BSection I Use of EnglishDirections: Read the following text. Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C or D./B

[A] Watching related expenses and making wise choice[B] Paying attention to details[C] Weighing your financial goals and expectations first[D] Maintaining realistic expectations[E] Narrowing the search[F] Not too special[G] Choosing specialty funds How to Select a Fund Eating better. Exercising. Investing. There are a lot of things you know should be doing. The problem is that getting started always seems to be the hardest part. For many investors, mutual funds are a good way to go, but trying to sort through the number of available choices—now more than 10 000—makes this important task appear overwhelming. Let's look at some ways to cut that number down to a reasonable size, as well as other factors to consider when selecting your first fund. 【R1】______ Before you begin examining potential investments, it's important to take some time to access your own goals and risk tolerance. If you start with a clear objective in mind, as well as an understanding as to how you might react if your investment loses money, you'll be less likely to purchase a fund that doesn't fit your needs. And that's what often leads to disappointment. It is important to look for funds that are appropriate for both your goals and your investment temperament (性情). 【R2】______ One way to begin your search for a good fund is to use the Morningstar star rating. The rating is a useful tool for narrowing the field to funds that have done a good job of balancing return and risk in the past. To assign ratings, Morningstar uses a formula that compares a fund's risk-adjusted historical performance with that of other funds within four rating groups-domestic stock funds, international stock funds, taxable bond funds, and municipal bond funds. 【R3】______ Funds that invest solely in a single market sectors, called specialty funds, often have impressive returns and may be great additions to a diversified portfolio(投资组合). However, the success of such funds depends largely on the fortunes of a particular market sector. Hence, specialty funds probably aren't the best way to start. For your first fund, look for a diversified stock fund that has exposure to different types of stocks. 【R4】______ There's no free lunch in fund investing: in addition to the sales fees that some fund companies charge, fund investors must also pay management fees and trading cost. Unfortunately, you don't necessarily get what you pay for—no one has ever shown that more expensive funds provide greater returns. Look for funds with reasonable costs. The expense ratio, which expresses annual costs as a percentage amount, is probably the best number to use when comparing mutual fund costs. 【R5】______ Whatever the market does, try to take it in stride. You're in for the long haul, so don't worry about the market's day-to-day gyrations. Relax and resist the temptation to monitor your first investment daily. Check in on your mutual funds once a month, and give your portfolio a thorough exam every 6 to 12 months. And consider adding to your fund each month. An automatic investment plan makes it a relatively painless process. Finally, remember that the ultimate measure of your success as an investor depends not on your owning the best-performing mutual fund. Only one fund will be the top performer over the next decade, and there's no way to predict which one it will be. Meeting your own financial goals should ultimately be the yardstick (标准) by which you measure your investment success.

The concept of man versus machine is at least as old as the industrial revolution, but this phenomenon tends to be most acutely felt during economic downturns and fragile recoveries. And yet, it would be a mistake to think we are right now simply experiencing the painful side of a boom and bust cycle. Certain jobs have gone away for good, outmoded by machines. Since technology has such an insatiable appetite for eating up human jobs, this phenomenon will continue to restructure our economy in ways we can' t immediately foresee. When there is exponential improvement in the price and performance of technology, jobs that were once thought to be immune from automation suddenly become threatened. This argument has attracted a lot of attention, via the success of the book Race Against the Machine, by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, who both hail from MIT' s Center for Digital Business. This is a powerful argument, and a scary one. And yet, John Hagel, author of The Power of Pull and other books, says Brynjolfsson and McAfee miss the reason why these jobs are so vulnerable to technology in the first place. Hagel says we have designed jobs in the U.S. that tend to be "tightly scripted" and "highly standardized" ones that leave no room for "individual initiative or creativity." In short, these are the types of jobs that machines can perform much better at than human beings. That is how we have put a giant target sign on the backs of American workers, Hagel says. It' s time to reinvent the formula for how work is conducted, since we are still relying on a very 20th century notion of work, Hagel says. In our rapidly changing economy, we more than ever need people in the workplace who can take initiative and exercise their imagination "to respond to unexpected events." That' s not something machines are good at. They are designed to perform very predictable activities. As Hagel notes, Brynjolfsson and McAfee indeed touched on this point in their book. We need to reframe race against the machine as race with the machine. In other words, we need to look at the ways in which machines can augment human labor rather than replace it. So then the problem is not really about technology, but rather, "how do we innovate our institutions and our work practices?"

