Writeanessaybasedonthefollowingchart.Youshould1)describethechartand2)giveyourcomments.Youshouldwriteabout150wordsontheANSWERSHEET.(15points)
Suppose you are studying in Washington University. You lost your passport by accident yesterday. Write a letter to the Chinese Embassy in Washington to 1) give details of what happened, and 2) ask what you should do next. You should write about 100 words. Do not use your own name. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write your address.
When the residents of Buenos Aires want to change the pesos they do not trust into the dollars they do, they go to a cueva, or "cave" , an office that acts as a front for a thriving illegal exchange market. In one cueva near Florida Street, a pedestrian avenue in the centre of the city, piles of pesos from previous transactions lie on a table. A courier is getting ready to carry the notes to safety-deposit boxes. This smallish cueva handles transactions worth $ 50,000—75 ,000 a day. Fear of inflation and of further depreciation of the peso, which fell by more than 20% in January, will keep demand for dollars high. Few other ways of making money are this good. " Modern Argentina does not offer what you could call an institutional career," says one cueva owner. As the couriers carry their bundles around Buenos Aires, they pass grand buildings like the Teatro Col6n, an opera house that opened in 1908, and the Retire railway station, completed in 1915. These are emblems of Argentina"s Belle 6poque, the period before the outbreak of the first world war when the country could claim to be the world"s true land of opportunity. In the 43 years leading up to 1914, GDP had grown at an annual rate of 6% , the fastest recorded in the world. The country was a magnet for European immigrants, who flocked to find work on the fertile pampas, where crops and cattle were propelling Argentina"s expansion. In 1914 half of Buenos Aires"s population was foreign-born. The country ranked among the ten richest in the world, after the likes of Australia, Britain and the United States, but ahead of France, Germany and Italy. Its income per head was 92% of the average of 16 rich economies. From this point, it looked down its nose at its neighbours: Brazil"s population was less than a quarter as well-off. It never got better than this. Although Argentina has had periods of robust growth in the past century—not least during the commodity boom of the past ten years—and its people remain wealthier than most Latin Americans, its standing as one of the world"s most vibrant economies is a distant memory. Its income per head is now 43% of those same 16 rich economies; it trails Chile and Uruguay in its own backyard.
By the year 2100, global temperatures are expected to rise by between 0.8 and 3.5 degree Celsius. That may not seem like much, but such an increase in temperature would cause a rise in sea levels large enough to put the lives of up to 100 million people at risk. For the first time in the scientific community, there is total agreement that the activity of humans is at least partly responsible for the problem—specifically the emission of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, which is released by the burning of wood, coal and petroleum products. Reducing harmful emission is just one area in which the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel is decidedly optimistic. In the short term it might not prove that difficult. Efficiency improvements alone could cut energy needs by as much as 30 percent at virtually no extra cost and, in developed countries, emission reductions of up to 60 percent "are technically feasible". In the longer term, harmful emissions will be reduced as the world changes over to cheaper, less environmentally damaging energy sources.
Britain's flexible labour market was a boon during the economic slump, helping keep joblessness down and then, when the recovery began, allowing employment to rise. Yet one of its bendier bits is causing politicians to fret. Ed Miliband, the leader of the Labour Party, has promised a crackdown on "zero-hours contracts" if he wins the next election. The government has launched a consultation. Zero-hours contracts allow firms to employ workers for as few or as many hours as they need, with no prior notice. In theory, at least, people can refuse work. Fully 1. 4m jobs were based on these contracts in January 2014, according to the Office for National Statistics. That is just 4% of the total, but the share rises to a quarter in the hospitality business. The contracts are useful for firms with unstable patterns of demand, such as hotels and restaurants. They have also helped firms to expand during the recovery—allowing them to test new business lines before hiring permanent staff, who would be more costly to make redundant if things went wrong. Flexibility suits some workers, too. According to one survey, 47% of those employed on zero-hours contracts were content to have no minimum contracted hours. Many of these workers are in full-time education. The ability to turn down work is important to students, who want to revise at this time of year. Pensioners keen for a little extra income can often live with the uncertainty of not having guaranteed hours. Yet that leaves more than a quarter of workers on zero-hours contracts who say they are unhappy with their conditions. Some of this is cyclical. During recessions, a dearth of permanent positions forces people into jobs with no contracted hours even if they do not want them. Underemployment is particularly prevalent among these workers, 35% of whom would like more hours compared with 12% in other jobs. As the economy recovers, many should be able to renegotiate their contracts or find permanent jobs. But the recovery will not cause unwanted zero-hours contracts to disappear. Some workers will never have much negotiating power; they are constrained by geography, family commitments and lack of competition for their skills among a small number of big employers. Zero-hours contracts make it easier for employers to abuse their labour-market power. Some use them to avoid statutory obligations such as sick and maternity pay. Workers are penalised for not being available when requested. And some contracts contain exclusivity clauses which prevent workers from taking additional jobs. These can harm other employers as well as workers, and actually reduce labour market flexibility. That, at least, is worth doing away with.
