问答题1. 题目要求：A campaign calling for the death penalty for child traffickers has recently gone viral on China's online social networks. Do you agree or disagree that child trafficking should be a death penalty offense? Do you think death penalty deters child traffickers? The following are opinions from different sides. Read the excerpts carefully and write your response in about 300 words, in which you should: 1. summarize briefly the different opinions; 2. give your comment. Marks will be awarded for content relevance, content sufficiency, organization and language quality. Failure to follow the above instructions may result in a loss of marks. Pnp Child traffickers must be sentenced to death because their greed brings pain and lasting misery to parents whose kids they traffic in! If you know a bit of the suffering of those parents who lost their kids to traffickers, their sleepless nights, their nightmares thinking of their beloved kids, their lives being turned upside down, and being unable to lead a normal life, you probably won't suggest such a soft approach! The death penalty is a very powerful deterrent; traffickers would think twice before they embark on this heinous crime against humanity! To postulate that it will endanger the lives of the kids, and therefore the death penalty should not be applied, is to cave in to the traffickers! I feel sorry for the kids and their parents. Smuffy Death penalty will not deter the child traffickers, since child trafficking is such a lucrative trade. Instead, it will pose a serious threat to the child victims. China should reform its adoption system, thus forcing some families to resort to legal measures to adopt a child. Seneca I am opposed to any killing of people, legal or otherwise. Death penalty solves no problem and only helps barbarity gain acceptance in the population. It is utterly devastating to lose one's child to a kidnapper who resells him to someone else. But have you ever taken the causes of this crime into consideration? China has enacted and enforced the one child family policy. This policy is quite reasonable against a background of demographics and economics, but it is unnatural and it also creates untold sufferings. What if a woman miscarries and loses her ability to conceive again? What if a couple have waited too long for their child to come? They have little option but to visit the grey and black market in search of a child. The question as to how to judicially treat child abductors and traffickers is a different one. Many crimes are committed out of sheer avarice; killing in retaliation does not make people more moral. Just think how lightly some corrupt officials get off the hook and you can understand that the death penalty is no solution. The countries in West Europe that have no death penalty have the lowest crime rates while the countries with death penalty see their crime rates go from bad to worse. Becky5512 Every child is the treasure of his parents. If you are in a situation where you are trapped in losing your child and unfortunately getting the news about the slack crackdown on those traffickers, how painful and desperate will you be? Definitely, effective measures should be taken to block the channel of trafficking children. Seanboyce88 You may think that offenders would think twice but an American research has shown that, the death penalty is an awful deterrent. It is simply an act of vengeance. I believe that the use of punishment is to teach someone right from wrong, and that most actions stem from societal issues. If poor people had better wages, maybe they wouldn't have to be child traffickers to pay the bills. Killing for vengeance just creates a spiral of hate. Nothing is gained from it.

