Just like other nations in the world, China has been entering an aging era demographically. How serious is this problem and what can we do to tackle it? Read the excerpt carefully and write your response in about 300 words, in which you should: 1. summarize briefly the author's opinion; 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. Aging Liu Caiping is a former teacher, now 71, who has lived alone in Xi'an since her husband died last year. The radio is her steadfast companion. Her eyesight is failing and she rarely goes out. Like many city residents, her former neighbors have scattered, and her two daughters are far away. When she can no longer cope on her own she will go to a nursing home, she says. That option remains extremely rare for old Chinese. And that highlights the problem: China is struggling to cope with a rapidly aging society and a rising number of elderly people living by themselves. For most of the past two millennia the family has been central to how Chinese have seen themselves—and the state has been seen as a family writ large. Filial piety was somewhere near the heart of a Confucian order regulating society, and the family was an extended, stable unit of several generations under one roof. A very common saying encapsulated it all: yang er fang lao—" raise children for your old age. Today multi-generation families are still the norm. Almost three-fifths of people over 65 live with their children, a higher proportion than in most rich countries. Yet things are changing fast. Increasingly, parents are living apart from their children—and when one spouse dies, as with Ms. Liu, the other often lives alone. A fifth of all single-person households in China are made up of over-65-year-olds. In contrast to younger Chinese living alone, few elderly do so by choice. Many are poorly educated. Women predominate, because they tend to outlive their husbands. China is unprepared for the consequences of solo dwelling among the elderly. Government policy enshrines the idea that families should live together and provide for the old and others unable to look after themselves. Despite efforts to extend pensions and other social protection, provisions fall far short because the state assumes offspring will help the old and sick. The welfare system is ill-equipped to help the elderly living alone. State financial support has improved in the past decade, but many millions of elderly Chinese still have no pension or retirement income. Health insurance is increasingly widespread, but usually covers only the basics. Rural areas lag far behind cities in the provision of pensions and health care for the old. By 2025 nearly one in four Chinese will be over 60. China's one-child policy has made a mockery of yang er fang lao—fewer among the younger generation are around for the old to move in with, a trend reinforced by starting families later. By 2050 there are likely to be just 2.5 working-age adults for every person over 65, down from eight today. Chinese born in the boondocks who migrate to far-off cities in search of work cannot easily take older family members with them even if they want to. Despite the challenges, many in China still regard responsibility towards their family as a defining feature of their culture. Not much difference with other countries there. But the expectation of filial piety means that those who are not recipients of it often feel ashamed or isolated. Many are reluctant to seek help of neighbors when they need it, for instance. The government acknowledges the problem. When it relaxed the one-child policy, one reason it cited was a growing number of elderly singletons. Some enterprising local governments have introduced schemes aimed at the lonely old. But with a weak social-safety net, little support is in place when families fail to help those living alone. Write your response on ANSWER SHEET FOUR.

阳台上的那盆 昙花 (epiphyllum)已冒出了小小的花苞，于是我留心期待着一个花开的夜晚。每回浇花的时候都叮咛自己可别错过了。但是一忙起来竟然真的错过了!待到第二天清晨倏地想起，急急推门出户，那已经绽放过的花朵，一如垂头敛翼的凤凰，倦然冷冷的不见一丝神采。想昨夜留它独自在漆黑的露台上，凄清寂寞地灿灿烂烂，我心中涌现满满的痛惜与歉疚——我岂止错过，分明是辜负了!

PASSAGE ONE

He continues to talk to the guest and listen to him, but leans forward and grasps the arms of the chair as about to push himself upwards.

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There are more drugs dispensed for pain than for any other disease on this planet. Drug companies enjoy earning huge profits from people suffering with chronic pain. Pain management clinicsflourish throughout the world. Most conventional medicine【M1】______prescribed for pain addresses a contemporary symptom removal(if【M2】______you are lucky)rather than curing the cause of the pain. There are many "pain management" drugs and techniques. Most of these willdry up to your savings and at the end of the day you will still suffer【M3】______from pain. This is not the worst part, but rather what your liver, kidneys【M4】______and other organic eventually become poisoned by long-term use of【M5】______synthetic drugs that is the most devastating to your health. Paindrugs are also addicted which will eventually cause other diseases.【M6】______Useful pain management techniques, whether they involve【M7】______poisonous drugs, pulsating your body parts with low voltage, rubbing your skin or using other inventions, only postpone the agony while the disease behind it will continue thriving. Many smart philosophers mention that the best way to keep young and healthy is to put food in your mouth that is healing: e.g.treat your food as your medicine while your medicine as your【M8】______food. People following this simple prescription live to be good into【M9】______their nineties or even hundreds and they feel thirty to fifty yearsyounger than they really are. Cultures follow this principle have【M10】______some of the healthiest seniors around.

By studying geometry, students can learn what to develop logical arguments through deductive reasoning.