BPart ADirections: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D./B
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
Humans are startlingly bad at detecting fraud. Even when we're on the lookout for signs of deception, studies show, our accuracy is hardly better than chance. Technology has opened the door to new and more pervasive forms of fraud: Americans lose an estimated $ 50 billion a year to con artists a-round the world, according to the Financial Fraud Research Center at Stanford University. But because computers aren't subject to the foibles of emotion and what we like to call "intuition," they can also help protect us. Here's how leading fraud researchers, neuroscientists, psychiatrists, and computer scientists think technology can be put to work to fight fraud however it occurs—in person, online, or over the phone. Spam filters are supposed to block e-mail scams from ever reaching us, but criminals have learned to circumvent them by personalizing their notes with information gleaned from the Internet and by grooming victims over time. In response, a company called ZapFraud is turning to natural-language analytics; Instead of flagging key words, it looks for narrative patterns symptomatic of fraud. For instance, a message could contain a statement of surprise, the mention of a sum of money, and a call to action. "Those are the hallmark expressions of one particular fraud e-mail," Markus Jakobsson, the company's founder, told me. "There's a tremendous number of[spam]e-mails, but a small number of story lines. " A similar approach could help combat fraud by flagging false statements on social media. Kalina Bontcheva, a computer scientist who researches natural-language processing at the University of Sheffield, in England, is leading a project that examines streams of social data to identify rumors and esti mate their veracity by analyzing the semantics, cross-referencing information with trusted sources, identifying the point of origin and pattern of dissemination, and the like. Bontcheva is part of a research collaboration which plans to flag misleading tweets and posts and classify them by severity: speculation, controversy, misinformation, or disinformation.
Suppose your friend Mike's father passed away yesterday. Mike is in deep sorrow. Write him an email to 1) comfort him, and 2) express condolence. You should write about 100 words. Do not use your own name. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write your address.
Directions：Inthispart，youareaskedtowriteanessaybasedonthefollowingchart．Inyourwriting，youshould1)interpretthechartand2)giveyourcomments．Youshouldwriteatleast150words．WriteyouressayonANSWERSHEET2．(15points)FinancialSourcesofCollegeStudents1)描述中美大学生经济资助状况2)分析这种状况的成因3)预测中国大学生经济资助的可能变化
The U.S. system of higher education is widely considered the world"s best. A college education【C1】______substantial benefits—about $20,000 per year【C2】______extra earnings over the course of a lifetime.【C3】______. according to a recent survey, 57 percent of Americans think higher education is not a good value,【C4】______they know how much it boosts earning power. And with the cost of many state universities【C5】______. the perceptions that college is too expensive for most people are【C6】______. Clearly, higher education officials must think harder about affordability—including not only more scholarship money but also lower costs and higher【C7】______One promising idea is the three-year degree which enables students to spend【C8】______. And they would have an extra year of work to pay the costs of education. There are many【C9】______approaches to the three-year degree: Schools can make it easier for students to【C10】______college credit earned in high school; they can fashion programs that【C11】______nearly four years of credits into three years, making use of summer and online learning; they can consider a more focused and streamlined curriculum. What all such【C12】______assume is that universities and colleges could make more intensive use of resources that often lie idle for much of the year under the【C13】______pattern. But up to now, only a handful of schools offered three-year degree【C14】______. Colleges and universities prefer to【C15】______the four-year model because of powerful economic incentives. Most won"t offer a three-year option【C16】______those incentives change. That may be starting to happen: The recent budget proposal by Ohio Governor John Kasich requires the state"s public univer sities to prepare【C17】______to offer three-year undergraduate degrees. It probably will take successful innovation by one or more large state systems to【C18】______change nationwide. Perhaps federal aid to universities or the schools" participation in the student loan program could be partly conditioned on offering a three-year degree option. Today"s students have the ability to acquire and【C19】______knowledge faster than any previous generation,【C20】______technology. Higher education needs to catch up.
