单选题Questions 11～13 are based on the following life story about a musician named Itzhak Perlman. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 11～13.

单选题The Earth"s Spreading Deserts Only a generation ago, Mauritania"s capital city was many days" walk from the Sahara. Today it is in the Sahara. The sand blows through the city streets and piles up against walls and fences. The desert stretches out as far as the eye can see. In some parts of the Amazon rain forest in Brazil, all the trees have been cut down. The earth lies bare and dry in the hot sun. Nothing grows there any more. Over vast areas of every continent, the rainfall and vegetation necessary for life are disappearing. Already more than 40 percent of the earth"s land is desert or desert-like. About 628 million people—one out of seven—live in these dry regions. In the past, they have managed to survive, but with difficulty. Now, largely through problems caused by modern life, their existence is threatened by the slow, steady spread of the earth"s deserts. Many countries first became concerned in the 1970s after a terrible drought and famine destroyed Africa"s Sahel, the fragile desert along the south edge of the Sahara. Thousands of people died even though there was a worldwide effort to send food and medicine to the starving people. Droughts and crop failures are not new in desert regions. They have been a fact of life for thousands of years. However, few people lived in desert regions in the past. They kept few animals, and they moved frequently. Today"s problems are caused in great part by distinctly modern factors. In the Sahel, for example, Africans benefited from improvements in public health and modern farming methods. New water wells encouraged people to settle down on the land near the wells. The population grew. Farmers planted more crops and enlarged their herds of cattle, sheep and goats. They became dependent on the new wells. When the drought came, the crops failed and the cattle ate all the grass around the overworked wells. The fragile land quickly lost its topsoil and became nothing but sand and dust. Many countries are experiencing similar problems. Poor land is farmed until it is worn out, and trees are cut for firewood, leaving the soil unprotected against wind and rain. In Peru, Chile, and Brazil, some areas that once were covered with forests now look like the moon. In India, some land has been so badly damaged by farming and tree cutting that mud now slides into the Indus and Ganges rivers. Cattle, sheep, and goats add to the problem by eating grass and other plants faster than they can grow back. In the United States, some highly populated areas are really desert. Water must be piped in from hundreds of miles away. Scientists still do not understand all the complex problems of the desert; but there have been many ideas for saving the land. Saudi Arabia has planted 10 million trees to help keep the sand from taking over fertile areas. The Israelis are again using some of the water collection systems left by the ancient peoples in the Negev desert. They plan to water their orchards with the extra water. Some Sahel farmers still raise cattle on their poor farm land, but before the cattle are sold, they are taken to greener lands in the south to get fat. The spread of the deserts affects more countries. The big question today is, how can an expanding world population find food and space without destroying the land it lives on? For many countries, battling the desert is the only chance to avoid starvation and disaster.

单选题{{B}}Directions:{{/B}}{{I}} Read the following text. Choose the best word or phrase for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C, or D on ANSWER SHEET 1.{{/I}} It has always been a problem to decide whether "popular music" is music which represents the people or is simply music that the people like. The same problem of{{U}} {{U}} 1 {{/U}} {{/U}}exists with jazz. So many different{{U}} {{U}} 2 {{/U}} {{/U}}of music have been called jazz at one time or another that it is hard to say what{{U}} {{U}} 3 {{/U}} {{/U}}it is. Jazz has always been considered tobe black music{{U}} {{U}} 4 {{/U}} {{/U}}when I first{{U}} {{U}} 5 {{/U}} {{/U}}an interest in it twenty years ago, I used to hear white{{U}} {{U}} 6 {{/U}} {{/U}}playing music that was like Louis Armstrong's in the 1920s. I found out afterwards that they learnt to do this by playing Armstrong's records over and over again until their style was close enough to his{{U}} {{U}} 7 {{/U}} {{/U}}for them to imitate him. Since then white singers like Bob Dylan have rediscovered{{U}} {{U}} 8 {{/U}} {{/U}}own folk tradition, instead of{{U}} {{U}} 9 {{/U}} {{/U}}from black roots. But the main{{U}} {{U}} 10 {{/U}} {{/U}}since 1960 have been social and technical. One is that young people have more{{U}} {{U}} 11 {{/U}} {{/U}}to spend on records at an earlier age than they used to, so Tin Pan Alley, the 'pop' music industry, aims at the teenage audience. {{U}} {{U}} 12 {{/U}} {{/U}}is that electronic equipment has developed to such an{{U}} {{U}} 13 {{/U}} {{/U}}that technicians are now capable of mixing sound to{{U}} {{U}} 14 {{/U}} {{/U}}recordings that are quite different from a live{{U}} {{U}} 15 {{/U}} {{/U}}. But the real{{U}} {{U}} 16 {{/U}} {{/U}}with 'pop' musis is that Tin Pan Alley has always worked against its being a{{U}} {{U}} 17 {{/U}} {{/U}}music of the people. It takes everything original and natural out of it and{{U}} {{U}} 18 {{/U}} {{/U}}it with cheap commercial imitations.{{U}} {{U}} 19 {{/U}} {{/U}}the American folk singer, Woody Guthrie, said: "They've always{{U}} {{U}} 20 {{/U}} {{/U}}the second-rate songs. They've never wanted to play the good ones."

