单选题 Questions 11 to 13 are based on a news report about a tornado which hit parts of Mexico. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 11 to 13.

单选题The meaning of the word "anomaly" in the second line of 4th paragraph is

单选题At dawn one morning in early May, Sean Cosgrove is stashing piles of maps, notes and photocopied documents in his gym bag before heading for West Milford High, a rural school in northernmost New Jersey. On his 30-minute commute, the young former investment banker tries to dream up new ways of lifting the monumentally forgettable Mexican War off the textbook page and into his students' imaginations. Can he invoke the storied memories of Robert E. Lee, who cut his first military exploits on the plains of Veracuz— or will he be met with thundering responses of "Who's Lee"? Should he raise James K. Polk out of the mystic chords of memory, and hope, for a nanosecond, that the kids will care about the first U. S president who stepped aside because he'd accomplished everything he wanted? Let's think some more. Well, there's always the Alamo. And hey, isn't that the teachers' parking lot up ahead? It's never an easy task. These big kids in big jeans and ball caps, come to his history classes believing that history is about as useful as Latin. Most are either unaware or unimpressed that the area's iron forges once produced artillery cannon for George Washington's army. Their sense of history orbits more narrowly around last month's adventures on "ShopRite Strip", the students' nickname for downtown West Milford, once a factory town, now a Magnet for middle-class vacationers. Cosgrove looks uncommonly glum as the thumbs through a stack of exams in the teachers' lounge. "I can't believe anyone in my class could think John Brown was the governor of Massachusetts," moans Cosgrove, 28, pointing to one student's test paper. He had to be sleeping for days on end. "The same morning, students in his college bound class could name only one U. S. Supreme Court justice—Clarence Thomas. All his wit, energy and beyond-the-textbook research can't completely reverse the students' poor preparation in history, their lack of general knowledge, their numbness to the outside world. It's the bane of history teachers at every level. When University of Vermont professor James Loewen asked his senior social-science majors who fought in the Vietnam War, 22 percent answered North and South Korea. Don't these kids even go to the movies?

单选题{{B}}Part A{{/B}} Read the following texts and answer the questions which accompany them by choosing A, B, C or D. {{B}}Text 1{{/B}} Text1 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 contracts with an American magazine under conditions forbidding any unauthorized disclosures about their private lives. Certain obvious qualifies are needed. Anyone who would be a 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 be 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. 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}} The fact that superior service can generate a competitive advantage for a company does not mean that every attempt at improving service will create such an advantage. Investments in service, like those in production and distribution, must be balanced against other types of investments on the basis of direct, tangible benefits such as cost reduction and increased revenues. If a company is already effectively on a par with its competitors because it provides service that avoids a damaging reputation and keeps customers from leaving at an unacceptable rate, then investment in higher service levels may be wasted, since service is a deciding factor for customers only in extreme situations. This truth was not apparent to managers of one regional bank, which failed to improve its competitive position despite its investment in reducing the time a customer had to wait for a teller. The bank managers did not recognize the level of customer inertia in the consumer banking industry that arises from the inconvenience of switching banks. Nor did they analyze their service improvement to determine whether it would attract new customers by producing a new standard of service that would excite customers or by proving difficult for competitors to copy. The 0nly merit of the improvement was that it could easily be described to customers.

单选题What does "bill on value" mean?

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} A scientist who does research in economic psychology and who wants to predict the way in which consumers will spend their money must study consumer behavior. He must obtain data both on resources of consumers and on the motives that tend to encourage or discourage money spending. If an economist was asked which of three groups borrow most--people with rising incomes, stable incomes or declining incomes--he would probably answer: those with declining incomes. Actually, in the year 1947～1950, the answer was people with rising incomes. People with declining incomes were next and people with stable incomes borrowed the least. This shows us that traditional assumptions about earning and spending are not always reliable. Another traditional assumption is that if people who have money expect prices to go up, they will hasten to buy. If they expect prices to go down, they will postpone buying. But research surveys have shown that this is not always true. The expectations of price increases may not stimulate buying. One typical attitude was expressed by the wife of a mechanic in. an interview at a time of rising prices. "In a few months, "she said, "we will have to pay more for meat and milk, we will have less to spend on other things." Her family had been planning to buy a new car but they postponed this purchase. Furthermore, the rise in prices that has already taken place may be resented and buyer's resistance may be evoked. This is shown by the following typical comment: "I just don't pay these prices, they are too high." The investigations mentioned above were carried out in America. Investigations conducted at the same time in Great Britain, however, yielded results more in agreement with traditional assumptions about saving and spending patterns. The condition most conductive to spending appears to be price stability. If prices have been stable and people consider that they are reasonable, they are likely to buy, thus, it appears that the common business policy of maintaining stable prices is based on a correct understanding of consumer psychology.

