问答题1) recommend a book you like 2) and give reasons for your recommendation You should write about 100 words on the ANSWER SHEET. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write your address.

问答题Directions: As part of a student social survey project, you are leading a group to visit an exhibition in a small town. Write a letter: 1) ask for information regarding such things as the contents of the exhibition, 2) the dates of its opening and closing, any discounts. You should write about 100 words on the ANSWER SHEET. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter, Use "Zhang Wei" instead. Do not write your address.

问答题Think about driving a route that"s very familiar. It could be your commute to work, a trip into town or the way home. Whichever it is, you know every twist and turn like the back of your hand. On these sorts of trips it"s easy to lose concentration on the driving and pay little attention to the passing scenery. The consequence is that you perceive that the trip has taken less time than it actually has. This is the well-travelled road effect. People tend to underestimate the time it takes to travel a familiar route. The effect is caused by the way we allocate our attention. When we travel down a well-known route, because we don"t have to concentrate much, time seems to flow more quickly. And afterward, when we come to think back on it, we can"t remember the journey well because we didn"t pay much attention to it. So we assume it was shorter.

问答题Directions: Two months ago you got a job as an editor for the magazine Designs & Fashions. But now you find that the work is not what you expected. You decide to quit. Write a letter to your boss, Mr. Smith, telling him your decision, stating your reason (s), and making an apology. You should write about 100 words on the ANSWER SHEET. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write your address.

问答题Signs of decline are sure to be found in a place as complex as America: debt, crime, the homeless, drugs, dropouts. But the main characteristic of America, the first and most enduring impression, is dynamism, energy, aggressiveness, forward movement. It is so hard to think of this nation in decline when you know that there are vast regions of the planet which are absolutely paralyzed, incapable of any improvement at all. It is difficult for me to agree with Paul Kennedy's thesis that America must inevitably follow historical precedent. That's the way history used to be—all powerful nations declined and gave way to other empires. But I have a sense that what is going on here concerns much more than the fate of a nation. It may be that the Euro-centered American nation is declining as it gives way to a new Pacific civilization that will include, but not limited to, America. (153 words)

问答题Directions: You have just come back from Canada and found a music CD in your luggage that you forgot to return to Bob, your landlord there. Write him a letter to 1) make an apology, and 2) suggest a solution. You should write about 100 words onthe ANSWER SHEET. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write your address.

问答题1)describethedrawingbriefly,2)explainitsintendedmeaning,andthen3)giveyourcomments.Youshouldwriteatleast150words.WriteyouressayontheANSWERSHEET.

问答题Like examinations, the annual ranking of school is a necessary evil. It is a boon to schools which do well and a bane to those which fail to measure up. Ranking is good in that it will lead to competition which will raise the overall teaching standards of schools. However, competition can be both virtuous and vicious and it is quite impossible to just retain the former and say no to the latter. The negative effects of the inevitable vicious competition may be a lot more damaging than we think. For a school to prove that it has made progress and emerge winner in the yearly battle, the principal, teachers and pupils will all have to focus their time and energy on achieving excellent academic results. It is unfortunate that to a large extent, academic scores have become the primary concern in the learning process.

问答题1)describethechart,and2)stateyourownopinion.Youshouldwriteabout150words.WriteyouressayontheANSWERSHEET.

问答题In the 19th century, there was a hydraulic model of how to be a good person. There are all these torrents of passion flowing through you. Your job, as captain of your soul, is to erect dams to keep these passions in check. Your job is to just say no to laziness, temptation, greed, drug use and the other sins. Praying could really help. They could help you identify sin. Preachers could persuade you to exercise the willpower you need to guard against temptation. These days that model is out of fashion. You usually can"t change your behavior by simply resolving to do something. If that were true, New Year"s resolutions would actually work. Your willpower is not like a dam that can block the torrent of self-indulgence. It"s more like a muscle, which tires easily. People can change their lives, but ordering change is not simple because many things, even within ourselves, are beyond our direct control.

问答题In most public schools today, teachers are simply rated "satisfactory" or "unsatisfactory," and evaluations consist of having the principal observe a class for a few minutes a couple of times each year. Many districts and states are trying to move toward better personnel systems for evaluation and improvement. Unfortunately, some education advocates in New York, Los Angeles and other cities are claiming that a good personnel system can be based on ranking teachers according to their "value-added rating"—a measurement of their impact on students" test scores—and publicizing the names and rankings online and in the media. I am a strong supporter of measuring teachers" effectiveness, and my foundation works with many schools to help make sure that such evaluations improve the overall quality of teaching. But publicly ranking teachers by name will not help them get better at their jobs or improve student learning. On the contrary, it will make it a lot harder to implement teacher evaluation systems that work.

问答题The supermarket is designed to lure customers into spending as much time as possible within its doors. The reason for this is simple: The longer you stay in the store, the more stuff you"ll see, and the more stuff you see, the more you"ll buy. And supermarkets contain a lot of stuff. The average supermarket, according to the Food Marketing Institute, carries some 44,000 different items, and many carry tens of thousands more. The sheer volume of available choice is enough to send shoppers into a state of information overload. According to brain-scan experiments, the demands of so much decision-making quickly become too much for us. After about 40 minutes of shopping, most people stop struggling to be rationally selective, and instead begin shopping emotionally—which is the point at which we accumulate the 50 percent of stuff in our cart that we never intended buying.

