单选题 {{I}}Questions 11～13 are based on the following conversation. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 11～13.{{/I}}

单选题According to the passage, the closing of the schools developed into a crisis because of ______.

单选题Questions 17 to 20 are based on the following conversation between Professor Lambert and Dale Kohler. You now have 20 seconds to read Questions 17 to 20.

单选题{{I}} Questions 18 to 20 are based on the following monologue about rainwater. You now have 20 seconds to read Questions 18 to 20.{{/I}}

单选题 {{I}}Questions 17 - 20 are based on the following talk. You now have 20 seconds to read Questions 17 - 20.{{/I}}

单选题Opinion polls are now beginning to show that, whoever is to blame and whatever happens from now on, high unemployment is probably here to stay. This means we shall have to make ways of sharing the available employment more widely. But we need to go further. We must ask some primary questions about the future of work. Would we continue to treat employment as the norm? Would we not rather encourage many other ways for self-respecting people to work? Should we not create conditions in which many of us can work for ourselves, rather than for an employer? Should we not aim to revive the household and the neighborhood, as well as the factory and the office, as centers of production and work? The industrial age has been the only period of human history in which most people's work has taken the form of jobs. The industrial age may now be coming to an end, and some of the changes in work patterns which it brought may have to be reversed. This seems a daunting thought. But, in fact, it could provide the prospect of a better future for work. Universal employment, as its history shows, has not meant economic freedom. Employment became widespread when the enclosures of the 17th and 18th centuries made many people dependent on paid work by depriving them of the use of the land, and thus of the means to provide a living for themselves. Then the factory system destroyed the cottage industries and removed work from people's homes. Later, as transportation improved, first by rail and then by road, people commuted longer distances to their places of employment until, eventually, many people's work lost all connection with their home lives and the place in which they lived. Meanwhile, employment put women at a disadvantage. In pre-industrial time, men and women had shared the productive work of the household and village community. Now it became customary for the husband to go out to paid employment, leaving the unpaid work of the home and family to his wife. Tax and benefit regulations still assume this norm today and restrict more flexible sharing of work roles between the sexes. It was not only women whose work status suffered. As employment became the dominant form of work, young people and old people were excluded—a problem now, as more teenagers become frustrated at school and more retired people want to live active lives. All this may now have to change. The time has certainly come to switch some effort and resources away from the idealist goal of creating jobs for all, to the urgent practical task of helping many people to manage without full time jobs.

单选题 Perusing the Times in 1844, Friedrich Engels was horrified to note that, in a single day, London suffered a theft, an attack on the police, an abandonment and a poisoning. "Social war is under full headway," commented Engels, who blamed the crime wave on the growing proletariat. It is hard to imagine what the gloomy social scientist would have made of the fact that, 160 years later, London's police would be recording 2,500 crimes per day. Most striking is the rise of mugging. In 1993 there were 323,000 robberies in England and Wales, according to the British Crime Survey-the highest since the survey began in 1981. That is not so surprising: There was a recession on. But the muggers carded on during the late-1990s boom, even as their house- and car-breaking colleagues hung up their sacks. Despite a buoyant economy, close attention from police and politicians and a shrinking proletariat, there were 347,000 muggings last year. The national numbers have dropped since 1999 but London still suffers: In September, robberies in London were up 21% on the same month in 2004. Why? One reason, says Simon Pountain, who polices the London borough of Hackney, is that "there are more desirable items walking around on the street." Technology and prosperity means more mobile phones, and, recently, more MP3 players. Meanwhile, many of the things people keep in their houses and cars have become less valuable. Why break into a house to steal a DVD player when you can snatch an iPod worth two or three times as much? As a criminal enterprise, mugging has unusually low barriers to entry. It requires less skill than burglary or car theft, and fewer connections and less financial savvy than drug dealing. A recent study of the capital's robbers found that ethnic patterns depended mainly on social and environmental factors. Black men are still over-represented among muggers, but that seems to be because they are poor, and, more important, because many of them live in neighbourhoods that have gentrified. Robbery thrives where wealth and poverty mix. Today's muggers are more discerning in their choice of victims and goods. Three-quarters of their victims are men, which is novel: A large study of street robbery in 1987 found that 57% of victims were women. Young muggers look down on drug-addled practitioners, generally in their early 20s, who go after softer targets and will steal anything. Simon Holdaway, who has interviewed young robbers in Sheffield, finds that they occasionally beat up their elders. "Many of these robbers are funding a lifestyle, not a drug habit," says Mr Pountain. Although poor, they are driven not by need but by aspiration find desire--for the latest gadget, or for something that can be used to finance its purchase. Engels might have regarded that as a sign of progress.

单选题Professor Thring's mechanical coal miner ______.

