Old people are always saying that the young are not what they were. The same【C1】______is made from generation to generation and it is always true. It has【C2】______been truer than it is today. The young are better educated. They have a lot more money to spend and enjoy more freedom. They grow up more quickly and are not so【C3】______on their parents. They think more for themselves and do not blindly【C4】______the ideals of their elders. Events which the older generation remembers vividly are【C5】______past history. This is as it should be. Every new generation is different from the one that【C6】______it. Today the difference is very【C7】______indeed. The old always assume that they know best for the simple【C8】______that they have been around a bit longer. They don't like to feel that their【C9】______are being questioned or threatened. And this is precisely【C10】______the young are doing. They are questioning the assumptions of their elders and【C11】______their complacency. Office hours, for instance, are nothing more than【C12】______slavery. Wouldn't people work best if they were given complete freedom and responsibility? Who said that all the men in the world should wear dull grey suits and convict haircuts? Why have the older generation so often used violence to solve their problems? Why are they so【C13】______and guilt-ridden in their personal lives, so obsessed with mean ambitions and the desire to amass more and more【C14】______possessions? These are not questions the older generation can【C15】______lightly. Traditionally, the young have turned to their elders for【C16】______. Today, the situation might be【C17】______. The old—if they are【C18】______to admit it-could learn a thing or two from their children. One of the biggest lessons they could learn is that enjoyment is not "sinful". Enjoyment is a principle one could apply to all【C19】______of life. It is surely not wrong to enjoy your work and enjoy your leisure; to【C20】______restricting inhibitions.

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

BSection II Reading Comprehension/B

Writeanessaybasedonthefollowingtable.Inyourwritingyoushould1)describethetable,and2)giveyourcomments.Youshouldwriteatleast150words.WriteyouressayonANSWERSHEET2.(15points)

New science reveals how your brain is hard-wired when it comes to spending—and how you can reboot it. The choice to spend rather than save reflects a very human—and, some would say, American—quirk: a preference for immediate gratification over future gains. In other words, we get far more joy from buying a new pair of shoes today, or a Caribbean vacation, or an iPhone 4S, than from imagining a comfortable life tomorrow. Throw in an instant-access culture—in which we can get answers on the Internet within seconds, have a coffeepot delivered to our door overnight, and watch movies on demand—and we're not exactly training the next generation to delay gratification. "Pleasure now is worth more to us than pleasure later," says economist William Dickens of Northeastern University, "We much prefer current consumption to future consumption. It may even be wired into us. " As brain Scientists plumb the neurology of an afternoon at the mall, they are discovering measurable differences between the brains of people who save and those who spend with abandon, particularly in areas of the brain that predict consequences, process the sense of reward, spur motivation, and control memory. In fact, neuroscientists are mapping the brain's saving and spending circuits so precisely that they have been able to stir up the saving and disable the spending in some people. The result: people' s preferences switch from spending like a drunken sailor to saving like a child of the Depression. All told, the gray matter responsible for some of our most crucial decisions is finally revealing its secrets. Psychologists and behavioral economists, meanwhile, are identifying the personality types and other traits that distinguish savers from spenders, showing that people who aren't good savers are neither stupid nor irrational—but often simply don't accurately foresee the consequences of not saving. Rewire the brain to find pleasure in future rewards, and you're on the path to a future you really want. In one experiment, neuroeconomist Paul Glimcher of New York University wanted to see what it would take for people to willingly delay gratification. He gave a dozen volunteers a choice: $ 20 now or more money, from $ 20.25 to $ 110, later. On one end of the spectrum was the person who agreed to take $21 in a month—to essentially wait a month in order to gain just $ 1. In economics-speak, this kind of person has a "flat discount function", meaning he values tomorrow almost as much as today and is therefore able to delay gratification. At the other end was someone who was willing to wait a month only if he got $ 68, a premium of $48 from the original offer. This is someone economists call a "steep discounter", meaning the value he puts on the future (and having money then) is dramatically less than the value he places on today; when he wants something, he wants it now.