单选题 Questions 14 to 16 are based on the following talk on the colleges for the deaf in the US. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 14 to 16.

单选题On November 5th 1605, a band of English Catholic hotheads planned to detonate 36 barrels of gunpowder under the House of Lords. The scheme would have destroyed the nation by wiping out MPs, lords, bishops and the king. For sheer terrorist ambition, the plot remains unmatched. So why has this plan, and the capture, torture and public execution of the leading conspirators, been celebrated in Britain for the past four centuries? "God"s Secret Agents" suggests one reason why: anti-Catholic paranoia. The plot was the "popish" outrage that Protestants had expected and warned about for half a century. Such fears had resulted in fines, strict laws and show trials of Jesuit missionaries. It is as though Anglicanism—a vague and ambiguous creed, even in its early days—required an enemy against which to test itself. Before 1605, the threat from Catholicism was mostly imaginary. Attempts to re-establish the old religion in England were doomed to failure. Missionaries concentrated on the nobility, reckoning they would in turn convert the rest of the population, but this was to misunderstand English society. Worst, the missionaries received little support from Rome or Spain. The Gunpowder Plot was a desperate last heave by men who had already failed. It was also a gift to the authorities. The plot had been so wide-ranging that every pillar of the state—monarchy, church, nobility and Parliament—could interpret its survival as an act of divine providence. All had an interest in keeping the memory of Catholic perfidy alive. As one preacher put it in 1636, the day was "never to be cancelled out of the calendar, but to be written in every man"s heart for ever." But then, something rather odd happened. What began as a celebration of the status quo became the opposite. By the 18th century, Bonfire Night had become an excuse for violence and barely disguised extortion. Respectable citizens who tried to suppress it were burned in effigy for their pains, alongside the pope—a tradition that survives in the Sussex town of Lewes. This peculiar transformation is the subject of Gunpowder Plots, a book of essays. It is a mixed bag, but two stand out: an elegant account of the evolution of Bonfire Night by David Cressy, a historian, and a nerdy and fascinating treatise on gunpowder and fireworks by Brenda Buchanan. The latter contains an intriguing detail. A receipt dated November 1605 from the Board of Ordnance mentions that the gunpowder recovered from Parliament was "decaied"—i. e. moist. Perhaps the plot that Britons have celebrated all this time would have been rather a damp firework.

单选题 The estimates of the numbers of home-schooled children vary widely. The U. S. Department of Education estimates there are 250,000 to 350,000 home-schooled children in the country. Home school advocates put the number much higher—at about a million. Many public school advocates take a harsh attitude toward home-schoolers, perceiving their actions as the ultimate slap in the face for public education and a damaging move for the children. Home-schoolers harbor few kind words for public schools, charging shortcomings that range from lack of religious perspective in the curriculum to a herdlike approach to teaching children. Yet, as public school officials realize they stand little to gain by remaining hostile to the home-school population, and as home-schoolers realize they can reap benefits from public schools, these hard lines seem to be softening a bit. Public schools and home-schoolers have moved closer to tolerance and, in some cases, even cooperation. Says John Marshall, an education official, "We are becoming relatively tolerant of home-schoolers. The idea is, 'Let's give the kids access to public school so they'll see it's not as terrible as they've been told, and they'll want to come back.'" Perhaps, but don't count on it, say home-school advocates. Home-schoolers oppose the system because they have strong convictions that their approach to education—whether fueled by religious enthusiasm or the individual child's interests and natural pace—is best. "The bulk of home-schoolers just want to be left alone," says Enge Cannon, associate director of the National Center For Home Education. She says home-schoolers choose that path for a variety of reasons, but religion plays a role 85% of the time. Professor Van Galen breaks home-schoolers into two groups. Some home-schoolers want their children to learn not only traditional subject matters but also "strict religious doctrine and a conservative political and social perspective. Not incidentally, they also want their children to learn—both intellectually and emotionally—that family is the most important institution in society." Other home-schoolers contend "not so much that the schools teach heresy, but that, schools teach whatever they teach inappropriately," Van Galen writes. "These parents are highly independent and strive to 'take responsibility' for their own lives within a society that they define as bureaucratic and inefficient."