问答题1. 题目要求：The educational system around the world has been using standardized tests to evaluate the performance of students. However, there has been an ongoing debate among scholars, parents, and teachers on the effectiveness of these tests. What are your views on standardized tests? Read the following excerpts carefully and write your response in about 300 words, in which you should: 1. summarize briefly the different opinions; 2. give your comment. Marks will be awarded for content relevance, content sufficiency, organization and language quality. Failure to follow the above instructions may result in a loss of marks. Peter The multiple-choice format that is used on standardized tests is an inadequate assessment tool. It encourages a simplistic way of thinking in which there are only right and wrong answers, which doesn't apply in real-world situations. The format is also biased toward male students, who, studies have shown, adapt more easily to the game-like point scoring of multiple-choice questions. Richard Teacher-graded assessments are inadequate alternatives to standardized tests because they are subjectively scored and unreliable. Most teachers are not trained in testing and measurement, and research has shown many teachers consider non-cognitive outcomes, including student class participation, perceived effort, and progress over the period of the course, which are irrelevant to subject-matter mastery. Ruth The multiple-choice format used on standardized tests produces accurate information necessary to assess and improve American schools. According to the Center for Teaching Excellence at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, multiple-choice questions can provide highly reliable test scores and an objective measurement of student achievement. Today's multiple-choice tests are more sophisticated than their predecessors. The Center for Public Education, a national public school advocacy group, says many multiple-choice tests now require considerable thought, even notes and calculations, before choosing a bubble. Charles While our understanding of the brain and how people learn and think has progressed enormously, standardized tests have remained the same. Test makers still assume that knowledge can be broken into separate bits and that people learn by absorbing these individual parts. Today, cognitive and developmental psychologists understand that knowledge is not separable bits and that people (including children) learn by connecting what they already know with what they are trying to learn. If they cannot actively make meaning out of what they are doing, they do not learn or remember. Valerie Standardized tests measure only a small portion of what makes education meaningful. According to late education researcher Gerald W. Bracey, qualities that standardized tests cannot measure include creativity, critical thinking, resilience, motivation, persistence, curiosity, endurance, reliability, enthusiasm, empathy, self-awareness, self-discipline, leadership, civic-mindedness, courage, compassion, resourcefulness, sense of beauty, sense of wonder, honesty, integrity. Sam China has a long tradition of standardized testing and leads the world in educational achievement. China displaced Finland as number one in reading, math, and science when Shanghai debuted on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) rankings in 2009. Despite calls for a reduction in standardized testing, China's testing regimen remains firm in place. Chester E. Finn, Jr. , Chairman of the Hoover Institution's Koret Task Force on K-12 Education, predicts that Chinese cities will top the PISA charts for the next several decades.

问答题2. 题目要求：A unique social phenomenon exists exclusively in China—chunyun, or Spring Festival Travel Rush. The following excerpt is about how a foreign reporter views this issue. Read the excerpt carefully and write your response in about 300 words, in which you should: 1. summarize briefly the content of the excerpt; 2. give your comment. Marks will be awarded for content relevance, content sufficiency, organization and language quality. Failure to follow the above instructions may result in a loss of marks. Tootling back to the Village The lunar new year holiday shows the strength of rural ties. It is often described as the world's biggest recurring movement of people: a 40-day period spanning the lunar new year, during which astonishing numbers of people travel to join distant family members to celebrate the Spring Festival. Officials call this period chunyun, or spring transportation. The term evokes horror in the minds of many: trains are so jammed that the only place to sit is on lavatory floors. This year the projected number of journeys on public transport during chunyun, which will end on March 15th, is nearly 2.9 billion, a 10% increase over the comparable period a year ago. Yet there are reasons to be a little less gloomy about what this entails. The numbers suggest that despite rapid urbanization, the pull of the countryside remains strong. Many of the journeys involve mingong, or peasant workers, as the nearly 300m migrants from the countryside who work in urban areas are often snootily called. Their families are often divided. Children stay in the villages, because a fragmented social-security system makes it difficult for migrants to enjoy subsidized education and health care in the cities. Many migrants think it a good idea that some relatives remain: the stay-behinds can help retain land-use rights which might come in handy for the migrants if urban work dries up. The authorities themselves are keen for migrants to keep this backstop. But migration patterns are changing. Wang Kan of the China Institute of Industrial Relations says that, during chunyun, trips between provinces have been declining. This is because migrants are often working closer to home, thanks to the relocation of some industries away from the coast to inland provinces where labour is cheaper. "We can see the emergence of more regional hubs," says Mr. Wang. No longer is the chunyun rush so concentrated in the biggest and wealthiest cities. Analyzing chunyun data is difficult. Xiaohui Liang of Renmin University of China says that companies have recently begun providing private long-distance coach transport for their workers. These trips do not get counted in official statistics. Other workers, he says, get counted twice if they go by train to a regional hub and from there continue by bus to their hometowns. A single worker doing this in both directions would account for four chunyun journeys. The growth of an urban middle class further complicates the picture. Journeys made by holiday tourists, with no rural reunion in mind, are on the rise. Researchers had long felt it safe to assume that trips taken on pricey high-speed trains were made by such travellers. But according to Mr. Wang, migrant workers are increasingly opting for the speed and comfort of the more expensive trains. This, he says, suggests that the purchasing power of migrants is on the rise. Some are even heading back to their villages in newly bought cars (perhaps with paying passengers to offset some of the cost). One source of data on this year's travel rush is Alibaba, an e-commerce firm which has analysed the sale of train tickets through Alitrip, its online travel business. In a new trend this year, the company says, some families are migrating in reverse for their holiday reunions. Alibaba says there has been a "tremendous increase" in the number of elderly parents travelling from their rural homes to industrial centres, such as the southern city of Guangzhou, to spend the festival with their children. That implies that some migrants are now proud enough of their new urban homes to begin showing off.

