On America"s Gulf coast, massive industrial facilities stand idle. Miles of twisting stainless-steel pipes and huge storage tanks gleam uselessly in the sun. They are a reminder of the hundreds of billions of dollars that America has invested in terminals for handling imports of liquefied natural gas(LNG). Thanks to the boom in domestic shale gas, those imports are no longer needed. America produces nearly as much gas as it consumes, and will soon produce far more. So the obvious thing to do with those idle terminals is to re-engineer them to handle exports. Instead of receiving shiploads of liquefied gas and re-gasifying it, they should be taking American gas, liquefying it and loading it onto tankers. Converting these plants will not be cheap—each one will cost at least $ 5 billion. But the potential rewards are much larger. In America gas sells for around $ 3.40 per million British thermal units(mBTU). In Europe it costs around $ 12. In gas-poor Asia, spot cargoes change hands for as much as $ 20 per mBTU. Since it costs roughly $ 5 per mBTU to liquefy the stuff, ship it and turn it back into gas, America could be making a fortune from gas exports. To the extent that such exports displaced dirty coal, they would also help curb global warming. Most of America"s two dozen LNG import terminals have applied for export licences. Yet only one, Sabine Pass in Louisiana, has actually started retooling its kit. Gas from there will start flowing onto global markets by the end of 2015. Why has every other terminal been so slow to seize this opportunity? Converting a plant is not easy: firms must build now upon row of expensive fridges, known as "liquefaction trains" , to get gas moving in the opposite direction. But the real hold-up is political. No LNG facility besides Sabine has yet received permission to export. American law requires the Department of Energy to determine whether gas exports are in the public interest, and President Barack Obama"s administration is in no hurry to make up its mind.

Writeanessaybasedonthechart.Inyourwriting,youshould1)describethediagram,and2)giveyourcomments.Youshouldwriteabout150words.

In the old days parents followed a simple rule: spare the rod and spoil the child. These days less violent forms of discipline are favoured. Supernanny, a television toddler-tamer, recommends the "naughty step" , to which ill-behaved naughty children are temporarily banished. Yet even this is too harsh, some psychologists say. But advocates of "positive discipline" say "naughty step" does nothing to encourage one to solve problems(and thus build character). Some even suggest it may be psychologically damaging. Positive discipline, which is becoming a fad in America, aims to teach children self-control and empathy. Rather than screaming at them to pick up the toys they have thrown on the floor, parents or teachers ask them to suggest their own way of tackling the problem. Adults are encouraged to think harder about the causes of bad behaviour. Families meet regularly to discuss all of the above. The Ravenswood School in Chicago has embraced positive discipline. When children quarrel, they are allowed to pick an option from a "wheel of choice" poster. These include "share and take turns" , "balloon breath" and a spell in the "calm-down corner". In one classroom this has a tiny chair, some fairy lights and an inviting box of picture books. Positive discipline is not new; Jane Nelson, a family consultant and child-care guru , first published a book with that title in 1981. No reliable statistics show how many parents or schools use it, but the Positive Discipline Association, a non-profit that ran 18 training workshops in 2005, found itself running 51 in 2010. Doubters fear that positive really means permissive. Not so, says Maria Vannucci of the Adler School of Professional Psychology in Chicago. The goal is to connect with a child, rather than simply barking " Shut up!" or " Go to your room!" For example, a child who is getting underfoot in the kitchen may need to feel involved and be given something to do, such as rolling pastry or folding napkins. One who has given up on his homework may need to have the task broken down. A toddler who hits another may not know why he is angry; he may be removed or told: " Use your gentle hands. " Bribes are out: positive disciplinarians fear they may prevent a child from developing pride in a job well done.

BSection III Writing/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 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 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 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.