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单选题One of the most alarming things about the crisis in the global financial system is that the warning signs have been out there for some time, yet no one heeded them. Exactly 10 years ago, a hedge fund called Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) failed to convince investors that it could repay its debts, thereby bringing the world to the brink of a similar "liquidity crisis" to the one we now see. Disaster was averted then only because regulators managed to put together a multi-billion-dollar bailout package. LTCM"s collapse was particularly notable because its founders had set great store by their use of statistical models designed to keep tabs on the risks inherent in their investments. Its fall should have been a wake-up call to banks and their regulatory supervisors that the models were not working as well as hoped—in particular that they were ignoring the risks of extreme events and the connections that send such events reverberating around the financial system. Instead, they carried on using them. Now that disaster has struck again, some financial risk modelers—the "quants" who have wielded so much influence over modern banking—are saying they know where the gaps in their knowledge are and are promising to fill them. Should we trust them? Their track record does not inspire confidence. Statistical models have proved almost useless at predicting the killer risks for individual banks, and worse than useless when it comes to risks to the financial system as a whole. The models encouraged bankers to think they were playing a high-stakes card game, when what they were actually doing was more akin to lining up a row of dominoes. How could so many smart people have gotten it so wrong? One reason is that their faith in their model"s predictive power led them to ignore what was happening in the real world. Finance offers enormous scope for dissembling: almost any failure can be explained away by a judicious choice of language and data. When investors do not behave like the self-interested homo economics that economists suppose them to be, they are described as being "irrationally exuberant" or blinded by panic. An alternative view—that investors are reacting logically in the face of uncertainty—is rarely considered. Similarly, extreme events are described as happening only "once in a century"—even though there is insufficient data on which to base such an assessment. The quants" models might successfully predict the movement of markets most of the time, but the bankers who rely on them have failed to realize that the occasions on which the markets deviate from normality are much more important than those when they comply. The events of the past year have driven this home in a spectacular fashion: by some estimates, the banking industry has lost more money in the current crisis than it has made in its entire history.

单选题 You will hear 3 conversations or talks and you must answer the questions by choosing A, B, C or D. You will hear the recording ONLY ONCE. Questions 11～13 are based on the following talk.

单选题"To err is human, to forgive, divine", "A little learning is a dangerous thing" are taken from the poems written by ______. A. John Milton B. Fransis Bacon C. William Shakespeare D. Alexander Pope

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} Standard English is that variety of English which is usually used ill print, and which is normally taught in schools and to non-native speakers studying tile language. It is also the variety which is normally spoken by educated people and used in news broadcasts and other similar situations. The difference between standard and non-standard, it should be noted, has nothing in principle to do with differences between formal and colloquial language; Standard English has colloquial as well as formal variants. Historically, the standard variety of English is derived from the London dialect of English that developed after the Norman Conquest resulted in the removal of the Court from Winchester to London. This dialect became the one preferred by the educated, and it was developed and promoted as a model, or norm, for wider and wider segments of society. It was also the norm that was carded overseas, but not one unaffected by such export. Today, Standard English is codified to the extent that the grammar and vocabulary of English are much the same everywhere in the world where English is used: variation among local standards is really quite minor, so flint the Singapore, South Africa, and Irish varieties are really very little different from one another so fax as grammar and vocabulary are concerned. Indeed, Standard English is so powerful that it exerts a tremendous pressure on all local varieties, to the extent that many of tile long-established dialects of England have lost much of their vigor and there is considerable pressure on them to converge toward the standard. This latter situation is not unique lo English: it is also true in other countries where processes of standardization are under way. But it sometimes brings problems to speakers who try to strike some kind of compromise between local norms and national, even supranational ones.

单选题 　　Today TV audiences all over the world are accustomed to the sight of American astronauts in tip-top condition, with fair hair, crew-cuts, good teeth, an uncomplicated sense of humour and a severely limited non-technical vocabulary.　　What marks out an astronaut from his earthbound fellow human beings is something of a difficult problem. Should you wish to interview him, you must apply beforehand, and you must be prepared for a longish wait, even if your application meets with success. It is, in any case, out of the question to interview an astronaut about his family life or personal activities, because all the astronauts have con- tracts with an American magazine under conditions forbidding any unauthorized disclosures about their private lives.　　Certain obvious qualities are needed. Any would be spaceman must be in perfect health, must have powers of concentration ( since work inside a spacecraft is exceptionally demanding) and must have considerable courage. Again, space-work calls for dedication. Courage and dedication are particularly essential. In the well-known case of the Challenger seven crew members lost their lives in space because of the faulty equipment in the shuttle. Another must is outstanding scientific expertise. It goes without saying that they all have to have professional aeronautical qualifications and experience.　　A striking feature of the astronauts is their ages. For the younger man, in his twenties, say, space is out. Only one of the fifty men working for NASA in 1970 was under 30. The oldest astronaut to date is Alan Shepard, America's first man in space, who, at nearly fifty, was also the man who captained Apollo 13. The average age is the late thirties. The crew members of Apollo 11 were all born well before the Second World War. In 1986 the Challenger astronauts had an average age of 39. The range was from 35 to 46.　　In a society where marital continuity is not always exhibited, the astronauts' record in this respect hits you in the eye. Of all the married men in NASA group, only two or three are divorced from their wives. Mind you, it is hard to tell whether something in the basic character of an astronaut encourages fidelity or whether the selection process demands that a candidate should be happily married.　　The NASA astronauts live in unattractive small communities dotted here and there around the base in Texas. You would expect them to find their friends from among their professional associates, but this is not the case. Rather, they prefer to make friends with the normal folk in their districts, A good job, too, Astronauts, like everybody else, must get fed up with talking shop all the time, and, whereas they are indeed an elite, their daily life outside work should be as normal as possible, if only for the sake of their families.　　As for the astronauts' political leanings, they seem to be towards the right. This may be due to the fact that a large proportion of the astronauts have a military background. On the other hand, it could be just coincidence.