Habits are a funny thing. We reach for them mindlessly, setting our brains on auto-pilot and relaxing into the unconscious comfort of familiar routine. "Not choice, but habit rules the unreflecting herd," William Wordsworth said in the 19th century. In the ever-changing 21st century, even the word "habit" carries a negative implication. So it seems paradoxical (自相矛盾的) to talk about habits in the same context as creativity and innovation. But brain researchers have discovered that when we consciously develop new habits, we create parallel paths, and even entirely new brain cells, that can jump our trains of thought onto new, innovative tracks. Rather than dismissing ourselves as unchangeable creatures of habit, we can instead direct our own change by consciously developing new habits. In fact, the more new things we try — the more we step outside our comfort zone — the more inherently creative we become, both in the workplace and in our personal lives. But don't bother trying to kill off old habits; once those ruts of procedure are worn into the brain, they're there to stay. Instead, the new habits we deliberately press into ourselves create parallel pathways that can bypass those old roads. "The first thing needed for innovation is a fascination (迷恋) with wonder," says Dawna Markova, author of The Open Mind. "But we are taught instead to 'decide,' just as our president calls himself 'the Decider'." She adds, however, that "to decide is to kill off all possibilities but one. A good innovational thinker is always exploring the many other possibilities. " All of us work through problems in ways of which we're unaware, she says. Researchers in the late 1960s discovered that humans are born with the capacity to approach challenges in four primary ways; analytically, procedurally, relationally (or collaboratively) and innovatively. At the end of adolescence, however, the brain shuts down half of that capacity, preserving only those modes of thought that have seemed most valuable during the first decade or so of life. The current emphasis on standardized testing highlights analysis and procedure, meaning that few of us inherently use our innovative and collaborative modes of thought. "This breaks the major rule in the American belief system — that anyone can do anything," explains M. J. Ryan, author of the 2006 book This Year I Will. . . and Ms. Markova's business partner. "That's a lie that we have perpetuated (保持) , and it fosters commonness. Knowing what you're good at and doing even more of it creates excellence." This is where developing new habits comes in.

BPart ADirections: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D./B

BPart ADirections: Write a composition/letter of no less than 100 words on the following information./B

Could the bad old days of economic decline be about to return? Since OPEC agreed to supply-cuts in March, the price of crude oil has jumped to almost $ 26 a barrel, up from less than $ 10 last December. This near-tripling of oil prices calls up scary (可怕的) memories of the 1973 oil shock, when prices quadrupled (成四倍) and 1979—1980, when they also almost tripled. Both previous shocks resulted in double-digit inflation and global economic decline. So where are the headlines warning of gloom and doom this time? The oil price was given another push up this week when Iraq suspended oil exports. Strengthening economic growth, at the same time as winter grips the northern hemisphere, could push the price higher still in the short term. Yet there are good reasons to expect the economic consequences now to be less severe than in the 1970s. In most countries the cost of crude oil now accounts for a smaller share of the price of petrol than it did in the 1970s. In Europe, taxes account for up to four-fifths of the retail price, so even quite big changes in the price of crude have a more muted (温和的) effect on pump prices than in the past. Rich economies are also less dependent on oil than they were, and so less sensitive to swings(摆动) in the oil price. Energy conservation(节约) , a shift to other fuels and a decline in the importance of heavy, energy-intensive industries have reduced oil consumption. Software, consultancy and mobile telephones use far less oil than steel or car production. For each dollar of GDP (in constant prices) rich economies now use nearly 50% less oil than in 1973. The OECD estimates in its latest Economic Outlook that, if oil prices averaged $ 22 a barrel for a full year, compared with $ 13 in 1998, this would increase the oil import bill in rich economies by only 0.25% -0.5% of GDP. That is less than one-quarter of the income loss in 1974 or 1980. On the other hand, oil-importing emerging economies — to which heavy industry has shifted — have become more energy-intensive, and so could be more seriously squeezed. One more reason not to lose sleep over the rise in oil prices is that, unlike the rises in the 1970s, it has not occurred against the background of general commodity-price inflation and global excess demand. A sizable portion of the world is only just emerging from economic decline. The Economist's commodity price index is broadly unchanging from a year ago. In 1973 commodity prices jumped by 70%, and in 1979 by almost 30%.

