阅读理解READING PASSAGE 2 Oxytocin The positive and negative effects of the chemical known as the love hormone A Oxytocin is a chemical, a hormone produced in the pituitary gland in the brain

阅读理解READING PASSAGE 1 Research using twins To biomedical researchers all over the world, twins offer a precious opportunity to untangle the influence of genes and the environment - of nature and nurture

阅读理解WEST THAMES COLLEGE SERVICES FOR STUDENTS A As a full-time student at West Thames College you will have your own Personal Mentor who will see you each week to guide you through your studies, and discuss any problems which may arise. We take a cooperative approach to the assessment of your work and encourage you to contribute to discussion. B This service provides specialist assistance and courses for those who need help to improve their writing, oral and numeracy skills for the successful completion of their college course. Help with basic skills is also available. C This service is available to anyone who is undecided as to which course to follow. It is very much a service for the individual, whatever your age, helping you to select the best option to suit your circumstances. The service includes educational advice, guidance and support, including a facility for accrediting your previous experience — the Accreditation of Prior Learning (APL). The Admissions Office is open Monday to Friday 9. 00 am to 5. 00 pm. All interviews are confidential and conducted in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere. Evening appointments are available on request. D The College Bookshop stocks a wide range of books, covering aspects of all courses, together with a good selection of stationery. It also supplies stamps, phone cards, blank videos supplies stamps, phone cards, blank videos and computer disks. The shop is open at times specified in the Student Handbook in the mornings, afternoons and evenings. E When students are weary from study and want the chance to relax and enjoy themselves with friends, they can participate in a number of recreational activities. Depending on demand, we offer a range of sporting activities including football, badminton, basketball, table tennis, volleyball, weight training and aerobics. For the non-sporting students we offer a debating society, video club, hair and beauty sessions, as well as a range of creative activities. Suggestions for activities from students are always welcome. F This confidential service is available if you have practical or personal difficulties during your course of study, whether of a financial or personal nature. Our Student Advisors can help you directly or put you in touch with someone else who can give you the help you need. G The College Nurses are there for general medical advice and for treatment of illness or injury. All visits are confidential. First aid boxes and fully-trained First Aiders are also on hand at various locations around the college. H West London employers have a permanent base in the center of college, with access to a database of more than 24000 jobs available locally and in Central London. They will also help you with job applications and interview techniques. Look at the West Thames College''s Services for Students on the following page. Each paragraph A~H describes a different service provided by the college. Questions 21 - 26 From the list below (i-xi) choose the most suitable summaries for paragraphs A, C and E-H. Write the appropriate numbers (i-xi) in boxes 21-26 on your answer sheet. There are more summaries than paragraphs, so you will not use them all. i A shop for the books and stationery needed to study ii Counselling and welfare willing to listen, offer advice or arrange a referral iii An Examinations Office arranging exams and issuing certificates iv A Registrar''s Office handing all fee payments and related enquiries v A Medical Service offering on-site assistance with health-related problems vi A tutorial system for regular one-to-one guidance, support and feedback vii Careers Advice helping students into employment viii An Admissions Service providing assistance in choosing and applying for higher education courses ix A Student Union representing students on college committees x Clubs and societies for students free-time xi A Learning Support Service supporting, presenting information and handling numbers

阅读理解READING PASSAGE 2 SAVING THE SOIL More than a third of the Earths top layer is at risk

阅读理解Efforts to save a special bird the spoon -billed sandpiper Last year an international team of ornithologists devised a bold plan to rescue one of the worlcTs rarest birds