问答题Knowing that you are paid less than your peers has two effects on happiness. The well-known one is negative: a thinner pay packet harms self-esteem. The lesser-known one is called the "tunnel effect": high incomes for peers are seen as improving your own chances of similar riches, especially if growth, inequality and mobility are high. A paper authored by Tom Dorson of the University of St Andrews separates the two effects using data from household surveys in Germany. Previous work showed that the income of others can have a small, or even positive, overall effect on people"s satisfaction in individual firms. But Mr. Dorson"s team hypothesized that older workers, who largely know their lifetime incomes already, will enjoy a much smaller tunnel effect. The data confirm this hypothesis. The negative effect on reported levels of happiness of being paid less than your peers is not visible for people aged under 45. It is only those people over 45, when careers have "reached a stable position", whose happiness is harmed by the success of others.

问答题Intelligence quotients (IQs) testing is controversial and regarded by some as a crude indicator of ability or potential. When comparing nations, measured average IQ tends to be affected by class, nutrition, and cultural factors including education. There is also disagreement over the influences of nature and nurture. IQs have risen in developed nations for almost a century. But in Britain, research has found a reversal of this trend. The average had declined by two points on average, but by as much as six points among teenagers in the top half of the IQ scale, a fall that wiped out the previous two decades of gains in that group. No cause for this fall in IQs has been established: the internet, the dumbing down of education, and an obsession with exam results have been suggested. Flynn has argued that youth culture has made a contribution.

问答题Just a few years ago, the world economy was in a mess. Today, growth prospects are brighter, but progress is slow, uneven and uncertain. Is the U.S. recovery sustainable? Will the euro zone overcome its economic difficulty and return to growth? Will faster-growing emerging markets overheat, or simply grow old before they grow rich? Which consumers will drive the global economy? These were just some of the issues raised by the 730 investors. However, a majority of these investors are optimistic about global economic expansion this year, banking on growth led by China and U.S. But most fear that structural problems, such as unsustainable debt, inadequate infrastructure and growing income gaps, may harm long-term growth prospects. A surprising 65% of investors agree that growing income diversities threaten the capitalist system. But smart investors are staying informed and flexible, while searching for value opportunities in troubled developed economies such as Greece, Italy and Spain. They are also looking beyond China and rising markets in South-East Asia.

问答题Will newspapers become a thing of the past in this Internet age? It is currently estimated that more than 1 billion people use the Internet worldwide. The number-one online activity is e-mail, followed by reading news on the Internet. The Internet is an increasingly effective and efficient way to reach the largest possible audience worldwide. Harris Interactive, a U.S.-based company, reported that the majority of people went online because they could obtain information at times suitable to them; or others did so because more detailed news could be found online; or more up-to-date information was available online; or because they could access news while at work. Though most media reporters and networks try to report objectively, bias exists. Bias means to favor. Bias can occur in the media"s choice of stories and coverage of a story. Through the choice of words and selection of interviews, interviewers and interviewees, the media might report favorably or unfavorably on a news issue. As viewers of news stories, audiences need to objectively judge the news coverage that they hear and read, and seek out more information from other sources, if necessary.

问答题Directions: Suppose you have a friend who is about to enter university, and he wants you to advise him on which subject to specialize in—history, in which he is very interested, or computer science, which offers better job prospects. 1) Give your suggestions, and explain the reasons. 2) Other recommendations. You should write about 100 words on the ANSWER SHEET. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Zhang Wei" instead. Do not write your address.

问答题Writeanessaybasedonthefollowingchart,inwhichyoushould1)interpretthechart,and2)giveyourcomments.Youshouldwriteabout150wordsontheANSWERSHEET.

问答题Reality is usually one step ahead of the language we possess to describe it. People began taking pictures of themselves long before the Oxford English Dictionary selected "selfie" as its 2013 Word of the Year. Friends e-mailed each other pictures of cats longing for cheezburgers without knowing they were sharing a "meme". This language lag time makes it difficult to understand the present as it unfurls. Or, as philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein might say, "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world." Our new book, The Age of Earthquakes: A Guide to the Extreme Present, tries to fill that gap. Part poetic manifesto, part postmodern dictionary, the text explores how technology is reinventing such fundamental things as time, individuality and class. Which of today"s universal experiences, we asked, would seem utterly alien to a version of us from two decades ago? Co-authors Douglas Coupland, Hans Ulrich Obrist and I turned our answers into new words that describe the effects of digital technology and the Internet on everything from our brains to the planet. You"ve all felt these things happening to you. But you didn"t have names for them yet. Well, now you do.

问答题A role model is a person who is a good example to others, in terms of doing noble or charitable acts or representing good values or ways of thinking and acting. Related to role models are heroes and icons. A hero is a person who has amazing abilities or traits, and has performed extraordinary acts. An icon is someone who is an image or symbol of importance. TIME magazine published a list of heroes and icons from the last 100 years (1900 to 2000). The list of twenty people who "articulate the longings of the last 100 years, exemplifying courage, selflessness, exuberance, superhuman ability and amazing grace" includes: Mother Teresa, Princess Diana, Pele, Che Guevara, Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgan, Helen Keller, Bruce Lee, Charles Lindbergh and Andrei Sakharov. Do you know who all of these people are? Who would you add to your personal list of heroes and icons? Some famous role models have been recipients of a Nobel Prize. The Nobel Prize is a highly-respected international award given to people (and organizations) who have conducted exceptional research, created ground-breaking inventions or made outstanding contributions to society. There are five categories: Nobel Prize in Physics, Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Medicine, Nobel Prize in Literature and Nobel Prize in Peace.