BSection III Writing/B

BSection III Writing/B

BSection III Writing/B

BPart CDirections: Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese./B

Suppose you are organizing a group of students to visit a historical exhibition in a small town. Write a letter to 1) ask for information about the contents of the exhibition, and 2) the dates of its opening and closing and any discounts available. You should write about 100 words on the ANSWER SHEET. Do not use your own name. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write your address. (10 points)

[A] Physical changes[B] Low self-esteem[C] Emerging independence and search for identity[D] Emotional turbulence[E] Interest in the opposite sex[F] Peer pressure and conformity[G] Transition to adulthood The transition to adulthood is difficult. Rapid physical growth begins in early adolescence — typically between the ages of 9 and 13 — and thought processes start to take on adult characteristics. Many youngsters find these changes distressing because they do not fully understand what is happening to them. Fears and anxieties can be put to rest by simply keeping an open line of communication and preparing for change before it occurs. The main issues that arise during adolescence are: 【R1】______ A child's self-worth is particularly fragile during adolescence. Teenagers often struggle with an overwhelming sense that nobody likes them, that they're not as good as other people, that they are failures, losers, ugly or unintelligent. 【R2】______ Some form of bodily dissatisfaction is common among pre-teens. If dissatisfaction is great, it may cause them to become shy or very easily embarrassed. In other cases, teens may act the opposite — loud and angry — in an effort to compensate for feelings of self-consciousness and inferiority. As alarming as these bodily changes can be, adolescents may find it equally distressing to not experience the changes at the same time as their peers. Late maturation can cause feelings of inferiority and awkwardness. 【R3】______ Young people feel more strongly about everything during adolescence. Fears become more frightening, pleasures become more exciting, irritations become more distressing and frustrations become more intolerable. Every experience appears king-sized during adolescence. Youngsters having a difficult adolescence may become seriously depressed and/or engage in self-destructive behavior. Often, the first clue that a teenager needs professional help is a deep-rooted shift in attitude and behavior. Parents should be alert to the warning signs of personality change indicating that a teenager needs help. They include repeated school absences, slumping grades, use of alcohol or illegal substances, hostile or dangerous behavior and extreme withdrawal and reclusiveness. 【R4】______ There is tremendous pressure on adolescents to conform to the standards of their peers. This pressure toward conformity can be dangerous in that it applies not only to clothing and hairstyles; it may lead them to do things that they know are wrong. 【R5】______ Adolescence marks a period of increasing independence that often leads to conflict between teenagers and parents. This tension is a normal part of growing up — and for parents, a normal part of the letting-go process. Another normal part of adolescence is confusion over values and beliefs. This time of questioning is important as young people examine the values they have been taught and begin to embrace their own beliefs. Though they may adopt the same beliefs as their parents, discovering them on their own enables the young person to develop a sense of integrity. Although adolescence will present challenges for young people and their parents, awareness and communication can help pave the way for a smooth transition into this exciting phase of life.

