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

Suppose you are a professor, and your student Gloria has applied for a part-time job. Write her a recommendation to 1) introduce her, and 2) recommend her. You should write about 100 words. Do not use your own name. Use "Professor Li" instead. Do not write your address.

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

The more parents talk to their children, the faster those children"s vocabularies grow and the better their intelligence develops. That might seem blindingly obvious, but it took until 1995 for science to show just how early in life the difference begins to matter. In that year Betty Hart and Todd Risley of the University of Kansas published the results of a decade-long study in which they had looked at how, and how much, 42 families in Kansas City conversed at home. Dr Hart and Dr Risley found a close correlation between the number of words a child"s parents had spoken to him by the time he was three and his academic success at the age of nine. At three, children born into professional families had heard 30m more words than those from a poorer background. This observation has profound implications for policies about babies and their parents. It suggests that sending children to "pre-school"(nurseries or kindergartens)at the age of four—a favoured step among policymakers—comes too late to compensate for educational shortcomings at home. Happily, understanding of how children"s vocabularies develop is growing, as several presentations at this year"s meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science(AAAS)showed. One of the most striking revelations came from Anne Fernald of Stanford University, who has found that the disparity starts at the tender age of 18 months, when most toddlers speak only a dozen words, those from disadvantaged families are several months behind other, more favoured children. Indeed, Dr Fernald thinks the differentiation starts at birth. She measures how quickly toddlers process language by sitting them on their mothers" laps and showing them two images; a dog and a ball, say. A recorded voice tells the toddler to look at the ball while a camera records his reaction. This lets Dr Fernald note the moment the child"s gaze begins shifting towards the correct image. At 18 months, toddlers from better-off backgrounds can identify the correct object in 750 milliseconds—200 milliseconds faster than those from poorer families. This, says Dr Fernald, is a huge difference.

Suppose there was a terrible earthquake in Taiwan last week and people there suffered a lot. Write a letter to your schoolmates to 1) tell them the bad news, and 2) appeal them to donate money to the disaster-stricken area. You should write about 100 words. Do not use your own name. Use "The Student Union" instead. Do not write your address.

Imagine a world in which we are assigned a number that indicates how influential we are. This number would help determine【C1】______you receive a job, a hotel-room upgrade or free samples at the supermarket. If your influence score is【C2】______, you don"t get the promotion, the suite or the cookies without charge. This is not science fiction. It"s happening to millions of social network users. If you have a Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn account, you are already being【C3】______—or will be soon. Companies【C4】______names like Klout, Peerlndex and Twitter Grader are in the【C5】______of scoring millions, eventually billions, of people on their【C6】______of influence. Yet the companies are not simply looking at the number of【C7】______or friends you"ve gathered.【C8】______, they are beginning to measure influence in more【C9】______ways, and posting their judgments—in the form of a score— online. To some, it"s an inspiring tool—one that"s【C10】______the democratization of influence. No longer must you be a public【C11】______, a politician or a media personality to be【C12】______influential. Social scoring can also help build a personal brand. To critics, social scoring is a brave new technoworld, where your rating could help【C13】______how well you are treated by everyone with whom you【C14】______. Influence scores typically range from 1 to 100. On Klout, the dominant player in this space, the average score is in the high teens. A score in the 40s【C15】______a strong following. A 100, on the other hand, means you"re Justin Bieber. On Peerlndex, the average score is 19. A(n)【C16】______100, the company says, is "god-like." Companies are still improving their methodologies—examining through data and【C17】______other networking sites. Industry professionals say it"s important to focus your digital presence on one or two areas of interest. Don"t be a generalist. Most importantly: be passionate, knowledgeable and trustworthy. 【C18】______, scoring is subjective and, for now, imperfect: most analytics companies rely heavily on a user"s Twitter and Facebook【C19】______, leaving out other online activities, like blogging or posting YouTube videos.【C20】______influence in the offline world—it doesn"t count.