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} Telegrams have just passed into history in America, following the announcement by Western Union, once the colossus of the industry, that it was discontinuing its telegram service at the end of January. Yet in a sense, the technology pioneered by Samuel Morse has been reborn with a modern twist, in the form of text messages sent between mobile phones. For years, foreigners have wondered why Americans, usually at the vanguard of technological adoption, were so reluctant to embrace texting. But now they have adopted the technology with enthusiasm. What happened? America's apathy towards texting was easy to explain. Voice calls on mobile phones are cheaper than in other countries, which gives cost-conscious users less incentive to send texts instead; several different and incompatible wireless technologies are in use, which made sending messages from one network to another unreliable or impossible; and texting was often an additional service that subscribers had to sign up for. As a result, the number of messages sent per subscriber per month was just over seven in December 2002, compared with a global average of around 30. But things have since changed, with that figure rising to 13 in December 2003, 26 in December 2004, and 38 in June 2005, the most recent date for which figures are available from the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association, an industry body. So America has now overtaken Germany, Italy and France in its enthusiasm for texting. There are several reasons for this. "We've had that penetration of the youth market," says Brian Modoff, an analyst at Deutsche Bank. "We didn't have that until a couple of years ago." Family calling plans and other new tariffs have put phones in the hands of more young people, who are more likely to adopt texting. There have also been technical changes: GSM, the text-friendly wireless technology used in Europe, has become far more widespread in America as operators have switched customers to it from older technologies, notes John Tysoe of The Mobile World, a consultancy. Interconnections between netwoks have improved too. But perhaps the most surprising factor is the role of reality television—and in particular, "American Idol", a talent show in which viewers phone in to vote for competing singers. In 2004, 13.5 million viewers cast votes by text messages—nearly half of them using the technology for the first time. Last year the number of votes was 41.5 million. "That upward arc is a fair indicator for the acceleration in growth of texting in general," says Mark Siegel of Cingular, America's biggest mobile operator. Even when viewers do not vote by text themselves, such programmes raise awareness of texting in general, says Mr. Modoff. Whatever you think about the music, "American Idol" has undoubtedly helped Americans to discover a valuable new talent.

单选题Which of the following works was written by Robert Browning? [A] My Last Duchess [B] David CopperfieId [C] An Ideal Husband [D] Under the Greenwood Tree

单选题Which of the following does not belong to the Island of Great Britain? A. England B. Scotland C. Wales D. Ireland

单选题{{B}}Text 1{{/B}} The Stone age, the Iron age. Entire epochs have been named for materials. So what to name the decades ahead? The choice will be tough. Welcome to the age of superstuff. Material science—once the least sexy technology—is bursting with new, practical discoveries led by superconducting ceramics that may revolutionize electronics. But superconductors are just part of the picture: from houses and cars to cook pots and artificial teeth, the world will sometime be made of different staff. Exotic plastics, glass and ceramics will shape the future just as surely as have genetic engineering and computer science. The key to the new materials is researchers' increasing ability to manipulate substances at the molecular level. Ceramics, for instance, have long been limited by their brittleness. But by minimizing the microscopic imperfections that cause it, scientists are making far stronger ceramics that still retain such qualities as hardness and beat resistance. Ford Motor Co. now uses ceramic tools to cut steel. A firm called Kyocera has created a line of ceramic scissors and knives that stay sharp for years and never rust or corrode. A similar transformation has overtaken plastics. High-strength polymers now form bridges, iceskating rinks and helicopter rotors. And one new plastic that generates electricity when vibrated or pushed is used in electric guitars, touch sensors for robot hands and karate jackets that automatically record each punch and chop. Even plastic litter, which once threatened to permanently blot the landscape, has proved amenable to molecular tinkering. Several manufacturers now make biodegradable forms; some plastic six-pack rings for example, gradually decompose when exposed to sunlight. Researchers are developing ways to make plastics as recyclable as metal or glass. What's more, composites—plastic reinforced with fibres of graphite or other compounds—made the round-the-world flight of tile voyager possible and have even been proved in combat: a helmet saved all infantryman's life by deflecting two bullets in the Grenada invasion. Some advanced materials are old standard with a new twist. The newest fiberoptic cables that carry telephone calls crass-country are made of glass so transparent that a piece of 100 miles thick is clearer than a standard window pane. But new materials have no impact until they are made into products. And that transition could prove difficult, for switching requires lengthy research and investment. It can be said a timer handle on how to move to commercialization will determine tile success or failure of a country in the coming future.