Differences Between Cultures in Non-verbal CommunicationsI. Cultural influence on nonverbal behaviour— Low-context cultures think【T1】_____ is more important【T1】______— High-context cultures think【T2】_____【T2】______II.【T3】_____【T3】______— America: women show fear, not anger; men show anger, not fear— China & Japan:【T4】_____ are unacceptable to show overtly【T4】______— A smile of a Japanese person does not necessarily mean【T5】_____【T5】______— To understand the cultural【T6】_____ and values【T6】______will help interpret expressed emotionsIII. Facial expression— Commonalitiesa)【T7】_____ expressions: a lack of control【T7】______b)Too much smiling:【T8】_____【T8】______— Differences:a)Asian cultures:【T9】_____ facial expression【T9】______b)Mediterranean cultures:【T10】_____ grief or sadness【T10】______c)American culture: men hide grief or sorrowIV. Proxemics— North Americans prefer【T11】_____ personal spaces than Europeans【T11】______— People who prefer closer spaces might see the attemptto create more space as cold, condescending or【T12】_____【T12】______— Americans and Canadians feel【T13】_____【T13】______to rearrange furniture for a meeting— Germans don't agree with thatV. 【T14】______【T14】______— America: take standing in lines seriously— French:【T15】_____【T15】______— Armenia one member of a family saves spots in a line for several others

Country life, on the other hand, differs from this kind of isolated existence in that a sense of community generally keep the inhabitants of a small village together.

区别于其他形式的校园暴力，霸凌行为通常并不会造成严重的一次性肢体伤害，但却往往会给受害人带来持久性隐形创伤。如果没有受到专业的心理引导，受害者有可能转变为报复社会的人，进而从受害者转变为施暴者，将自己的遭遇原封不动或放大百倍地转嫁到他人身上。美国相关机构的统计显示，在过去25年的37起校园枪击案中，有三分之二的攻击者都曾是校园暴力或校园霸凌的受害者。

Because of the rising cost of fuel, scientists are building automobile engines who will conserve gasoline but still run smoothly.

Passage Four

年轻人到纽约别只在夜店贪玩，只去百老汇看戏。可以找一个短期课程，纽约大学有各种不给学位的短期课程，可以在那里学英文、交朋友。纽约附近常有短期出租公寓，租一个小房间，一个月、两个月皆可。房东可能是当地艺术家，和他们聊天，看他们追求艺术梦，白天创作，傍晚当苦力工作至深夜。没有人会在黑夜里哭泣，因为他们清楚地知道，一切辛苦是为了圆自己的梦。

(1)It is mid-September, the heat is just leaking out of the end of summer, and Japan is enjoying a rare public holiday. A holiday, that is, in the uniquely Japanese sense of the word, which means the GPS hardwired into every citizen is sending thousands upon thousands to the same fashionable boutiques near my home in Tokyo to shop. It is more crowded than a commuter train at rush hour. Policemen shepherd the multitude along the streets with flashing orange batons. Yet there is something peaceful about the way the Japanese drift together in a crowd; they carry a tiny aura of personal space with them, no bigger than one of their Louis Vuitton handbags, and every bit as precious. They hardly touch, like those shoals of translucent fish that dart from one direction to another without colliding. The policemen use their batons like conductors, keeping everything harmonious. But if you try to defy them, those batons will block your way faster than they can say "Dame desu"—which is about as final as "Not on your life." (2)Such are the means by which order and harmony are maintained in Japan. There is a deep-rooted respect for others, so ingrained that ground staff at Narita airport bow to departing planes as they taxi to the runway. And there is a subtle coercion, like an invisible hand on society's collar, based on centuries of ancestor worship that has made many customs immutable. The attitudes have been shaped partly by the physical landscape of Japan, which packs one of the most crowded populations on earth onto narrow plains, bounded by sea and inhospitable mountains. For centuries the main activity has been rice farming, which requires communal planting, weeding, watering and harvesting, rather than the rugged individualism of American and European agriculture. (3)I have been captivated by life here since I arrived a year ago, floating on a wave of adoration of most things Japanese, yet getting in everyone's way and doing everything wrong. I would jog around the Imperial Palace in a clockwise direction, only to find everyone else running anti-clockwise, bearing down on me as if I didn't exist. I wore short sleeves in early autumn, and couldn't work out why, when it was still blazing hot outside, everyone had put on their jackets and ties again. After swimming with dolphins on the island of Mikurajima this summer, my family and I went to a cafe to have lunch, still in our damp bathing costumes. Our hostess was so livid that at first I thought we must have set the place alight, not left a few damp seats where our bottoms had been. Living as a foreigner in Japan, for all its attractions, has many such small humiliations. You may be on a noble quest to plumb the depths of the Japanese soul, but you will take so many wrong turns you end up wondering whether you are indeed too brutish to make sense of it. (4)You may also be struck by how few of the locals have a matching interest in you and your culture. That is because it increasingly seems as if the outside world—with its sharper elbows, fattier food and shoddy dress sense—is kept at arm's length. Fewer young Japanese are travelling abroad, fewer are studying English, and fewer are taking places at leading academic institutions overseas such as Harvard Business School. Bosses at Japan's legendary export businesses complain they cannot find youngsters who are prepared to work abroad. Two clever young Japanese friends, just posted to excellent jobs in America, told me that Japan is so comfortable they find it hard to leave. (5)Yet as those friends are the first to admit, it is a cotton-wool comfort that keeps out alien germs—like the surgical facemasks that many Japanese wear, so at odds with the rest of their perfect dress. To the outsider, it can lend the society an air of feeble vulnerability. At times it is downright maddening. Foreign ATM cards don't work in most Japanese banks, Japanese movies—even the classics—rented at the ubiquitous Tsutaya video store don't offer the option of foreign-language subtitles. Japanese mobile-phone technology is so unusual that analysts talk of "the Galapagos effect", because it has grown up in a unique eco-system that makes it unsuitable for use anywhere else.