问答题《复合题被拆开情况》 Every fall, like clockwork, Linda Krentz of Beaverton, Oregon, felt her brain go on strike. "I just couldn’t get going in the morning," she says. "I’d get depressed and gain 10 pounds every

问答题《复合题被拆开情况》PASSAGE ONE《问题》：What can be summarized from the study results in Para. 8?

问答题2. The following two excerpts are about the Massive Online Open Course. The Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) is a massive open online course of study made accessible over the internet without charge. It differs from the traditional online course because it does not charge tuition, carry credits and limit enrollment. From the excerpts, you can find that MOOC has both advantages and disadvantages. Write an article of NO LESS THAN 300 words, in which you should: 1. summarize the advantages and disadvantages of MOOC, and then 2. express your opinion towards this kind of courses. Marks will be awarded for content relevance, content sufficiency, organization and language quality. Failure to follow the above instructions may result in a loss of marks. Write your article on ANSWER SHEET FOUR. Excerpt 1 The MOOC has many advantages that would help students benefit. One advantage includes that you are able to enroll in the massive open online course for free. Unlike traditional online courses, when enrolling in the MOOC no tuition is charged. Another advantage of the MOOC is that most professors come from elite campuses. For example, according to page 28, paragraph 24, Dr. Stavens says they pick instructors not because of their academic research, as universities do, but because of how they teach. Lastly, the MOOC provides students with tool sets that help them control the pace that they work in. This helps them decide whether they want to work fast or slow. The popularity of MOOC in the world in recent years has its reasons and it should continues to be carried out in some universities in China such as Peking University and Zhejiang University. Excerpt 2 The MOOC has many disadvantages that affect the way students think of the courses. One disadvantage includes that the MOOC does not provide credits. According to page 33, paragraph 41, Dr. Agarwal predicts that "a year from now, campuses will give credit for people with edX certificates". Another disadvantage is that providing instructors in the MOOC feedback is tricky. For example, page 27, paragraph 16 states, "What's frustrating in a MOOC is the instructor is not as available because there are tens of thousands of others in the class." In addition, students in the MOOC schedule meet-ups to complete the courses. However, paragraph 21 states, "No one showed up at the meet-up that Stacey Brown, an information technology manager at a Hartford insurance company..." Traditional courses are more beneficial because students may receive additional treatment. Therefore, we would both prefer traditional courses instead of the MOOC.

问答题《复合题被拆开情况》 A trade group for liquor retailers put out a press release with an alarming headline: "Millions of Kids Buy Internet Alcohol, Landmark Survey Reveals. " The announcement, from the Wine and

问答题5. Translate the underlined part of the following text from Chinese into English. 回信，固然可畏，不回信，也绝非什么乐事。书架上经常叠着百多封未回之信，“债龄：或长或短，长的甚至在一年以上，那样的压力，也绝非一个普通的罪徒所能负担的。一叠未回的信，就像一群不散的阴魂，在我罪深孽重的心底憧憧作崇。理论上说来，这些信当然是要回的。我可以坦然向天发誓，在我清醒的时刻，我绝未存心不回人信。问题出在技术上。给我一整个夏夜的空闲．我该先回一年半前的那封信呢，还是7个月前的这封?