Brands are basically a promise. They tell consumers what quality to expect from a【C1】______and show off its personality. Firms invest a lot on the image of their brands to【C2】______sales and loyalty. But measuring their value is hard. Millward Brown, a market-research company, is one of several that takes a stab at it. It has just published its annual ranking of the world"s "most【C3】______" brands based on consumers"【C4】______and the performance of the companies that own them. The top 100 are collectively worth $2.6 trillion, the firm【C5】______Apple remains the world"s most【C6】______brand, worth $185 billion,【C7】______the head of three major technology companies. However, it may have been a【C8】______year for Apple in many respects: rivals are gaining share of the smartphone market;【C9】______and margins have been【C10】______. And Apple hasn"t unveiled a major new product since last October.【C11】______. none of the three major technology companies has increased much in value since last year perhaps because they have been refining their products【C12】______being startlingly innovative. Microsoft, which tried to be startling by【C13】______a radical new operating system, has seen its brand value fall. Apple"s big rival, Samsung, jumped 25 places, partly by out-innovating Apple and partly by【C14】______its advertising expenditure by $1.6 billion. Visa was one of the main brand sponsors for the 2012 Olympic games in London. But many of the big gainers【C15】______growth in emerging markets. That helps explain the rise in the value of beer brands like Brazil"s Brahma, which is worth 61% more than last year. Ten-cent, an internet services company, benefited from being innovative and Chinese.【C16】______sales slowed in Europe, Zara, a high-street fashion retailer introduced online shopping for customers in China Luxury【C17】______companies tend their brands even more carefully than most. Gucci, whose brand value increased by almost 50%, has invested in technology to【C18】______its online and mobile presence. The biggest riser this year,【C19】______. is Prada, whose brand value【C20】______63% as it increased sales in both old markets and new. But even in Western Europe its most enthusiastic customers were Asian tourists.

Directions: You are scheduled to head for a job interview tomorrow afternoon. However, you have just been informed that there will be an important lecture then, and you can't excuse yourself. So write a letter to the interviewer; 1) Express your apology; 2) Explain the reason why you can't meet the appointment; 3) Request your appointment be scheduled for another time. Write your letter with no less than 100 words. Write it neatly on Answer Sheet 2. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter, use "Li Ming" instead. You do not need to write the address. (10 points)

BPart BDirections: Write an essay of 160-200 words based on the following information./B

You bought a digital camera in a store last week, and you have found that there is something wrong with it. Write a letter to the store manager to explain the problem, express your complaints and suggest a solution. You should write about 100 words on ANSWER SHEET 2. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use" Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address. (10 points)

Psychologists have known for a century that individuals vary in their cognitive ability. But are some groups, like some people, reliably smarter than others? In order to answer that question, we grouped 697 volunteer participants into teams of two to five members. Each team worked together to complete a series of short tasks, which were selected to represent the varied kinds of problems that groups are called upon to solve in the real world. One task involved logical analysis, another brainstorming; others emphasized coordination, planning and moral reasoning. Individual intelligence, as psychologists measure it, is defined by its generality: People with good vocabularies, for instance, also tend to have good math skills, even though we often think of those abilities as distinct. The results of our studies showed that this same kind of general intelligence also exists for teams. On average, the groups that did well on one task did well on the others, too. In other words, some teams were simply smarter than others. We found the smartest teams were distinguished by three characteristics. First, their members contributed more equally to the team' s discussions, rather than letting one or two people dominate the group. Second, their members scored higher on a test called Reading the Mind in the Eyes, which measures how well people can read complex emotional states from images of faces with only the eyes visible. Finally, teams with more women outperformed teams with more men. This last effect, however, was partly explained by the fact that women, on average, were better at "mindreading" than men. In a new study, we replicated these earlier findings. We randomly assigned each of 68 teams to complete our collective intelligence test in one of two conditions. Half of the teams worked face to face. The other half worked online, with no ability to see any of their teammates. We wanted to see whether groups that worked online would still demonstrate collective intelligence, and whether social ability would matter as much when people communicated purely by typing messages into a browser. And they did. Online and off, some teams consistently worked smarter than others. More surprisingly, the most important ingredients for a smart team remained constant regardless of its mode of interaction: members who communicated a lot, participated equally and possessed good emotion-reading skills.