阅读理解Read the text below and answer Questions

阅读理解What''s good for the poor is good for America Part 1 Although its prosperity depends on a worldwide network of trade, finance and technology, the United States currently treats the rest of the world, and especially the developing world, as if it barely exists. Much of the poorer world is in turmoil, caught in a vicious circle of disease, poverty and political instability. Large-scale financial and scientific help from the rich nations is an investment worth making, not only for humanitarian reasons, but also because even remote countries in turmoil become outposts of disorder for the rest of the world. The biggest priority of next week''s Genoa Summit should be for the rich countries, above all the United States, to get serious about contributing to global economic development. The principal goal of foreign policy is now almost containment''s opposite: helping to ensure that all parts of the world, including the poorest, are integrated into global economic and ecological networks in mutually beneficial ways. Unfortunately, American presidents in recent times have not acknowledged that this goal requires massive foreign-policy investments. America''s foreign aid is 0.1% of GDP, a derisory shadow of what it used to be, and roughly one-third of the European level. Following America''s lead, most of the large economies have allowed their own foreign-assistance programmes to shrink since the end of the cold war. Even when the United States reaped a peace dividend of more than 2% of GDP in reduced defence spending after 1990, it cut, rather than increased, foreign-assistance spending as a share of national income. Part 2 The Bush administration and Congress must find their way to a renewal of American foreign policy and the sensible international investments that will be needed to back it up. The president''s core team knows the world and its risks. Last year''s Meltzer Commission, on which I served, demonstrated that there could be a bipartisan consensus on the need for much more American help for the poorest countries. The new chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Joseph Biden, is ideally suited by knowledge and temperament to help lead a bipartisan foreign-policy effort with the Bush administration. Here are some guidelines for investing in foreign policy in today''s global economy. First, we must identify the areas where money can really make a difference. Keenest attention should be paid to the world''s poorest regions, the ones most likely to fall prey to the vicious circle of poverty, disease and state collapse. Remarkably, only around one-sixth of American aid is currently directed to the 48 least-developed countries, most of which are in Africa. Help for these countries should come in two ways: as direct support for national programmes to fight disease, malnutrition and illiteracy, when those programmes make sense and are honestly administered; and through programmes to develop new technologies to overcome barriers to long-term economic development. Second, the United States should end its decade-long war against the United Nations agencies. Specialised organisations such as the World Health Organisation, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, UNAIDS and the United Nations Development Programme need to be bolstered with more money and administrative reforms, not squeezed financially to the point of collapse. These agencies would be greatly strengthened by closer and properly financed links with America''s own top-rank institutions, such as the National Institutes of Health and the Centres for Disease Control. Third, and surely most important, the Bush administration must explain to Americans that a big increase in budgetary outlays on behalf of economic development in the world''s poorest and most unstable regions is an investment in core American interests and values. All serious professional estimates show that the fight against AIDS in the developing countries will require at least $ 2 billion-3 billion a year from the United States government for the global fund-rather more than the $ 200 million so far promised. External assistance for Africa will require not the current miserly $ 1 billion from America, but a several-fold increase, if profound problems have a chance of being overcome. Sub-Saharan Africa, neglected by the United States, has routinely received a sum equivalent to around one-sixth of the American aid given to the Middle East. Part 3 Fifty years ago a soldier-statesman, General George Marshall, then secretary of state, explained to Americans that urgent financial support for Europe would stabilize societies destroyed by the second world war and the post-war economic crises. Such aid would unleash Europe''s potential for recovery to everyone''s mutual benefit. His vision was exactly on the mark. Winston Churchill called the resulting Marshall Plan "the most unsordid act in history". The United States once again has a soldier-statesman, Colin Powell, as secretary of state. A new Powell Plan to mobilize American technology and finances, both public and private, on behalf of the economic development of the world''s poor countries would be a fitting follow-up to the Marshall Plan. The world, and America, would be enormously safer and more prosperous as a Result. Questions 31 - 33 Below is a list of headings, choose the most suitable choices for parts (1-4) and write the appropriate numbers (i-iv) on your answer sheet. Note: There are more headings than you need so you will not use all of them and you may use any heading more than once. List of heading i. Jeffrey Sachs on where Uncle Sam should be more generous, and the reason ii. the United States should end its decade-long war against the United Nations agencies iii. Re-inventing foreign aid v. A Powell Plan

阅读理解Reading Passage 2 Title: Public Art Program: research updates Question types: list of heading; 人名理论matching; summary 文章内容回顾 关于art的好处、社会作用、应该鼓励民众参与art等。 题型难度分析 Summary对于程度好的学生而言是比较简单的。做这样的题型可以以句子为单位进行阅读，进行“空格类型判断”、“定位词选择”、“方向判断”。这种题型一般是按照行文顺序出题的，这对我们做题是比较方便的。 题型技巧分析 Heading题考查学生对段落大致含义的把握能力，虽然出题人可能希望我们好好的读懂全段，但是考生未必有这样的能力。我们可以根据一些特定的词语在段落中寻找主题句的出现位置： 1. 在段落开头有举例结构的地方往往说明该段的主题句在举例结构之前。 2. 在段落中间有比较明显的转折结构，那么转折后的内容有可能是段落的重点内容。 3. 在段末有表示结果的词语，那么该句句子有可能是段落的主题句。 常见的段落结构有：总分结构；对比结构；并列结构；分总结构。总分结构还是占大多数的。