问答题《复合题被拆开情况》Current Challenges Confronting U.S. Higher EducationThe first challenge: force of the marketplace• Current situation : —presence of the marketplace as【T1】________external force —government

问答题 经过了几千年缓慢的、各代人都几乎觉察不到的发展之后，城市正在突然、迅速地向四面八方扩展开来

问答题《复合题被拆开情况》 A trade group for liquor retailers put out a press release with an alarming headline: "Millions of Kids Buy Internet Alcohol, Landmark Survey Reveals. " The announcement, from the Wine and

问答题《复合题被拆开情况》PASSAGE THREE《问题》：Why does the author say that "Shaffer’s story makes for great drama" Para. 3?

问答题《复合题被拆开情况》 A summary of the physical and chemical nature of life must begin, not on the Earth, but in the Sun; in fact, at the Sun’s very center. It ishere where is to be found the source of the energ

问答题 一个人的生命究竟有多大意义，这有什么标准可以衡量吗?提出一个绝对的标准当然很困难；但是

问答题《复合题被拆开情况》 Ingma Bergman’s latest work as a screenwriter is "Sunday’s Children". Set in rural Sweden during the late 1920s, the story centers on a young boy named Pu, clearly modelled with Bergman him

问答题《复合题被拆开情况》 A longtime aide to President Bush who wrote occasional guest columns for his hometown newspaper resigned on Friday evening after admitted that he had repeatedly plagiarized from other write

问答题《复合题被拆开情况》 Underscoring the importance of Asia to the US in the new century, Hillary Clinton is breaking with tradition as new Secretaries of State often the first visit Europe or the Middle East. 【S1

问答题《复合题被拆开情况》 For the longest time, I couldn’t get worked up about privacy: my right to it; how it’s dying; how we’re headed for an even more wired, under-regulated, over-intrusive, privacy-deprived age.