College students are more stressed out than ever before—at least according to the latest findings of a large, national survey that has been conducted annually for the last 25 years. The survey includes more than 200,000 students【C1】______nearly 300 colleges and asks them to【C2】______how their own mental health【C3】______their classmates' —for example, is it "above average" or in the "highest 10%"? This【C4】______unusual methodology typically results in the statistical Lake Woebegon effect in which most people【C5】______to overestimate themselves in relation to others (it refers to the fictional Lake Woebegon, where "all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking and all the children are above average").【C6】______the most recent results indicate that fewer and fewer freshmen feel like they are in top form in terms of【C7】______stress. So what's going on? Obviously, the economy and high unemployment might【C8】______the increase in stress. A much more precise large study recently found that empathy【C9】______college students had declined 40% since 2000—and since caring relationships are【C10】______to mental (and physical) health, a decline in empathy could also produce a decline in mental health and coping. My final point brings us back to my earlier post on a Stanford study that looked at the psychological【C11】______of comparing ourselves to others. It found that the way people are incline to【C12】______their negative emotions while broadcasting their happy ones makes the rest of us feel somehow "less than"—【C13】______all our friends and neighbors have better lives than we【C14】______ This【C15】______, too, might tie into why the new survey, "The American Freshman: National Norms, Fall 2011," found that students are feeling less【C16】______about their level of emotional and mental stability. If all the students around you are desperately trying to【C17】______a happy face—and you【C18】______that face as a true reflection of their【C19】______selves, even as you work to hide your own【C20】______—well, it's not surprising that so many students might be getting a bit strained.

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

It is a fact universally accepted that Britons dislike immigration. Sure enough, when travel restrictions on Romanians and Bulgarians(imposed when their countries joined the EU)were lifted on January 1st, newspapers and politicians fretted. Two MPs even took it upon themselves to meet a morning flight from Bucharest and quiz its passengers. Yet a report published on January 2nd by Ip-sos MORI, a polling firm, shows attitudes to be more varied. A widening gap divides those born before 1965 from younger folk. Although immigrants are often said to deprive younger Britons of entry-level jobs and housing, members of Generation Y(born in 1980 or later)and Generation X(born between 1966 and 1979)are ambivalent towards them. By contrast, the baby boomers(born between 1945 and 1965)and the old, who benefit most from cheap carers and cleaners, counterintuitively think immigrants a drag. Age influences opinion more strongly than social class does. This makes Britain an oddity. Ipsos MORI conducted the same study in Germany, and found the views of the young and the old to be converging. According to Robert Ford of the University of Manchester, the gap between the old and the young is larger in Britain than in America, France or Spain, too. Different life experiences explain why. When baby boomers were in their politically formative teens and early 20s, Britain was a pretty homogeneous place; before the mid-1970s it was closer to the Commonwealth than to continental Europe. That generation grew up doubtful about diversity. East European immigrants, who began arriving in large numbers in the mid-2000s, doubly offend them. Bobby Duffy of Ipsos MORI, who has conducted focus groups with members of this generation , reports that the prospect of retirement makes people worry about their children"s chances. For Generation X, mass immigration, European integration and multiculturalism are part of the furniture. They grew up in a more individualistic Britain; which, says Mr Ford, explains their relative distaste for authority, homogeneity and flag-waving. This, like university attendance(more common among this group than their parents), tends to make people more tolerant of different races and nationalities. Thus Generation X"s experiences are closer to those of Generation Y than to the baby boomers—a fact reflected in Ipsos MORI"s findings.

A pretty pot plant might make an unemotional work space feel more personal. But new research has revealed that office plants do so much more as they can help staff be more creative and productive, which could ultimately【C1】______promotion. At work,【C2】______houseplants have been proven to aid concentration, increase productivity and【C3】______staff well-being by 47 per cent, according to a study undertaken at this year"s Chelsea Flower Show. The results showed that【C4】______staff to make design decisions in a workspace【C5】______with office plants can increase creativity by 45 per cent and improve productivity by 38 per cent. The researchers believe their findings demonstrate that plants are not unnecessary【C6】______of business environments and add【C7】______to other studies, which indicate plants increase psychological comfort and business【C8】______. Psychologist Dr Craig Knight said: "We have previously shown that designing your own workspace improves health, happiness and productivity. It was time to go a step【C9】______and see whether the principle can also【C10】______creativity and indeed whether the very act of designing the workspace can be used effectively. The results indicate that plants, in a well-designed and personalized office environment can increase business effectiveness【C11】______improved staff productivity and creativity. This gives company managers a real【C12】______to share control of office space with their staff and create meaningful, less【C13】______and more grown up space." Plants have previously been proven to have【C14】______effects in hospitals, where patients with pot plants close by said they experienced less pain, anxiety and tiredness,【C15】______houses with plant-filled rooms【C16】______between 50 and 60 per cent fewer bacteria than other rooms【C17】______plants. Monique Kemperman from The Joy of Plants, said: "Scientific studies have demonstrated that we can see a【C18】______improvement in air quality alone, just by【C19】______a few common houseplants around a room." The organization wants to encourage everyone in the UK to add a houseplant to their home and office and claims it will make a "【C20】______" impact to people"s quality of life on a daily basis.