阅读理解READING PASSAGE 1 The coconut palm For millennia, the coconut has been central to the lives of Polynesian and Asian peoples

阅读理解The lessons of state failure Traditional diplomacy deals with risks of conflict between nation-states. These risks are of course still present, but a more pervasive danger is that states will simply collapse. Of a dozen or so conflicts in Africa in recent years, few, if any, have involved cross-border aggression. Instead, bankrupt and impoverished states have imploded, the vacuum filled not by regimes with newly consolidated power but by brutal violence engulfing civilians. The disaster then fans out to neighboring countries, and eventually much farther a field. A special "task force on state failure" set up by America''s CIA has found that three variables are most predictive of state stability or instability: the openness of the economy; democracy; and infant mortality. In sub-Saharan Africa, where much of the population lives on the edge of subsistence, poverty and slow economic growth, or outright decline, increased the likelihood of future state collapse, thereby trapping the countries in a vicious circle of poverty and political instability. Rich countries, on the other hand, tend to maintain political stability which, in turn, promotes further economic development. When countries were classified in 1990 by their status in the United Nations Human Development Index (an index of income, literacy and health), high-development countries achieved robust and stable economic growth during 1990-98, with average growth rates of around 2. 3% a year and with 35 out of 36 countries enjoying rising living standards. Middle-development countries achieved a slightly lower growth rate, 1. 9% a year, but 7 out of 34 countries experienced outright declines in living standards. The poorest countries averaged no economic growth at all, with 15 out of 39 experiencing falling living standards. The flip-side to the poverty trap, however, is that the gains of development tend to be sustained, once countries break through to sufficient levels of income, health and literacy. Conservatives in America often ask why it matters if an impoverished country collapses. The answer is that, aside from humanitarian concerns, crises in such far away places often suck the United States into crisis as well. Since 1960, America has been dragged into military conflicts in Cuba, Thailand, Laos, Congo, Vietnam, the Dominican Republic, Cambodia, Cyprus, Lebanon, Zaire, El Salvador, Libya, Lebanon, Honduras, Nicaragua, Chad, Liberia, Bosnia, Somalia and, more recently, Kosovo and Colombia. State failures, or even milder state instability, have also undermined American and global interests through globally transmitted financial crises, drug-trafficking, money-laundering, terrorism, the spread of diseases such as AIDS and mass refugee flows. On the positive side, sustained economic development would create new and potentially large gains from trade, as well as much-needed cooperation in science and culture. Even when a problem is correctly identified, there is a stunning disconnect between risk and action in America''s foreign economic policy. The global AIDS epidemic, for example, has recently and wisely been identified as a risk to the security of the United States. What action has been taken? President George Bush has called upon Americans to give just $ 200 million, or 70 cents each, to the new global fund to fight the disease. The failure to make even basic investments in foreign policy has been pervasive, and the examples are legion. Eleven years ago, the last prime minister of unified Yugoslavia, Ante Markovic, launched a last-ditch plan for economic stabilization. He appealed to Europe and the United States for a reduction in debt-servicing and other modest financial support, but was turned down by the creditor governments. Economic stabilisation was undermined, and this helped Slobodan Milosovic to get the upper hand. The rest, as they say, is history. In the past two years America and European countries have made the same mistake in Nigeria, an impoverished and unstable country emerging from years of corrupt despotism. Although Nigeria''s oil earnings, net of production costs and income to foreign oil companies, amount to around only $ 90 per Nigerian a year, the United States and Europe continue to prevaricate over urgently needed debt-reduction because the oil earnings are easy to squeeze for debt-service payments. The new democratic regime of President Olesegun Obasanjo is put at risk, and Libya''s leader, Muammar Qaddafi, does not miss a chance to inflame matters in Nigeria''s Islamic northern states. Area after area of neglect can be catalogued, from the strife-torn Andes to regions around the world undermined by climate change. Through all of it, the United States barely lifts a finger. It somehow thinks that sending the impoverished and unstable governments down Pennsylvania Avenue to get loans from the IMF and the World Bank will do the job, but even some staff of those organisations now publicly acknowledge that they have failed: making loans when grants are needed, imposing excessive austerity by collecting rather than canceling debts, and failing to find partner-institutions with the scientific expertise to tackle underlying problems of disease, low food production, climatic stress and environmental degradation.