问答题. SECTION A MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS PASSAGE ONE (1)Gabriel Oak was a sensible man of good character, who had been brought up by his father as a shepherd, and then managed to save enough money to rent his own farm on Norcombe Hill, in Dorset. He was twenty-eight, a tall, well-built man, who did not seem, however, to think his appearance was very important. (2)One winter morning he was in one of his fields on the side of Norcombe Hill. Looking over his gate, Gabriel could see a yellow cart, loaded with furniture and plants, coming up the road. Right on top of the pile sat a handsome young woman. As Gabriel was watching, the cart stopped at the top of the hill, and the driver climbed down to go back and fetch something that had fallen off. (3)The girl sat quietly in the sunshine for a few minutes. Then she picked up a parcel lying next to her, and looked round to see if the driver was coming back. There was no sign of him. She unwrapped the parcel, and took out the mirror it contained. The sun shone on her lovely face and hair. Although it was December, she looked almost summery, sitting there in her bright red jacket with the fresh green plants around her. She looked at herself in the mirror and smiled, thinking that only the birds could see her. But behind the gate Gabriel Oak was watching too. "She must be rather vain," he thought. "She doesn't need to look in that mirror at all!" (4)As the girl smiled and blushed at herself, she seemed to be dreaming, dreaming perhaps of men's hearts won and lost. When she heard the driver's footsteps, she packed the mirror away. The cart moved on downhill to the tollgate. Gabriel followed on foot. As he came closer he could hear the driver arguing with the gatekeeper. (5)"My mistress's niece, that's her on top of the furniture, is not going to pay you the extra two pence," said the driver. "She says she's offered you quite enough already." "Well, if she doesn't pay the toll, your mistress's niece can't pass through the gate," replied the gatekeeper. Gabriel thought that two pence did not seem worth bothering about, so he stepped forward. "Here," he said, handing the coins to the gatekeeper, "let the young woman pass." (6)The girl in the red jacket looked carelessly down at Gabriel, and told her man to drive on, without even thanking the farmer. Gabriel and the gatekeeper watched the cart move away. "That's a lovely young woman," said the gatekeeper. "But she has her faults," answered Gabriel. (7)"True, farmer." "And the greatest of them is what it always is with women." "Wanting to win the argument every time? Oh, you're right." (8)"No, her great fault is that she's vain." (9)A few days later, at nearly midnight on the longest night of the year, Gabriel Oak could be heard playing his flute on Norcombe Hill. The sky was so clear and the stars so visible that the earth could almost be seen turning. In that cold, hard air the sweet notes of the flute rang out. The music came from a little hut on wheels, standing in the corner of a field. Shepherds' huts like this are used as a shelter during the winter and spring, when shepherds have to stay out all night in the fields, looking after very young lambs. (10)Gabriel's two hundred and fifty sheep were not yet paid for. He knew that, in order to make a success of the farming business, he had to make sure they produced a large number of healthy lambs. So he was determined to spend as many nights as necessary in the fields, to save his lambs from dying of cold or hunger. (11)The hut was warm and quite comfortable inside. There was a stove, and some bread and beer on a shelf. On each side of the hut was a round hole like a window, which could be closed with a piece of wood. These air-holes were usually kept open when the stove was burning, because too much smoke in a small, airless hut could kill the shepherd. (12)From time to time the sound of the flute stopped, and Gabriel came out of his hut to check his sheep. Whenever he discovered a half-dead new lamb, he brought the creature into the hut. In front of the stove it soon came back to life, and then he could return it to its mother. (13)He noticed a light further down the hill. It came from a wooden hut at the edge of a field. He walked down to it and put his eye to a hole in the wood. Inside, two women were feeding a sick cow. One of the women was middle-aged. The other was young and wore a cloak. Gabriel could not see her face. (14)"I think she'll be all right now, aunt," said the younger woman. "I can come and feed her again in the morning. What a pity I lost my hat on the way here!" Just then the girl dropped her cloak, and her long hair fell on to the shoulders of her red jacket. Gabriel recognized the girl of the yellow cart and the mirror, the girl who owed him two pence. The women left the hut, and Gabriel returned to his sheep. (15)As the sun was rising the next morning, Gabriel waited outside his hut until he saw the young woman riding up the hill. She was sitting sideways on the horse in the usual lady's position. He suddenly thought of the hat she had lost, searched for it, and found it among some leaves on the ground. He was just going to go up to her to give it back, when the girl did something very strange. Riding under the low branches of a tree, she dropped backwards flat on the horse's back, with her feet on its shoulders. Then, first looking round to make sure no one was watching, she sat up straight again and pulled her dress to her knees, with her legs on either side of the horse. This was obviously easier for riding, but not very ladylike. Gabriel was surprised and amused by her behaviour. He waited until she returned from her aunt's hut, and stepped out into the path in front of her. PASSAGE TWO (1)"Like Florence in the Renaissance." That is a common description of what it is like to live in Silicon Valley. America's technology capital has an outsize influence on the world's economy, stockmarkets and culture. This small portion of land running from San Jose to San Francisco is home to three of the world's five most valuable companies. Giants such as Apple, Facebook, Google