BSection II Reading Comprehension/B

Suppose you ordered a hair dryer online at the cost of $22, but only received an empty package box. Something must be wrong. Write ft letter to 1) complain about it, and 2) ask for a refund or another delivery. You should write about 100 words. Do not use your own name. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write your address.

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

How best to solve the pollution problems of a city sunk so deep within sulfurous clouds that it was described as hell on earth? Simply answered: Relocate all urban smoke-creating industry and encircle the metropolis of London with sweetly scented flowers and elegant hedges. In fact, as Christine L. Corton, a Cambridge scholar, reveals in her new book, London Fog, this fragrant anti-smoke scheme was the brainchild of John Evelyn, the 17th-century diarist. King Charles II was said to be much pleased with Evelyn' s idea, and a bill against the smoky nuisance was duly drafted. Then nothing was done. Nobody at the time, and nobody right up to the middle of the 20th century, was willing to put public health above business interests. And yet it's a surprise to discover how beloved a feature of London life these multicolored fogs became. A painter, Claude Monet, fleeing besieged Paris in 1870, fell in love with London's vaporous, mutating clouds. He looked upon the familiar mist as his reliable collaborator. Visitors from abroad may have delighted in the fog, but homegrown artists lit candles and vainly scrubbed the grime from their gloom-filled studio windows. "Give us light!" Frederic Leighton pleaded to the guests at a Lord Mayor' s banquet in 1882, begging them to have pity on the poor painter. The more serious side of Corton' s book documents how business has taken precedence over humanity where London' s history of pollution is concerned. A prevailing westerly wind meant that those dwelling to the east were always at most risk. Those who could afford it lived elsewhere. The east was abandoned to the underclass. Lord Palmerston spoke up for choking East Enders in the 1850s, pointing a finger at the interests of the furnace owners. A bill was passed, but there was little change. Eventually, another connection was established: between London' s perpetual veil of smog and its citizens' cozily smoldering grates. Sadly, popular World War I songs like "Keep the Home Fires Burning" didn't do much to encourage the adoption of smokeless fuel. It wasn 't until what came to be known as the "Great Killer Fog" of 1952 that the casualty rate became impossible to ignore and the British press finally took up the cause. It was left to a Member of Parliament to steer the Clean Air Act into law in 1956. Within a few years, even as the war against pollution was still in its infancy, the dreaded fog began to fade. Corton's book combines meticulous social history with a wealth of eccentric detail. Thus we learn that London's ubiquitous plane trees were chosen for their shiny, fog-resistant foliage. It's discoveries like these that make reading London Fog such an unusual and enlightening experience.

Imagine a world in which there was suddenly no emotion—a world in which human beings could feel no love or happiness, no terror or hate. Try to imagine the consequences of such a transformation. People might not be able to stay alive: knowing neither joy nor pleasure, anxiety nor fear, they would be as likely to repeat acts that hurt them as acts that were beneficial. They could not learn: they could not benefit from experience because this emotionlessness would lack rewards and punishments. Society would soon disappear; people would be as likely to harm one another as to provide help and support. Human relationships would not exist; in a world without friends or enemies, there could be no marriage, affection among companions, bonds among members of groups; society's economic underpinnings would be destroyed: since earning $ 10 million would be no more pleasant than earning $ 10, there would be no incentive to work.