阅读理解A serious contest A Like the combatants in a beat-me-up video game, the makers of videogames consoles do battle in orderly rounds, one of which occurs every five or six years. The current round began in 2000, when Sony launched PlayStation 2. In 2001 Nintendo, the firm that once ruled the industry, launched the Game Cube, and Microsoft made its first foray into the cut-throat market with the Xbox. Four years on, Sony is the clear winner, with sales of 70 million consoles, followed by Microsoft with 14 million and Nintendo with 13 million. Next week, the industry''s biggest trade show, E3, which takes place in Los Angeles, will provide the first glimpses of the next round. It is expected to be a brutal two-way fight. For, after a difficult start, Microsoft has now established itself as Sony''s main rival, and is gaining momentum. Most important, it has won the crucial support of games publishers, says Nick Gibson of Games Investor, a consultancy. That means Microsoft will "pretty much be neck and neck with Sony" in the next round. Nintendo, by contrast, has been less successful at keeping publishers on board, and has survived thanks only to the strength of its in-house software business. B Xbox Live, Microsoft''s subscription-based online-gaming service, has also been well received. It provides features, such as global player rankings, that Sony cannot match. And although online gaming is still a minority sport, it is expected to be far more significant in the next round, as broadband connections and wireless home networks become more widespread. By signing up customers for Xbox Live now, Microsoft hopes to retain their loyalty into the next round. But perhaps cleverest of all is Microsoft''s new software-development platform for games, called XNA, a set of software tools that can be used to write games for PCs, Xbox and the forthcoming Xbox 2. According to Robbie Bach, Microsoft''s "chief Xbox officer", insulating programmers from the underlying complexity of the console hardware "creates huge cost efficiency and flexibility. " While Microsoft will probably not unveil the Xbox 2 at E3, says P.J. McNealy, an analyst at American Technology Research, the XNA tools will enable the firm to demonstrate the kind of things that will be possible on Xbox 2 when it appears. C The contrast with Sony is striking. While Microsoft is focusing on software, Sony is emphasizing hardware innovation for its PlayStation 3. Its plan, which it has yet to describe fully, is to use a new kind of chip, called Cell, as the basis for both the PlayStation 3 and its consumer-electronics devices, such as DVD players. With multiple Cell chips working in parallel, the PlayStation 3 will be a powerful machine. But its radical new architecture will require games programmers to start from scratch. In the meantime, Sony is trying to keep developers focused on the PlayStation 2. D Microsoft senses an opportunity. It is widely expected to steal a march on Sony by launching the Xbox 2 towards the end of next year, kicking off the next round before Sony is ready. "Microsoft has taken the gloves off," says Mr. McNealy. The PlayStation 3 is not expected until early 2006, and even then only in Japan; analysts do not expect the worldwide launch until late 2006. (Nintendo''s successor to the Game Cube is also expected in 2006.) Last time around, Sony''s 18-month head start and Microsoft''s status as the industry''s newcomer meant that the Xbox never had a chance of catching up with PlayStation 2; it was always going to be just a trial run for Microsoft. But now Sony and Microsoft look evenly matched — and the battle can begin in earnest. Questions 17-20 Below is a list of headings, choose the most suitable choices for parts (A~D) and write the appropriate numbers (i-v) on your answer sheet. NB: There are more headings than you need so you will not use all of them and you may use any heading more than once. List of Heading i. Sony focus on hardware innovation ii. Microsoft''s offensive iii. Who will win in the future? iv. furious competition in video-game consoles v. Nintendo''s failure in competition

阅读理解READING PASSAGE 3 Artificial artists Can computers really create works of art? The Painting Fool is one of a growing number of computer programs which, so their makers claim, possess creative talents