Before a big exam, a sound night's sleep will do you more good than poring over textbooks. That, at least, is the folk wisdom. And science, in the form of behavioral psychology, supports that wisdom. But such behavioral studies cannot distinguish between two competing theories of why sleep is good for the memory. One says that sleep is when permanent memories form. The other says that they are actually formed during the day, but then "edited" at night, to flush away what is superfluous. To tell the difference, it is necessary to look into the brain of a sleeping person, and that is hard. But after a decade of painstaking work, a team led by Pierre Maquet at Liege University in Belgium has managed to do it. The particular stage of sleep in which the Belgian group is interested in is rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, when brain and body are active, heart rate and blood pressure increase, the eyes move back and forth behind the eyelids as if watching a movie, and brainwave traces resemble those of wakefulness. It is during this period of sleep that people are most likely to relive events of the previous day in dreams. Dr. Maquet used an electronic device called PET to study the brains of people as they practiced a task during the day, and as they slept during the following night. The task required them to press a button as fast as possible, in response to a light coming on in one of six positions. As they learnt how to do this, their response times got faster. What they did not know was that the appearance of the lights sometimes followed a pattern — what is referred to as "artificial grammar". Yet the reductions in response time showed that they learnt faster when the pattern was present than when there was not. What is more, those with more to learn (i.e., the "grammar", as well as the mechanical task of pushing the button) have more active brains. The "editing" theory would not predict that, since the number of irrelevant stimuli would be the same in each case. And to eliminate any doubts that the experimental subjects were learning as opposed to unlearning, their response times when they woke up were even quicker than when they went to sleep. The team, therefore, concluded that the nerve connections involved in memory are reinforced through reactivation during REM sleep, particularly if the brain detects an inherent structure in the material being learnt. So now, on the eve of that crucial test, maths students can sleep soundly in the knowledge that what they will remember the next day are the basic rules of algebra and not the incoherent talk from the radio next door.

BPart B/B

If you intend using humor in your talk to make people smile, you must know how to identify shared experiences and problems. Your humor must be relevant to the audience and should help to show them that you are one of them or that you understand their situation and are in sympathy with their point of view. Depending on whom you are addressing, the problems will be different. If you are talking to a group of managers, you may refer to the disorganized methods of their secretaries; alternatively if you are addressing secretaries, you may want to comment on their disorganized bosses. Here is an example, which I heard at a nurses' convention, of a story which works well because the audience all shared the same view of doctors. A man arrives in heaven and is being shown around by St. Peter. He sees wonderful accommodations, beautiful gardens, sunny weather, and so on. Everyone is very peaceful, polite and friendly until, waiting in a line for lunch, the new arrival is suddenly pushed aside by a man in a white coat, who rushes to the head of the line, grabs his food and stomps (跺脚) over to a table by himself. "Who is that?" the new arrival asked St. Peter. "Oh, that's God," came the reply, " but sometimes he thinks he's a doctor. " If you are part of the group which you are addressing, you will be in a position to know the experiences and problems which are common to all of you and it'll be appropriate for you to make a passing remark about the inedible canteen food or the chairman's notorious bad taste in ties. With other audiences you mustn't attempt to cut in with humor as they will resent an outsider making disparaging remarks about their canteen or their chairman. You will be on safer ground if you stick to scapegoats (替罪羊) like the Post Office or the telephone system. If you feel awkward being humorous, you must practice so that it becomes more natural. Include a few casual and apparently off-the-cuff remarks which you can deliver in a relaxed and unforced manner. Often it's the delivery which causes the audience to smile, so speak slowly and remember that a raised eyebrow or an unbelieving look may help to show that you are making a light-hearted remark. Look for the humor. It often comes from the unexpected. A twist(旋转) on a familiar quote " If at first you don't succeed, give up" or a play on words or on a situation. Search for exaggeration and understatements. Look at your talk and pick out a few words or sentences which you can turn about and inject with humor.