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} Although recent years have seen substantial reductions in noxious pollutants from individual motor vehicles, the number of such vehicles has been steadily increasing. Consequently, more than 100 cities in the United States still have levels of carbon monoxide, particulate matter, and ozone (generated by photochemical reactions with hydrocarbons from vehicle exhaust) that exceed legally established limits. There is a growing realization that the only effective way to achieve further reduction in vehicle emissions -- short of a massive shift away from the private automobile -- is to replace conventional diesel fuel and gasoline with cleaner-burning fuels such as compressed natural gas, liquefied petroleum gas, ethanol, or methanol. All of these alternatives are carbon-based fuels whose molecules are smaller and simpler than those of gasoline. These molecules burn more cleanly than gasoline, in part because they have fewer, if any, carbon-car-bon bonds and the hydrocarbons they do emit are less likely to generate ozone. The combustion of larger molecules, which have multiple carbon-carbon bonds, involves a more complex series of reactions. These reactions increase the probability of incomplete combustion and are more likely to release uncombusted and photochemically active hydrocarbon compounds into the atmosphere. On the other hand, alternative fuels do have draw backs. Compressed natural gas would require that vehicles have a set of heavy fuel tanks -- a serious {{U}}liability{{/U}} in terms of performance and fuel efficiency -- and liquefied petroleum gas faces fundamental limits on supply. Ethanol and methanol, on the other hand, have important advantages over other carbon-based alternative fuels: they have a higher energy content per volume and would require minimal changes in the existing network for distributing motor fuel. Ethanol is commonly used as a gasoline supplement, but it is currently about twice as expensive as methanol, the low cost of which is one of its attractive features. Methanol's most attractive feature, however, is that it can reduce by about 90 percent the vehicle emissions that form ozone, the most serious urban air pollutant. Like any alternative fuel, methanol has its critics. Yet much of the criticism is based on the use of "gasoline clone" vehicles that do not incorporate even the simplest design improvements that are made possible with the use of methanol. It is true, for example, that a given volume of methanol provides only about one half of the energy that gasoline and diesel fuels dot other things being equal, tile fuel tank would have to be somewhat larger and heavier. However, since methanol-fueled vehicles could be designed to be much more efficient than "gasoline clone" vehicles fueled with methanol, they would need comparatively less fuel. Vehicles incorporating only the simplest of the engine improvements that methanol makes feasible would still contribute to an immediate lessening of urban air pollution.

单选题{{B}}TEXT 1{{/B}} Survey results indicate that smoking and alcohol and marijuana use increased among residents of Manhattan during the 5～8 weeks after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center winch took place on September 11, 2001. Almost one-third of the nearly 1,000 persons interviewed reported an increased use of alcohol, marijuana, or cigarettes following the September 11th attacks. The largest increase was in alcohol use. About one-fourth of the respondents said they were drinking more alcohol in the weeks after September 11; about 10% reported an increase in smoking, and 3.2% said they had increased their use of marijuana. The investigators found survey participants by randomly dialing New York City phone numbers and screened potential respondents for Manhattan residents living in areas close to the World Trade Center. Interviews were conducted with 988 individuals between October 16 and November 15, 2001. Participants were asked about their cigarette smoking, alcohol drinking, and marijuana use habits before and after September 11. During the week prior to September 11, 2001, 22. 6% of the participants reported smoking cigarettes, 59. 1% drinking alcohol, and 4.4% using marijuana. After September 11th, 23.4% reported smoking cigarettes, 64. 4% drinking alcohol, and 5.7% smoking marijuana. Among those who smoked, almost 10% reported smoking at least an extra pack of cigarettes a week and among those who drank alcohol, more than 20% reported imbibing at least one extra drink a day. The researchers found that people who reported an increase in substance abuse were more likely to suffer from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and from depression. People who reported an increase in cigarette smoking or marijuana use were also more likely to have both PTSD and depression, while those who reported an increase in alcohol use were more likely to have depression only. Persons who were living closer to the World Trade Center were more likely to increase their cigarette smoking, but other factors such as being displaced from home, losing possessions during the attacks, or being involved in the rescue efforts were not consistently associated with increased substance use. Symptoms of panic attack were associated with an increase in the use of all substances. Increase in substance abuse did not differ significantly between men and women or among racial or ethnic groups. Demographic factors such as age, marital status, and income seemed to play a more critical role in determining if the events of September 11th led to an increase in substance use.

单选题The word "fiasco" (para. 1) most probably means______.

单选题Questions 4--7 Answer the following questions by using NO MORE THAN three words.

单选题We understand from the passage that most 18th-century sculpture was ______.

单选题During the period 1490～1979 the main progress mentioned in this passage was ______.