and Netflix all claim Silicon Valley as their birthplace and home, as do trailblazers (先驱) such as Airbnb, Tesla and Uber. The Bay Area has the 19th-largest economy in the world, ranking above Switzerland and Saudi Arabia. (2)The Valley is not just a place. It is also an idea. Ever since Bill Hewlett and David Packard set up in a garage nearly 80 years ago, it has been a byword (代名词) for innovation and ingenuity. It has been at the centre of several cycles of Schumpeterian (熊彼特的) destruction and regeneration, in silicon chips, personal computers, software and internet services. Some of its inventions have been ludicrous: internet-connected teapots, or an app that sold people coins to use at laundromats (自助洗衣机). But others are world-beaters: microprocessor chips, databases and smartphones all trace their lineage to the Valley. (3)Its combination of engineering expertise, thriving business networks, deep pools of capital, strong universities and a risk-taking culture have made the Valley impossible to clone, despite many attempts to do so. There is no credible rival for its position as the world's pre-eminent innovation hub. But there are signs that the Valley's influence is peaking. If that were simply a symptom of much greater innovation elsewhere, it would be cause for cheer. The truth is unhappier. (4)First, the evidence that something is changing. Last year more Americans left the county of San Francisco than arrived. According to a recent survey, 46% of respondents say they plan to leave the Bay Area in the next few years, up from 34% in 2016. So many startups (初创公司) are branching out into new places that the trend has a name, "Off Silicon Valleying". Peter Thiel, perhaps the Valley's most high profile (知名度高的) venture capitalist, is among those upping sticks. Those who stay have broader horizons: in 2013 Silicon Valley investors put half their money into startups outside the Bay Area; now it is closer to two-thirds. (5)The reasons for this shift are manifold, but chief among them is the sheer expense of the Valley. The cost of living is among the highest in the world. One founder reckons young startups pay at least four times more to operate in the Bay Area than in most other American cities. New technologies, from quantum computing to synthetic biology, offer lower margins than internet services, making it more important for startups in these emerging fields to husband their cash. All this is before taking into account the nastier features of Bay Area life: clogged traffic, discarded syringes (注射器) and shocking inequality. (6)Other cities are rising in relative importance as a result. The Kauffman Foundation, a non-profit group that tracks entrepreneurship, now ranks the Miami-Fort Lauderdale area first for startup activity in America, based on the density of startups and new entrepreneurs. Mr Thiel is moving to Los Angeles, which has a vibrant tech scene. Phoenix and Pittsburgh have become hubs for autonomous vehicles; New York for media startups; London for fintech; Shenzhen for hardware. None of these places can match the Valley on its own; between them, they point to a world in which innovation is more distributed. (7)If great ideas can bubble up in more places, that has to be welcome. There are some reasons to think the playing-field for innovation is indeed being levelled up. Capital is becoming more widely available to bright sparks everywhere: tech investors increasingly trawl the world, not just California, for hot ideas. There is less reason than ever for a single region to be the epicentre of technology. Thanks to the tools that the Valley's own firms have produced, from smartphones to video calls to messaging apps, teams can work effectively from different offices and places. A more even distribution of wealth may be one result, greater diversity of thought another. The Valley does many things remarkably well, but it comes dangerously close to being a monoculture of white male nerds. Companies founded by women received just 2% of the funding doled out by venture capitalists last year. (8)The problem is that the wider playing-field for innovation is also being levelled down. One issue is the dominance of the tech giants. Startups, particularly those in the consumer-internet business, increasingly struggle to attract capital in the shadow of Alphabet, Apple, Facebook et al. In 2017 the number of first financing rounds in America was down by around 22% from 2012. Alphabet and Facebook pay their employees so generously that startups can struggle to attract talent (the median salary at Facebook is $240,000). When the chances of startup success are even less certain and the payoffs not so very different from a steady job at one of the giants, dynamism suffers—and not just in the Valley. It is a similar story in China, where Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent are responsible for close to half of all domestic venture-capital investment, giving the giants a big say in the future of potential rivals. (9)The second way in which innovation is being levelled down is by increasingly unfriendly policies in the West. Rising anti-immigrant sentiment and tighter visa regimes of the sort introduced by President Donald Trump have economy-wide effects: foreign entrepreneurs create around 25% of new companies in America. Silicon Valley first bloomed, in large part, because of government largesse (慷慨解囊). But state spending on public universities throughout America and Europe has fallen since the financial crisis of 2007 -2008. Funding for basic research is inadequate—America's federal-government spending on RD was 0.6% of GDP in 2015, a third of what it was in 1964—and heading in the wrong direction. (10)If Silicon Valley's relative decline heralded the rise of a global web of thriving, rival tech hubs, that would be worth celebrating. Unfortunately, the Valley's peak looks more like a warning that innovation everywhere is becoming harder. PASSAGE THREE (1)In a sunny room in a small apartment in the Tokyo satellite town of Kunitachi lies Yasuyuki Ibaraki, eyes closed and breathing laboured. Yukio Miyazaki, his doctor, who visits fortnightly from