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单选题Questions 11 to 13 are based on the following radio program "Science around Us". You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 11 to 13.

单选题 {{B}} Questions 14 to 16 are based on a talk on pruritus, so called "severe itching"—why and how body parts itch. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 14 to 16.{{/B}}

单选题Text 2 You'd think that if the San Andreas Fault went to the trouble of having a perfectly good earthquake, the folks on the US West Coast might at least notice. A new study reveals, however, that in 1992, what should have been a China-smashing 4.8 Richter-scale quake hit central California, and yet nobody felt a thing. The explanation for the odd shadow-quake was published last week in the journal Nature and may help improve science's understanding of earthquakes in general. According to Alan T. Linda, a geophysicist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington and the study's leader, what makes seismic events so destructive is not just that the earth moves but the speed with which it does so. In many quakes the earth's surface movement that leads to shaking takes only seconds to unfold, sending energy exploding in all directions. But recent analysis of data from strain gauges along the San Andreas Fault reveals that four years ago, a skip occurred that took a week to play out. Such slow sliding almost eliminates an earthquake's quaking. Exactly what determines the speed with which the earth's plates move is unclear, but scientists have some ideas. "The fault material may play a role," Linda says, "Rock with holes containing water can move more smoothly than other rock. The pressure the plates are under can make a difference too: the bigher the stress, the likelier the fault will fail suddenly." Linda's work may never help seismologists determine which type of temblor is likely to strike which region, but he still believes the research has value. There may be no better way of understanding destructive quakes, he feels, than to learn what makes them less destructive.

单选题There is a section of the Western Atlantic, off the southeast coast of the United States, forming what has been termed a triangle, extending from Bermuda in the north to southern Florida, and then east to a point through the Bahamas to about 40~ west longitude and then back again to Bermuda. This area occupies a disturbing and almost unbelievable place in the world's catalogue of unexplained mysteries. This is usually referred to as the Bermuda Triangle, where more than 100 planes and ships have literally vanished into thin air, most of them since 1945, and where more than 1,000 lives have been lost in the past twenty-six years, without a single body or even a piece of wreckage from the vanishing planes or ships have been found. Disappearances continue to occur with apparently increasing frequency, in spite of the fact that the seaways and airways are today more traveled, searches are more thorough, and record's are more carefully kept. Investigators of the Bermuda Triangle have long noted the existence of another mystery area in the world's oceans, southeast of Japan, with a record and reputation indicative of special danger to ships and planes. Whether the ships have been lost from underwater volcanoes or sudden tidal waves, this area, often called the Devil's Sea, enjoys an even more sinister reputation than the Bermuda Triangle in that the Japanese authorities have proclaimed it a danger zone. The Devil's Sea had long been dreaded by fishermen, who believed it was inhabited by devils, demons, and monsters which seized the ships of the unwary. Aircraft and boats had disappeared in the area over a period of many years, but during the time when Japan was at peace, nine modern ships disappeared in the period of 1950 to 1954, with crews totaling several hundred persons, in circumstances characteristic (extensive air-sea searches, lack of wreckage or oil slicks) of the happenings in the Bermuda Triangle. The Bermuda Triangle and the Devil's Sea share a striking coincidence. The Bermuda Triangle includes almost at its western terminus, longitude 80~ west, a line where true north and magnetic north become aligned with no compass variation to be calculated. And this same 80~ W changes its designation when it passes the poles, becoming 150~ E. From the North Pole south, it continues on, passing east of Japan, and crosses the middle of the Devil's Sea. At this point in the center of the Devil's Sea, a compass needle will also point to true north and magnetic north at the same time, just as it does at the western border of the Bermuda Triangle on the other side of the world. The unexplained losses in this Japanese equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle were instrumental in inspiring a governmentsponsored investigation of the area, which took place in 1955. This expedition, with scientists taking data as their ship, the Kaiyo Maru No.5, cruised the Devil's Sea, ended on a rather spectacular note -the survey ship suddenly vanished with its crew and the investigating scientists!