Only two countries in the advanced world provide no guarantee for paid leave from work to care for a newborn child. Last spring one of the two, Australia, gave up the dubious distinction by establishing paid family leave starting in 2014. I wasn't surprised when this didn't make the news here in the United States—we're now the only wealthy country without such a policy. The United States does have one explicit family policy, the Family and Medical Leave Act, passed in 1993. It entitles workers to as much as 12 weeks' unpaid leave for care of a newborn or dealing with a family medical problem. Despite the modesty of the benefit, the Chamber of Commerce and other business groups fought it bitterly, describing it as " government-run personnel management" and a "dangerous precedent". In fact, every step of the way, as (usually) Democratic leaders have tried to introduce work-family balance measures into the law, business groups have been strongly opposed. As Yale law professor Anne Alstott argues, justifying parental support depends on defining the family as a social good that, in some sense, society must pay for. In her book No Exit; What Parents Owe Their Children and What Society Owes Parents, she argues that parents are burdened in many ways in their lives; there is "no exit" when it comes to children. "Society expects—and needs—parents to provide their children with continuity of care, meaning the intensive, intimate care that human beings need to develop their intellectual, emotional and moral capabilities. And society expects—and needs— parents to persist in their roles for 18 years, or longer if needed." While most parents do this out of love, there are public penalties for not providing care. What parents do, in other words, is of deep concern to the state, for the obvious reason that caring for children is not only morally urgent but essential for the future of society. The state recognizes this in the large body of family laws that govern children' welfare, yet parents receive little help in meeting the life-changing obligations society imposes. To classify parenting as a personal choice for which there is no collective responsibility is not merely to ignore the social benefits of good parenting; really, it is to steal those benefits because they accrue (不断积累) to the whole of society as today's children become tomorrow's productive citizenry(公民). In fact, by some estimates, the value of parental investments in children, investments of time and money (including lost wages) , is equal to 20-30% of gross domestic product. If these investments generate huge social benefits—as they clearly do—the benefits of providing more social support for the family should be that much clearer.

As I type these lines, my daughter, Harriet, who is 14, is on her iPhone skipping among no fewer than eight social media sites. My son, Penn, who is 15, will be asleep for hours yet. He was 【C1】______ all night with a friend playing two video games, in a jag fueled by his favorite foodlike【C2】______ . I like that my kids are comfortable and alert in the wired world. But increasingly I am【C3】______ for them. It' s more【C4】______ every day that screens have gradually stolen them from themselves. My wife, Cree, and I have【C5】______ them to drift quite distantly into the online world, and we fear our casualness has been a 【C6】______. Each summer Cree and I resolve to【C7】______ things back. This is【C8】______ we draft rules for a new school year, strictures like: no laptops in bedrooms during the week; homework before screen time; no electronics after 10 p.m.. These rules invariably begin to【C9】______ by Day 3. By Day 4, there is pleading, and the discreet slamming of doors. By Day 8, no one is sure what the【C10】______ are anymore. We're back where we started, and plump with fear. This year it【C11】______ to me we needed help. So I sat down with a new book that【C12】______ assistance, and understanding. It is The Big Disconnect: Protecting Childhood and Family Relationships in the Digital Age, whose primary【C13】______, Catherine Steiner-Adair, is a clinical psychologist who teaches at Harvard Medical School. Her book is【C14】______ on thousands of interviews, and it can be eloquent about the need to ration our children's computer time. Here the author has pinned me. I like to think I' m a good father, perhaps even casually【C15】______ in my better moments, 【C16】______ there is zero doubt that, without my iPhone in my palm, I feel I lose something since I'm fairly【C17】______.I must change my life a bit. Cree and I are still hammering out our kids' computer rules. We are trying to【C18】______ in mind that we're not our kids' best friends; we're their【C19】______. And we are【C20】______ if there's an app for fortitude.