There are two basic sorts of visual perspective—aerial perspective and linear perspective. Aerial perspective—and "aerial" just means "air" or "【T1】______", not your view from an airplane! —aerial perspective is the way that the atmosphere affects【T2】______, especially distant things. I won't try to go into the laws of physics that are involved here, but it is aerial perspective that makes a mountain in the distance appear to be a different color, that makes it seem hazier—less distinct—than closer objects. These are effects that【T3】______ attempt to reproduce carefully. And impressionists also use it to create their own special effects. Just think of many of Turner's landscapes—or cityscapes like his "Dido Building Carthage"—to get an idea of how the air can affect what we see. The other perspective, linear perspective, is the way that things seem to get smaller the farther away they get. A classic example of this is the way we perceive【T4】______or a line of telephone poles running away from us. They seem to get smaller and smaller as they recede—until they vanish in a point on the horizon—and this point is appropriately called "【T5】______". This effect happens whenever there are【T6】______, like the two train tracks, or the tops and bottoms of the telephone poles.

都十点钟了。起床了，懒虫!

沙漠里真有魔鬼吗?在那时人们的知识水平看起来，确像是有魔鬼在作怪。但是人们掌握了自然规律以后，便可把这种光怪陆离的现象说清楚。这种现象在大戈壁夏天中午是常见的。当人们旅行得渴不可耐的时候，忽然看见一个很大的湖，里面蓄着碧蓝的清水，看来并不很远。当人们欢天喜地向大湖奔去的时候，这蔚蓝的湖却总有那么一个距离，所谓“可望而不可即”。 阿拉伯人是对沙漠广有经验的民族，阿拉伯语中称这一现象为“魔鬼的海”。

Jackie Mclean's recordings have shown that he is one of the few jazz musicians who style of playing has kept pace with the evolution of modern jazz.

(1)Think of the solitude felt by Marie Smith before she died earlier this year in her native Alaska, at 89. She was the last person who knew the language of the Eyak people as a mother-tongue. Or imagine Ned Mandrell, who died in 1974 — he was the last native speaker of Manx, similar to Irish and Scots Gaelic. Both these people had the comfort of being surrounded, some of the time, by enthusiasts who knew something precious was vanishing and tried to record and learn whatever they could of a vanishing tongue. In remote parts of the world, dozens more people are on the point of taking to their graves a system of communication that will never be recorded or reconstructed. (2)Does it matter? Plenty of languages — among them Akkadian, Etruscan, Tangut and Chibcha — have gone the way of the dodo, without causing much trouble to the descendants. Should anyone lose sleep over the fact that many tongues — from Manchu(spoken in China)to Hua(Botswana)and Gwich'in(Alaska)— are in danger of suffering a similar fate? (3)Compared with groups who lobby to save animals or trees, campaigners who lobby to preserve languages are themselves a rare breed. But they are trying both to mitigate and publicize an alarming acceleration in the rate at which languages are vanishing. Of some 6,900 tongues spoken in the world today, some 50% to 90% could be gone by the end of the century. In Africa, at least 300 languages are in near-term danger, and 200 more have died recently or are on the verge of death. Some 145 languages are threatened in East and South-east Asia. (4)Some languages, even robust ones, face an obvious threat in the shape of a political power bent on imposing a majority tongue. A youngster in any part of the Soviet Union soon realised that whatever you spoke at home, mastering Russian was the key to success. (5)Nor did English reach its present global status without ruthless tactics. In years past, Americans, Canadians and Australians took native children away from their families to be raised at boarding schools where English rules. In all the Celtic fringes of the British Isles there are bitter memories of children being punished for speaking the wrong language. (6)But in an age of mass communications, the threats to linguistic diversity are less ruthless and more spontaneous. Parents stop using traditional tongues, thinking it will be better for their children to grow up using a dominant language(such as Swahili in East Africa)or a global one(such as English, Mandarin or Spanish). And even if parents try to keep the old speech alive, their efforts can be doomed by films and computer games. (7)The result is a growing list of tongues spoken only by white-haired elders. A book edited by Peter Austin, an Australian linguist, gives some examples: Njerep, one of 31 endangered languages counted in Cameroon, reportedly has only four speakers left, all over 60. The valleys of the Caucasus used to be a paradise for linguists in search of unusual syntax, but Ubykh, one of the region's baffling tongues, officially expired in 1992.

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