阅读理解LOSING: THE VIRUS In a wonderful 1943 novel, "I Am Thinking of My Darling," by Vincent McHugh, New York City is invaded by a previously unknown tropical virus that quickly grows to epidemic proportions and afflicts the entire population. The hero is a young city official, who works day and night to control the thing, but then he himself is infected and becomes a victim. He stops work and spends his time making love. That''s the virus; all the folks in town — cops and schoolteachers, subway motormen and lawyers and delicatessen owners and dental hygienists and bail bondsmen — forget whatever they''re doing and start doing it, right out in the open. Everybody is in love. A huge celebratory parade is planned — all hands hurry to Fifth Avenue, with accompanying balloons and jazz bands, but in couples, so they can keep up the pairing and partying. Then the weather shifts, in mid-parade, with a cold snap blowing in from the west. The virus dies — it''s run its course—and the happy men and women look at each other with a resumed seriousness and go home. It''s over. This is pretty much what it was like up until the middle of last week, when the Yankees, who have been so single-minded about winning, were caught up in losing instead. For once, it didn''t feel like their own doing, exactly, because almost nobody could hit the ball anymore or catch it much or always throw it to the right place; something had come over them. By Tuesday, the Bronx Steinbrenners had dropped four in a row and seven out of their last ten. They''d lost three out of four games to the hated and feared Red Sox, up at Fenway Park, and a few days later were swept by the Bosox in a weekend series back at Yankee Stadium, scoring only four runs in three games. The Bombers'' team batting average stood at . 217, the lowest in the league, and they had committed a league-worst nineteen errors. They were tied for third in their five-team division, four and a half behind the Red Sox—not a fatal handicap at this early stage of things but not at all what they or anyone else in the world had expected. This was miserable or delightful, depending on where your loyalties lay, but most of all it was weird. It was glorious. The Yankees, as we know, have finished first in the American League East for the past six years, and have played in the post-season for the past nine, picking up four World Championships along the way. They''ve won thirty-nine pennants in all and twenty-six World Championships. A new Yankees promotion calls this the greatest record in all team sports, but what it also means, as every Yankee executive and coach and player and nine-year-old rooter knows, is "Win or Else. " To this end, the 2004 Yankees have amassed a record hundred-and-eighty-million-dollar payroll — more than the combined salaries of the Devil Rays, the Indians, the Tigers, and the Royals — and picked up last year''s A. L. Most Valuable Player , Alex Rodriguez, to play third base. He can''t play shortstop, his accustomed position, because the Yanks'' captain and perennial favorite, Derek Jeter, holds prior lease on the property. They brought in two expensive new pitchers to replace the departed Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte. They did their homework, in short, and entered the long examination period of the regular season with the smug assurance of another A. There was no end of indignation and irritation, to be sure -- especially in Boston, where the powerful and almost great 2003 Red Sox team had fallen victim to the Yankees once again last fall, after a killing eleventh-inning home run in the final League Championship game — but Yankee spending and Bosox burning are standard ingredients of contemporary ball. Confirmation replaces expectation at these levels of sport, and fun feels prearranged. The Yankees'' losing streak suspended all this, for a while at least, and what was refreshing about it was that the Yankees were suddenly so bad, at the plate and a field, that they seemed removed from the games, spooked or laid low not by the opposing pitcher or sluggers but by some cosmic change of terms. They were playing in a cartoon or on an asteroid landscape. Pitchers kept making throwing errors, and catcher Jorge Posada dropped or misplayed three foul balls in a single game. Bernie Williams (two hits for his last twenty-six at-bats) and Derek Jeter (oh for twenty-one, oh for twenty-five, oh for twenty-eight, etc. , as the games ticked by) and Jason Giambi (six for forty-two), among others, stepped up to the plate as if entering Jell or a time warp and shortly sat down again. The Yankees never panicked or blew up, and manager Joe Torre, speaking one day about Williams, seemed to sum it all up when he said, "He''s caught up in what everyone else is caught up in, and that''s trying to help the club do something it''s had trouble doing.... I can''t blame anybody. " Red Sox fans and local Yankee haters exulted but also shook their heads: geez, what''s wrong with those guys? You could blame injuries or age (the Yanks are the oldest team in the majors) or jet lag from the season — opening series against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays that was played in Tokyo, but it was the beautiful and eloquent unpredictability of baseball itself that was making this happen: the sport once again showing us that statistical unlikelihood can come in bursts and bunches, a virus from nowhere, and for a time sever the game and its players from all expectation. Think of Mel Gibson taking up the harp, President Bush being late for a Cabinet meeting while he finishes "The Ambassadors": this was better. The end of the losing arrived in a Yankee game against Oakland, when the Pinstripes, down by 8-4 in the eighth inning, were granted a succession of feeble singles, nubbed infield squigglers, three walks, and a two-run double, good for six runs and, in time, the win. The double, by pinch-hitter Ruben Sierra, curved sharply toward foul ground in deep left field but then changed its mind and hit the line instead — a big hit, and a smile at last from the great and enigmatically difficult game. The Yanks won again the next two nights, resuming their 2004"campaign with a three-game sweep. Derek Jeter was the last to leave the isolation ward of the April epidemic. Hitless in his previous thirty-two at-bats, he led off the Yankees'' first inning of the Oakland finale by smashing Barry Zito''s first pitch deep into the left-field stands, circled the bases, and touched home, restored at last to the humdrum.