a local clinic, suspects that he does not have much time left: he has brain damage from a cerebral infarction (脑梗死), a tumour in his digestive system and is unable to swallow or talk. Reiko, his wife, feeds him through a tube to his stomach and clears phlegm (痰) from his throat. "He is from a close-knit family and is a quiet man, so I think it is better for him to be here rather than in a hospital," she says, over green tea and grapes. (2)Life expectancy in Japan is the highest in the world, at 84. This is good news for its people, but means that an ever-higher share of the population is elderly. Fully 28% of Japanese are older than 65, compared with 15% of Americans and 21% of Germans. More old people, in turn, means higher health-care costs. Last year the government budgeted ￥15trn ($138bn, or 15% of its total expenditure) for health care and nursing, excluding the charges it levies for the public health-insurance scheme. With public debt at 250% of GDP, and debt service consuming a further 24% of spending, the government is looking desperately for ways to cut costs. It reckons caring for people at home is one of its best options. (3)All Japanese pay a monthly premium to the public insurance scheme, either through their employer or the local municipality. In return they are entitled to treatment and drugs from public and private doctors and hospitals, although they must also pay a portion of the cost of treatment (a co-payment, in American parlance), subject to a cap. In 2000 Japan introduced an additional public insurance scheme for long-term care for those over 65, into which people must pay from the age of 40. It works the same way. The premiums and co-payments cover around 60% of the cost of the services provided; the government pays for the rest. And it is the old who cost the most. The government reckons that the average annual cost of health care for someone over 75 is ￥942,000, compared with just ￥221,000 for everyone else. (4)By the standards of ageing nations, Japan has managed to curb medical costs fairly well, says Naoki Ikegami of St Luke's International University in Tokyo. The government sets fees for services to keep costs down (although that encourages providers to perform unnecessary procedures to make more money: Japan has more CT scanners relative to its population than any other country). It has also promoted the use of generic drugs, which are cheaper. (5)Nonetheless, the country has crept up to sixth place in the OECD's ranking of the share of GDP spent on health care, behind France and America, but ahead of Italy and South Korea—two other ageing countries. It is not just that the number of old people is increasing; spending per person is rising, too, as people live longer with diseases like Alzheimer's (阿尔茨海默症) and diabetes. (6)Japan has promoted home care for many years, but it is pushing it harder now. The policy is especially beneficial given that the average hospital stay in Japan is three times longer than in the Netherlands, for instance. The health ministry reckons that 1m people will receive care at home in 2025—one-and-a-half times the current total. The number of special nursing units exclusively for home visits has risen from 7,473 in 2014 to 10,418 in 2018. (7)Last year a government panel suggested raising the amount doctors are paid for home visits and making consultations conducted via video-conferencing services eligible, too. It also proposed new rules to encourage care at home. Hospitals should be obliged to talk to social services when they discharge a patient, for example. (8)Some municipalities are already offering good care in the community. Onomichi, a small provincial city that is even older than the country as a whole, is one. Its medical facilities have 15-minute "care conferences" with doctors, nurses, family members and even dentists, to discuss how they will go about looking after people. "It used to be hard for hospitals to tell a patient to return home as there was no system for that; that has changed," says Hisashi Katayama, a doctor. (9)Community care for specific diseases is improving, too. Take dementia (痴呆), which currently affects 5m Japanese (4% of the population), and will afflict 6%-7% by 2030. Rather than provide only institutional care and medicine, some towns, such as Matsudo, north-east of Tokyo, have set up cafés to offer advice and companionship to patients and their carers. Day centres that give respite to families tending to elderly relatives are common. Much more could be done: only 13% of Japanese die at home, although most say they want to. (10)But more widespread home care will not be enough to make Japan's health care affordable. The government of Shinzo Abe wants to revamp the social-security system, which it reckons will help reduce health-care costs. Raising the retirement age, for example, will keep people active, healthier and paying tax for longer. The government also wants to try to reduce the incidence of diseases that affect older people, but have their origins in behaviour at a younger age. "We have tended to focus on the old, but we need to look at the younger to prevent disease," says Kazumi Nishikawa of the economy ministry. He is particularly focused on giving people more information on what causes diabetes, which is on the rise in Japan, or exercises that can stem the progression of dementia. (11)People are likely to have to pay more for health care, too. Co-payments for many of those over 75 are only 10%, compared with 30% for everyone else. The government should start by doubling that to 20%, says Shigefumi Kawamoto, managing director of Kenporen, the national federation of health-insurance societies. "Some elderly people don't have resources, but many do," he avers (断言). The government could exclude some items from coverage, he says, such as over-the-counter drugs. (12)Meanwhile, back in Kunitachi, Dr Miyazaki talks to Reiko about her husband's condition. She is worried that her husband is getting worse, she says, and is anxious between visits. The doctor promises to come weekly from now on.1. It can be concluded from Para. 1 that Gabriel Oak ______. (PASSAGE ONE)