When people talk about a "north-south divide" in Britain, they usually refer to house prices, employment and the ratio of private-sector to public-sector jobs. The south scores higher on all such measures. But new data from the British Trust for Ornithology(BTO), a research charity, implies the growth of another north-south divide—this time to the north"s benefit. Every 20 years the BTO produces a detailed picture of bird life in Britain and Ireland. The 2007 to 2011 edition is cheery: more species are recorded than in previous pictures, and many birds are increasing in number. Compared with two decades ago, 45% of regular native species are ranging more widely while 32% are living in smaller areas; the rest have stayed put. But the most striking news comes from the north. The overall populations of woodland, farmland and migrant perching birds are up in northern England and Scotland but down in the south. The same is true of individual species such as the garden warbler, bullfinch and swallow. The number of cuckoos, a closely-watched species, declined by 63% in England between 1995 and 2010 but by only 5% in Scotland. Raptors are faring especially well in the south, but their numbers are rising in most parts of Britain. Partly this reflects climate change, suggests Simon Gillings of the BTO. Some birds are drawn to warmer winters in Scotland and northern England; visiting migrants may stick around for longer. Hard though it may be to believe during a week of rain, the south is becoming drier, pushing snipe northward. More efficient farming has squeezed some farmland species. Some birds find it harder to make homes in the south, too. Pressure on housing means deserted buildings and barns, handy for nesting, have been converted into human dwellings. Between 2006 and 2012 the number of vacant dwellings fell by 17% in London and by 12% in Kent. Over the same period the number of empty houses increased by 16% in Derbyshire and by 10% in Lancashire. Northern mining villages once full of workers are now sparsely populated, points out Ian Bart-lett, a birdwatcher in Hartlepool, in north-east England. They have become hot spots for birds and the people who watch them. Cultural difference also plays a part, thinks Mark Cocker, an expert on birds. The "obsession with tidiness" is stronger in the south, he says. Fewer people cultivate gardens; they prefer to cover them in decking and remove weeds from between concrete slabs. Village greens are mowed short. In contrast, Scotland and northern England have more trees, grassland and wind-swept moors. Less popular with humans, rugged parts of the countryside are filling up with a winged population instead.

Inthissection,youareaskedtowriteanessaybasedonthefollowingchart.Inyourwriting,youshould1)interpretthechartand2)giveyourcomments.Youshouldwriteatleast150words.WriteyouressayonANSWERSHEET2.

It is a well-known fact that there are constant conflicts among different groups of people, and that people tend to blame their misfortunes on some outside other groups for their misfortunes. What are the causes of group prejudice? There seems to be little doubt that one of the principal causes of prejudice is fear; in particular the fear that the interests of our own group are going to be endangered by the actions of another. This is less likely to be the case in a stable, relatively unchanging society in which the members of different social and occupational groups know what to expect of each other, and know what to expect for themselves. In times of rapid social and economic change, however, new occupations and new social roles appear, and people start looking jealously at each other to see whether their own group is being left behind.

It used to be so straightforward (直接的). A team of researchers working together in the laboratory would submit the results of their research to a journal. A journal editor would then remove the author's names and affiliations(附属机构) from the paper and send it to their peers for review, depending on the comments received, the editor would accept the paper for publication or decline it. Copyright rested with the journal publishers, and researchers seeking knowledge of the results would have to subscribe to the journal. No longer. The Internet—and pressure from funding agencies, who are questioning why commercial publishers are making money from government-funded research by restricting access to it— is making access to scientific results a reality. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has just issued a report describing the far-reaching consequences of this. The report, by John Houghton of Victoria University in Australia and Graham Vickery of the OECD, makes heavy reading for publishers who have, so far, made handsome profits. But it goes further than that. It signals a change in what has, until now, been a key element of scientific endeavor. The value of knowledge and the return on the public investment in research depends, in part, upon wide distribution and ready access. It is big business. In America, the core scientific publishing market is estimated at between $7 billion and $11 billion. The International Association of Scientific Technical and Medical Publisher says that there are more than 2,000 publishers worldwide specializing in these subjects. They publish more than 1.2 million articles each year in some 16,000 journals. This is now changing. According to the OECD report, some 75% of scholarly journals are now online. Entirely new business models are emerging; three main ones were identified by the report's authors. There is the so-called big deal, where institutional subscribers pay for access to a collection of online journal titles through site-licensing agreements. There is open-access publishing, typically supported by asking the author (or his employer) to pay for the paper to be published. Finally, there are open-access archives (档案) , where organizations such as universities or international laboratories support institutional repositories (仓库). Other models exist that are hybrids of these three, such as delayed open-access, where journals allow only subscribers to read a paper for the first six months, before making it freely available to everyone who wishes to see it. All this could change the traditional form of the peer-review process, at least for the publication of papers.