Despite helping to record events, photos could damage our memories. Researchers found people who take pictures have【C1】______remembering what actually happened. This phenomenon has been named "photo-taking impairment effect". From children"s birthdays to that long-awaited family holiday, we all want to remember those【C2】______moments with a photograph.【C3】______if you"re one of those people who can"t stop【C4】______beware then—you could【C5】______forgetting it all in a flash. A study has found that taking too many photos may prevent us from forming detailed memories. Researchers from Harvard University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Columbia University in the U.S. recently found that many people now use the Internet【C6】______a memory. They claimed that when someone wants to know something they now use the Internet【C7】______an "external memory" just as computers use an external hard【C8】______. The study continued that we are now so【C9】______on smartphones and laptops, we go into "withdrawal when we can"t find out something【C10】______". Far from helping us to【C11】______the moment, it could mean we miss what"s going on right in front of our noses. Researchers led a group of students around a museum and asked them to either photograph or try to remember certain works of art and historical【C12】______. The next day, their memory was tested. It showed they were【C13】______at recognizing objects they had photographed than those they had only looked at. They were also poorer at【C14】______details of the objects they had taken pictures of. Dr Linda Henkel, who conducted the study at Fair field University in Connecticut, said: "People so often【C15】______out their cameras almost mindlessly. When people rely on technology to remember for them, it can have a【C16】______impact on how well they remember their【C17】______." Previous studies have suggested that【C18】______old photos can help us remember, but only if we spend long enough doing it. "In order to remember, we have to【C19】______and interact with the photos, rather than just【C20】______them," said Dr Henkel.
[A] Pick up the local paper[B] Save from the first place[C] Use a guidebook—your own[D] Pick up the phone[E] Choose cheap countries[F] Download magazines from web[G] Splurge when it matters You've mastered the art of modern-travel savings: Your airfare alerts are set up on Kayak; you flit around Europe on cheap carriers like EasyJet. You stay in apartments rented through Airbnb. You could probably shave a few more cents off travel costs by downloading five new apps and bookmarking 10 new sites. But real savings will come to those who go retro by stepping away from the screen, or using it differently, to find old-fashioned tactics that can save you big. Here are some old-school tips for getting the most out of your travel buck. 【R1】______ We think we can get everything done online these days, but sometimes a simple phone call is your best bet for saving money. Speak with an innkeeper and learn of potential discounts on extended stays or information on how to get there from the airport by public transit. Contact the specific location where you'll pick up your rental car and reserve a compact to avoid getting "upgraded" to a bigger vehicle that will increase (sometimes even double) your gas costs. Call travel agencies that strike special deals with airlines to get your prices below anything you' ll find online. 【R2】______ Goodbye Norway, hello Bolivia. Or as a blogger put it, "Cheapest dorm bed in Zurich=nice room in Bangkok." Extrapolate that to tour guides, museum entries, food and more, and the savings start to add up. Of course, keep in mind how much it will cost you to get there in the first place. Luckily, a lot of the cheaper countries are also cheap to fly to; another blogger put together a list of 10 "Cheap Places to Travel on the U.S. Dollar," which includes Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Peru, Hungary and Romania. 【R3】______ Most travelers will never be across-the-board cheapskates. Street food, nosebleed-theater seats and bunk beds are not for everyone. But you don't have to be a purist. For each trip, decide on a themed "waste" or two—transportation, food, arts, lodging—and save on the rest. 【R4】______ No listings are more up-to-the-minute than Friday arts supplements, alternative weeklies or the local editions of Time Out magazine. Get them on actual paper while they last. You' ll not only find the nontouristy scene laid out for you in one handy package, but often come across coupons or specials you certainly won't find on Yelp. 【R5】______ I still carry a travel guide around when I travel—as backup, if nothing else. But those books are pricey, and there's so much free information online that, with a little copying and pasting (and printing out), you can come pretty close to matching them with your own bespoke travel guide. So, in a retro twist, no Wi-Fi needed.
Eva Ullmann took her master's degree in 2002 on the part that humour has to play in psychotherapy, and became hooked on the subject. In 2005 she founded the German Institute for Humour in Leipzig. It is dedicated to "the combination of seriousness and humour". She offers lectures, seminars and personal coaching to managers, from small firms to such corporate giants as Deutsche Bank and Telekom. Her latest project is to help train medical students and doctors. There is nothing peculiarly German about humour training. It was John Morreall, an American, who showed that humour is a market segment in the ever-expanding American genre of self-help. In the past two decades, humour has gone global. An International Humour Congress was held in Amsterdam in 2000. And yet Germans know that the rest of the world considers them to be at a particular disadvantage. The issue is not comedy, of which Germany has plenty. The late Vicco von Buelow, alias Lori-ot, delighted the elite with his mockery of German seriousness and stiffness. Rhenish, Swabian and other regional flavours thrive—Gerhard Polt, a bad-tempered Bavarian, now 72, is a Shakespeare among them. There is lowbrow talent too, including Otto Waalkes, a Frisian buffoon. Most of this, however, is as foreigners always suspected: more embarrassing than funny. Germans can often be observed laughing, loudly. And they try hard. "They cannot produce good humour, but they can consume it," says James Parsons, an English man teaching business English in Leipzig. He once rented a theatre and got students, including Mrs Ullmann, to act out Monty Python skits, which they did with enthusiasm. The trouble, he says, is that whereas the English wait deadpan for the penny to drop, Germans invariably explain their punchline. At a deeper level, the problem has nothing to do with jokes. What is missing is the series of irony, overstatement and understatement in workaday conversations. Immigrants in Germany share soul-crushing stories of attempting a non-literal turn of phrase, to evoke a horrified expression in their German friends and a detailed explanation of the literal meaning, followed by a retreat into awkward politeness. Irony is not on the curriculum in Mrs Ullmann's classes. Instead she focuses mostly on the basics of humorous spontaneity and surprise. Demand is strong, she says. It is a typical German answer to a shortcoming: work harder at it.