阅读理解Question 10-11 　　Answer the questions below using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer. 　　10. What is the next step of the UCL team‘s study?

阅读理解READING PASSAGE 3 MAKING THE MOST OF TRENDS Experts from Harvard Business School give advice to managers Most managers can identify the major trends of the day

阅读理解Read the text below and answer Questions Tips for giving an effective business presentation Preparation Get someone else to evaluate your performance and highlight your best skills

阅读理解READING PASSAGE 1 THE STORY OF SILK The history of the worlds most luxurious fabric, from ancient China to the present day Silk is a fine, smooth material produced from the cocoons - soft protective shells - that are made by mulberry silkworms (insect larvae)

阅读理解The road to invention Big companies have a big problem with innovation. This was most vividly described by Clayton Christensen, a Harvard Business School professor, in his book, "The Innovator''s Dilemma" (Harvard Business School Press, 1997). Few conversations about innovation take place without reference to this influential work. The Oxford English Dictionary defines innovation as "making changes to something established". Invention, by contrast, is the act of "coming upon or finding: discovery". Whereas inventors stumble across or make new things, "innovators try to change the status quo," says Bhaskar Chakravorti of the Monitor Group, another consulting firm, "which is why markets resist them. " Innovations frequently disrupt the way that companies do things (and may have been doing them for years). It is not just markets that resist innovation. Michael Hammer, co-author of another important business book ("Re-engineering the Corporation", HarperCollins) quotes the example of a PC-maker that set out to imitate Dell''s famous "Build-to-Order" system of computer assembly. The company found that its attempts were frustrated not just by its head of manufacturing, who feared it would lead to most of his demesne, including his job, being outsourced, but also by the head of marketing, who did not want to upset his existing retail outlets. So the innovative proposal got nowhere. Dell continued to dominate the business. Mr. Christensen described how "disruptive innovation" — simpler, cheaper and more convenient products that seriously upset the status quo — can herald the rapid downfall of well-established and successful businesses. This, he argues, is because most organizations are designed to grow through "sustaining innovations"-the sort, like Gillette''s vibrating razor, that do no more than improve on existing products for existing markets. When they are hit by a disruptive innovation — as IBM was by the invention of the personal computer and as numerous national airlines have been by low-cost carriers — they are in danger of being blasted out of their market. This message found a ready audience, coming as it did just as giant businesses from banking to retailing, and from insurance to auction houses, were being told that some as-yet-unformed dotcom was about to knock them off their pedestal.