BSection II Reading Comprehension/B

You have just come back from the U. S. as a member of a Sino-American exchange program. Write a letter to your American colleague to l)express your thanks for his/her warm reception; 2)welcome him/her to visit China in due course. You should write about 100 words on ANSWER SHEET 2. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Zhang Wei" instead. Do not write your address.

For decades the market for expensive headphones was mainly limited to hi-fi fans. But【C1】______the boxy stereo system in the corner of the bedroom is largely a thing of the past, and young music fans listen【C2】______on portable devices, headphones have become as much of a fashion statement as the music player itself.【C3】______the first to spot the potential of this market was Dr Dre and Jimmy Iovine. In 2008 they【C4】______their Beats range of headphones, to great【C5】______. They have all but created a new product【C6】______: premium-priced headphones whose sound quality is good enough,【C7】______which mainly sell on their brand image. Beats Electronics and its founders have proved skilled【C8】______using celebrity endorsements and product placement to【C9】______his headphones. In America the company now has almost half the market for premium-priced headphones, compared with 21% for Bose, a longer-established maker. Beats headphones are exactly what hip-hop fans want, but might not suit opera lovers. Overall,【C10】______, they are a lot better than the earphones that come free with most portable devices. There is in any case a limit to how good music will sound through even the best headphones. Most of the music tracks on portable music players are in the form of mp3 audio files, in which the music has been【C11】______to make the files smaller and【C12】______fit more of them into a【C13】______amount of storage capacity. Since consumers have been persuaded, largely by Beats, that it is worth paying a high price for headphones, perhaps they could be persuaded to turn their backs on cheap mp3s and【C14】______recordings in true high fidelity. If sales of hi-fi recordings take off it may【C15】______the market for really top-class headphones like those of Grado Labs, another American firm. Grado has for decades relied on reviews in specialist magazines, and word-of-mouth【C16】______from fans, to spread news of its headphones"【C17】______reproduction. In contrast to Beats, it has avoided imagemaking it has not【C18】______since 1964 Unlike Dr Dre, then, its【C19】______are less tied to the【C20】______tastes and fast-changing fashions of the young.

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

People have been holding heated discussions recently about women"s experience in the workplace. Last month Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer at Face-book, published "Lean In", a【C1】______declaration on why women have not【C2】______to the most senior positions at companies. She concludes that it is partly women"s own【C3】______: they do not "lean in" and ask for promotions,【C4】______at meetings and insist on taking a seat at the table. Another new book will not have the same impact as "Lean In", but it offers some interesting new【C5】______on how women are coping at work, and what is holding them【C6】______. Some of it is down to simple miscommunication. Barbara Annis and John Gray argue in "Work With Me" that men and women are biologically wired to think and react【C7】______to situations, and have "gender blind spots" when it comes to understanding their co-workers" behavior. Ms Annis, who leads workshops on gender for big companies and governments, and Mr. Gray, author of "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus", have【C8】______to produce an easy-to-read guide to work place communications. Women ask more questions,【C9】______more people"s opinions and seek collaboration with coworkers more frequently than men. Men view these preferences as【C10】______of weakness, and women, in turn, grow【C11】______by how competitively men work, and how quickly they arrive【C12】______conclusions by themselves. 【C13】______both female and male employees became more "gender【C14】______" about how their work and behavioral preferences are hard-wired, it would contribute to a more harmonious workforce. Women have been choosing to leave companies at twice the【C15】______of men, and more than half the women whom the authors met in workshops were considering leaving their【C16】______. Women often tell their bosses that they are【C17】______for personal reasons, but the majority actually leave because they feel【C18】______teams and not valued for their contributions. Yet the【C19】______is that women often have trouble communicating with other women at work as well,【C20】______the authors do not explain in quite as much detail why this is so.

Write a letter of about 100 words to your American friend Jam, recommending your Chinese friend Han Ling to teach him Chinese. You should include the details you think necessary. You should write neatly on the ANSWER SHEET. Do not use your own name. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address.(10 points)