Heart disease has long been Britain's biggest single killer. Despite our efforts to ward off its risk factors with more exercise and a healthier diet, the statistics remain sobering—particularly if you are a man. According to the British Heart Foundation, one in seven men will die from heart disease compared with one in 11 women, and of the 2. 3 million people living with heart disease in the UK, 60 percent are men. Professor Jamie Waterall, the national lead for cardiovascular disease prevention at PHE, says there are many reasons why more men than women are suffering heart disease. "Women do have the advantage of some hormonal protection of the heart prior to the menopause, which lessens their risk, but from that age onwards things should even out. But men continue to display an abundance of risky lifestyle behaviours that make them more vulnerable. They eat more, drink more, smoke more, for example. " Numerous studies have shown that excess belly fat, even if you are skinny everywhere else, can be deadly. "Fat around the middle—especially the deep visceral fat hidden in your abdomen—has been linked to a higher risk of heart disease because these fat cells produce damaging toxic substances," Allen says. Previously, men were advised to drink no more than three to four units of alcohol a day, which technically meant they could consume 28 units a week. The latest rules have cut that to no more than 14 units. Cutting down is one thing, but you should also spread your alcohol intake and have "several drink-free days per week" , according to the charity Drinkaware. Doing so can help your weight and cholesterol levels, both bad for the heart, to drop. According to the smoking cessation charity Ash, smoking at any age causes about 14 percent of deaths from heart disease. If you are a smoker, stopping is the single most important thing you can do. Switching to e-cigarettes or vaping is a positive move—provided that you eventually stop for good. In February a study from the University of California revealed that people who vape are more likely to have higher adrenaline levels and more stress in the heart, both of which have an adverse effect on cardiovascular health. "In the short term, using e-cigarettes may be useful as a stepping stone to quitting, but the ultimate goal is to stop using them too," says Allen.

BPart B/B

Suppose the Student's Union in your department is holding an end-of-semester party on July 11. Write an invitation letter to Mr. Black, the dean, and invite him to join you. Let him know the time and place and what he is expected to do at the party. You should write about 100 words on the ANSWER SHEET. Do not sign your name. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address. ( 10 points)

BSection II Reading Comprehension/B

The world is on the top of a staggering rise in the number of old people, and they will live longer than ever before.【C1】______the next 20 years the global population of those aged 65 or more will almost double, from 600m to 1.1 billion. The experience of the 20th century, when longer life【C2】______more years in retirement rather than more years at work, has persuaded many observers that this shift will lead to slower economic growth and【C3】______, while the swelling ranks of pensioners will smash government【C4】______. But the notion of a sharp division between the working young and the【C5】______old misses a new trend, the growing gap between the skilled and the unskilled. Employment rates are falling among younger unskilled people,【C6】______older skilled folk are working longer. The【C7】______is most extreme in America, where well-educated baby-boomers are【C8】______retirement while many less-skilled younger people have dropped out of the workforce. Policy is【C9】______responsible. Many European governments have abandoned policies that used to encourage people to retire early. Longer life, combined with the replacement of generous pension plans【C10】______meaner ones, means that even the better-off must work longer to have a【C11】______retirement. But the changing nature of work also plays a big role. Pay has risen sharply for the highly educated, and those people continue to【C12】______rich rewards into old age because these days the educated elderly are more productive than their【C13】______. Technological change may well reinforce that shift: the skills that【C14】______computers, from management expertise to creativity, do not necessarily【C15】______with age. This trend will benefit not just【C16】______elderly people but also, in some ways, society as a whole. Growth will slow less dramatically than expected; government revenues will be in better【C17】______, as high earners pay taxes for longer. At the other end of the social scale, however, things look【C18】______. Manual work gets harder as people get older. The rapid innovation has raised the incomes of the highly skilled while【C19】______those of the unskilled. The consequences, for individuals and society, are【C20】______.

BSection III Writing/B

Suppose you phoned your friend Mary several times yesterday but she didn't answer your call at all. Write her an email to 1) find out what happened, and 2) ask if she need your help. You should write about 100 words. Do not use your own name. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write your address.

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

Write a letter of about 100 words to a beach resort where you had a wonderful vocation to express your gratitude for their good service. 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)

Our society is full of competition, which is inevitable. Generally speaking, competition contributes to progress in society. In this section, you are asked to write an essay on the importance of competition. You can provide specific reasons and examples to support your idea. You should write at least 150 words.