Leaving the European Union would save every Dutch household 9,800 a year by 2035, claims Capital Economics, a London consultancy, in a report commissioned by Geert Wilders" far-right PVV party. Mr Wilders calls this "the best news in years" , painting a picture of a country freed from the chokehold of Brussels, mass migration and high taxes, and enjoying more trade, more jobs and a booming economy. The report lists the benefits of departure; lower business costs because of less regulation; no more net payments to the EU; a doubling of the share of trade with emerging markets; faster economic recovery. The only cost is the transition from the euro to a new guilder, and this is "modest and manageable". The report concludes that Dutch GDP would be 10—13% higher by 2035. This finds a receptive audience among those Dutch who are looking for scapegoats. Unemployment has doubled since 2008 and the economy is flat. A recent poll finds a majority of Dutch voters in favour of leaving the EU if that would lead to more jobs and growth. The PVV is leading in opinion polls before the European elections in May. Yet there are problems with the Capital Economics report. The idea that the economy would miraculously recover if freed from the European Central Bank"s policies ignores the structural failings that hold it back. The assumption that having the guilder would allow a much looser monetary policy is, at best, questionable. And it defies political reality to imagine that Netherlands would enjoy virtually cost-free access to the EU"s single market, which takes 75% of Dutch exports. Norway and Switzerland both pay for the privilege and have to comply with most EU laws and regulations; the latest Swiss vote for quotas on EU migration threatens the entire relationship. Despite its flaws, the report fires a welcome starting-gun for a debate about what is good and bad about the EU. Some 66% of the Dutch feel their "No" vote in the 2005 referendum on the EU constitution was largely ignored. If regulation costs as much as the report claims, and if the ECB"s monetary policy is too restrictive, both should be changed. Defenders of the EU also need to stress its less tangible benefits, such as peace, shared interests and the boost to the fight against cross-border crime.
BSection II Reading Comprehension/B
Suppose you are taking charge of the recruitment of the Dance Association in your university, and you just received an application letter from a freshman Wendy. Write her a letter to 1) acknowledge that you have received her application letter, and 2) tell her to wait for your reply next week. You should write about 100 words. Do not use your own name. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write your address.
[A]Robots Come from the Movies. [B]Development of Robots Is Fast. [C]Google Enters the Robot Industry. [D]Robots Today Are Not Impressive Enough. [E]The Future Robot Market Rests With Fancy. [F]Robots May Be Different in the Near Future. [G]More Money Is Thrown into the Robot Industry. Robots came into the world as a literary device whereby the writers and film-makers of the early 20th century could explore their hopes and fears about technology, as the era of the automobile, telephone and aeroplane picked up its reckless jazz-age speed. From Fritz Lang's Metropolis and Isaac Asimov's I, Robot to WALL-E and the Terminator films, and in countless repetitions in between, they have succeeded admirably in their task. 【R1】______ Since moving from the page and screen to real life, robots have been a mild disappointment. They do some things that humans cannot do themselves, like exploring Mars, and a host of things people do not much want to do, like dealing with unexploded bombs or vacuuming floors. And they are very useful in bits of manufacturing. But reliable robots—especially ones required to work beyond the safety cages of a factory floor—have proved hard to make, and robots are still pretty stupid. So although they fascinate people, they have not yet made much of a mark on the world. 【R2】______ That seems about to change. The exponential growth in the power of silicon chips, digital sensors and high-bandwidth communications improves robots just as it improves all sorts of other products. And, as our special report this week explains, three other factors are at play. 【R3】______ One is that robotics R eventually some of them will build mass markets. Aerial robots—drones—may be in the vanguard here. They will let farmers tend their crops in new ways, give citizens, journalists and broadcasters new perspectives on events big and small, monitor traffic and fires, look for infrastructure in need of repair and much more besides.
Writeanessaybasedonthefollowingtable.Inyouressay,youshould1)describethetableand2)stateyouropinionsdrawnfromit.Youshouldwriteatleast150wordsontheANSWERSHEET.(15points)