问答题4. 题目要求：The educational system around the world has been using standardized tests to evaluate the performance of students. However, there has been an ongoing debate among scholars, parents, and teachers on the effectiveness of these tests. What are your views on standardized tests? Read the following excerpts carefully and write your response in about 300 words, in which you should: 1. summarize briefly the different opinions; 2. give your comment. Marks will be awarded for content relevance, content sufficiency, organization and language quality. Failure to follow the above instructions may result in a loss of marks. Peter The multiple-choice format that is used on standardized tests is an inadequate assessment tool. It encourages a simplistic way of thinking in which there are only right and wrong answers, which doesn't apply in real-world situations. The format is also biased toward male students, who, studies have shown, adapt more easily to the game-like point scoring of multiple-choice questions. Richard Teacher-graded assessments are inadequate alternatives to standardized tests because they are subjectively scored and unreliable. Most teachers are not trained in testing and measurement, and research has shown many teachers consider non-cognitive outcomes, including student class participation, perceived effort, and progress over the period of the course, which are irrelevant to subject-matter mastery. Ruth The multiple-choice format used on standardized tests produces accurate information necessary to assess and improve American schools. According to the Center for Teaching Excellence at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, multiple-choice questions can provide highly reliable test scores and an objective measurement of student achievement. Today's multiple-choice tests are more sophisticated than their predecessors. The Center for Public Education, a national public school advocacy group, says many multiple-choice tests now require considerable thought, even notes and calculations, before choosing a bubble. Charles While our understanding of the brain and how people learn and think has progressed enormously, standardized tests have remained the same. Test makers still assume that knowledge can be broken into separate bits and that people learn by absorbing these individual parts. Today, cognitive and developmental psychologists understand that knowledge is not separable bits and that people (including children) learn by connecting what they already know with what they are trying to learn. If they cannot actively make meaning out of what they are doing, they do not learn or remember. Valerie Standardized tests measure only a small portion of what makes education meaningful. According to late education researcher Gerald W. Bracey, qualities that standardized tests cannot measure include creativity, critical thinking, resilience, motivation, persistence, curiosity, endurance, reliability, enthusiasm, empathy, self-awareness, self-discipline, leadership, civic-mindedness, courage, compassion, resourcefulness, sense of beauty, sense of wonder, honesty, integrity. Sam China has a long tradition of standardized testing and leads the world in educational achievement. China displaced Finland as number one in reading, math, and science when Shanghai debuted on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) rankings in 2009. Despite calls for a reduction in standardized testing, China's testing regimen remains firm in place. Chester E. Finn, Jr. , Chairman of the Hoover Institution's Koret Task Force on K-12 Education, predicts that Chinese cities will top the PISA charts for the next several decades.