单选题Geologists are using modern technology to ______.

单选题 Questions 17—20 are based on the following monologue. You now have 20 seconds to read Questions 17—20.

单选题What does the author try to tell us?

单选题Most of the trade deficit in this balance of payments was attributed to trade with which country?

单选题 Scholars and students have always been great travellers. The official case for "academic mobility" is now often stated in impressive terms as a fundamental necessity for economic and social progress in the world, and debated in the corridors of Europe, but it is certainly nothing new. Serious students were always ready to go abroad in search of the most stimulating teachers and the most famous academies; in search of the purest philosophy, the most effective medicine, the likeliest road to gold. Mobility of this kind meant also mobility of ideas, their transference across frontiers, their simultaneous impact upon many groups of people. The point of learning is to share it, whether with students or with colleagues; one presumes that only eccentrics have no interest in being credited with a startling discovery, or a new technique. It must also have been reassuring to know that other people in other parts of the world were about to make the same discovery or were thinking along the same lines, and that one was not quite alone, confronted by inquisition, ridicule or neglect. In the twentieth century, and particularly in the last 20 years, the old footpaths of the wandering scholars have become vast highways. The vehicle which has made this possible has of course been the aeroplane, making contact between scholars even in the most distant places immediately feasible, and providing for the very rapid transmission of knowledge. Apart from the vehicle itself, it is fairly easy to identify the main factors which have brought about the recent explosion in academic movement. Some of these are purely quantitative and require no further mention: there are far more centres of learning, and a far greater number of scholars and students. In addition one must recognise the very considerable multiplication of disciplines, particularly in the sciences, which by widening the total area of advanced studies has produced an enormous number of specialists whose particular interests are precisely defined. These people would work in some isolation if they were not able to keep in touch with similar isolated groups in other countries. Frequently these specialisations lie in areas where very rapid developments are taking place, and also where the research needed for developments is extremely costly and takes a long time. It is precisely in these areas that the advantages of collaboration and sharing of expertise appear most evident. Associated with this is the growth of specialist periodicals, which enable scholars to become aware of what is happening in different centres of research and to meet each other in conferences and symposia. From these meetings come the personal relationships which are at the bottom of almost all formalized schemes of cooperation, and provide them with their most satisfactory stimulus. But as the specialisations have increased in number and narrowed in range, there had been an opposite movement towards interdisciplinary studies. These owe much to the belief that one cannot properly investigate the incredibly complex problems thrown up by the modern world, and by recent advances in our knowledge along the narrow front of a single discipline. This trend has led to a great deal of academic contact between disciplines, and a far greater emphasis on the pooling, of specialist knowledge, reflected in the broad subjects chosen in many international conferences.

单选题The living standards of the new immigrants were improved in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries mainly because

单选题{{I}}Questions 17—20 are based on the following passage you have just heard. You have 20 seconds to read Questions 17—20.{{/I}}

单选题Questions 11—13 are based on the following talk about the kinds of fatigue. You know have 15 seconds to read questions 11—13.

单选题The passage tells us that the arrival of the industrial age meant that ______.