foundations but by academic institutions themselves. Humanists are usually among the lowest-paid faculty members at most institutions and are often lightly regarded because they do not generate grant income and because they provide no obvious credentials ( 资质) for most nonacademic careers. Undoubtedly American education Should train more scientists and engineers. Much of the concern among politicians about the state of American universities today is focused on the absence of 'real world' education—which means preparation for professional and scientific careers. But the idea that institutions or their students must decide between humanities and science is false. Our society could not survive without scientific and technological knowledge. But we would be equally impoverished ( 贫困的) without humanistic knowledge as well. Science and technology teach us what we can do. Humanistic thinking helps us understand what we should do. It is almost impossible to imagine our society without thinking of the extraordinary achievements of scientists and engineers in building our complicated world. But try to imagine our world as well without the remarkable works that have defined our culture and values. We have always needed, and we still need, both.

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

单选题 Questions19-21 are based on the recording you have just heard.

单选题 Directions: For this part, you ate allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay entitled How Should College Students Relieve Stress? You should write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words following the outline given below. 1．如今的大学生面临着多重压力 2．出现这些压力的原因 3．为了缓解压力，我认为……