阅读理解In search of an election Beppe Severgnini, an Italian correspondent and a columnist, finds some people quite enjoying the campaign, and some quite unaware of it. When it opened in 1914, the Adelphi was one of the greatest hotels in the world. With solid marble walls, indoor swimming pool, full central heating in all rooms, it was Liverpool''s arrival and departure point for passengers on the great liners to America. People are busy, around here, tonight. There is the graduation ball for Hope University , a convention of church — bell players and a Welsh football team that decided there was no point in waiting for the match in order to celebrate, so they sing and hug each other in the lobby. Not only are these people ignorant of Harold Wilson''s sojourn in the hotel, but most seem oblivious to the fact that a general election is only days away. The last time I was in Liverpool, Derek Hatton''s Trotskyite militants were running the city council in the 1980s. Mr Hatton, for all his faults, inflamed Liverpudlians, who love a good argument. "Souses are like Neapolitans. Great sense of humour, laid-back attitude, maybe not the hardest-working people in the world," says Alberto Bertali, an Italian who runs a big factory making household appliances, loves the city and wouldn''t want to live anywhere else. A real Neapolitan-Alfredo Oliva, an architect who moved to Liverpool "per amore" and now walks around camouflaged in an Italian flag as the cook of the Adelphi''s pizzeria-disagrees. "Until today, I didn''t even know there was an election coming up. In Naples, and all over Italy, people are at each other''s throat, before a big vote. That''s good. That''s how you make up your mind. " Maybe people in this city have made up their minds already, and that''s why they don''t bother with politics. They prefer to walk around in the drizzle, pretending it is spring. Boys in bright red Liverpool FC jerseys , girls in what looks like their underwear, but turns out to be an evening dress. Their Labour MPs enjoy huge majorities. Jane Kennedy, in Liverpool Weavertree, has almost 20,000. Peter Kilfoyle , in inner-city Liverpool Walton (home of the two football clubs, Everton and Liverpool), 27,000. Louise Ellman , in Liverpool Riverside, which includes poor and volatile Tox-teth, 22,000. Bob Wareing , in Liverpool West Derby, 26,000. Stan Jones, the organiser for the local Labour Party, asks whom I would like to meet. I go for Ms Ellman and Mr. Wareing. Ms Ellman is a nice lady with piercing green eyes, and no illusion. Her constituency has one of the lowest turnouts in the country. "Young people are not interested, they don''t feel connected. Four out of five are not going to vote. Older people talk to me about their everyday problems. One lady told me: ''If you don''t fix my shower, I won''t vote for you''. " Wally Edwards, a former aide to Harold Wilson, is expecting me. He is happy to talk about his days in the navy, and his encounter with the future prime minister, in 1945, in the Shefton Arms pub. He tells me he''s got two daughters married to Italians, who live in Tuscany. "What do they think about Silvio Berlusconi becoming prime minister?" I ask. "Not happy," Wally says. "But I told them: ''Come on, girls. At least you had got a couple of nice hammers-and-sickles on your Italian ballot papers. '' Some working-class element, I mean. " Mr. Edwards says he "is not much of a Blairite". But he works for the common cause. This morning, he must brief a group of volunteers who are about to deliver leaflets in the area. They leave the Labour Club with a shoulder bag that says: "Taking the Lead in Europe". I ask them if Europe is a big issue, in this campaign. "No, it isn''t. But the bags were left over from the European election. " While we drive, they are in a good mood. "You seem to enjoy putting leaflets into letter-boxes," I say. They laugh: "It is not so much putting ours in that we like. It is taking the Lib Dems'' out. You know, sometimes they stick out. " Good, I think. Four pensioners, two children. At least six people in Britain are having fun in this election campaign. Questions 14-17 Who don''t bother with politics and prefer to walk around in the drizzle? 14.___________________ 15.___________________ 16.___________________ 17.___________________

阅读理解Reading Passage 3 Title: What Counts as Knowledge? Question types: 表格类summary; 段落细节matching(8) 文章内容回顾 内容是medical knowledge, 大意是医生的专业知识和普通人对于illness的感受，定义的区别，怎么知道自己生病了，关于illness认知的发展历程。 题型技巧分析 段落细节包含是一种“人见人烦”的题型，这种题型没有什么做题方法。我个人的意见是：不管这种题型是文章的第几个题型，我们都不能把它作为重点题型处理。阅读的顺序我们可以返璞归真，按照段落顺序进行阅读。在读段落的过程中把相应的细节题搞定。当读完整个段落之后，再去比对细节配对题。这样做可以尽量减少回读或重读。这种题型学生首先要做到淡定，我们要做全对很难，想全错也几乎不可能。 剑桥雅思推荐原文练习 剑桥4 Test 2 Passage 2: Alternative Medicine in Australia