If you watched a certain swimmer's Rio Games debut on Sunday night, when he propelled the United States 4×100-meter relay team to a gold medal, you know the answer: Michael Phelps. While it may look like the athletes have been in a bar fight, the purple dots actually are signs of "cupping," an ancient Chinese healing practice that is experiencing an Olympic moment. In cupping, practitioners of the healing technique—or sometimes the athletes themselves— place specialized cups on the skin. Then they use either heat or an air pump to create suction between the cup and the skin, pulling the skin slightly up and away from the underlying muscles. The suction typically lasts for only a few minutes, but it's enough time to cause the capillaries just beneath the surface to rupture, creating the circular, eye-catching bruises that have been so visible on Phelps as well as members of the United States men's gymnastics team. Physiologically, cupping is thought to draw blood to the affected area, reducing soreness and speeding healing of overworked muscles. Athletes who use it swear by it, saying it keeps them injury free and speeds recovery. Phelps posted an Instagram photo showing himself stretched on a table as his Olympic swimming teammate Allison Schmitt placed several cups along the back of his thighs. "Thanks for my cupping today!" he wrote. While there's no question that many athletes, coaches and trainers believe in the treatment, there's not much science to determine whether cupping offers a real physiological benefit or whether the athletes simply are enjoying a placebo effect. "A placebo effect is present in all treatments, and I am sure that it is substantial in the case of cupping as well," said Leonid Kalichman, a senior lecturer at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. "A patient can feel the treatment and has marks after it, and this can contribute to a placebo effect." One 2012 study of 61 people with chronic neck pain compared cupping to a technique called progressive muscle relaxation, or PMR, during which a patient deliberately tenses his muscles and then focuses on relaxing them. About half the patients used cupping while the other half used PMR. Both patient groups reported similar reductions in pain after 12 weeks of treatment. Notably, the patients who had used cupping scored higher on measurements of well-being and felt less pain when pressure was applied to the area. Even so, the researchers noted that more study is needed to determine the potential benefits of cupping.

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

Air pollution killed about seven million people last year, making it the world"s single biggest environmental health risk, the World Health Organisation (WHO) says. The【C1】______a doubling of previous estimates, means one in eight of all global deaths were linked to polluted air. This means air pollution has【C2】______poor diet, high blood pressure and tobacco smoke as the leading【C3】______of preventable death worldwide. It also shows how【C4】______pollution inside and outside of people"s homes could save millions of lives in future. Air pollution deaths are most【C5】______from heart disease, strokes or lung disease. It is also linked to deaths from lung cancer and【C6】______breathing infections. "The evidence【C7】______the need for concerted action to clean up the air we all breathe," said Maria Neira, an official from WHO. "The risks from air pollution are now far greater than previously thought or understood, particularly for heart disease and strokes." Poor and middle-income countries in Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific region had the largest number of air pollution-related deaths, with 3.3 million deaths linked to indoor air pollution and 2.6 million deaths to outdoor air pollution. Indoor pollution is mostly caused by cooking【C8】______coal, wood stoves. The WHO estimates that around 2.9 billion people worldwide live in homes using wood or coal as their【C9】______cooking fuel. Outdoors, air is mainly polluted by transport, power generation, industrial and agricultural emissions and residential【C10】______and cooking. Research suggests outdoor air pollution【C11】______levels have risen significantly in some parts of the world, particularly in【C12】______countries with large populations【C13】______rapid industrialization. Carlos Dora, a WHO public health expert, called on governments and health【C14】______to act on the evidence and【C15】______policies to reduce air pollution, which【C16】______would improve health and reduce humans"【C17】______on climate change. "Excessive air pollution is often a by-product of unsustainable policies in【C18】______such as transport, energy, waste management and industry, " he said. "In most cases, healthier【C19】______will also be more economical in the long term due to healthcare cost savings as well as climate【C20】______."

Suppose there will be some basketball matches against Yale University on your campus. Write a poster to 1) inform all students of the matches in your university on behalf of the Student Union, and 2) encourage them to participate. You should write about 100 words. Do not use your own name. Use "The Student Union" instead.

The family is the center of most traditional Asians' lives. Many people worry about their families' welfare, reputation, and honor. Asian families are often【C1】______, including several generations related by【C2】______or marriage living in the same home. An Asian person's misdeeds are not blamed just on the individual but also on the family—including the dead【C3】______. Traditional Chinese, among many other Asians, respect their elders and feel a deep sense of duty【C4】______them. Children repay their parents'【C5】______by being successful and supporting them in old age. This is accepted as a【C6】______part of life in China.【C7】______, taking care of the aged parents is often viewed as a tremendous【C8】______in the United States, where aging and family support are not【C9】______highly.【C10】______, in the youth-oriented United States, growing old is seen as a bad thing and many old people do not receive respect. Pilipinos, the most Americanized of the Asians, are【C11】______extremely family-oriented. They are【C12】______to helping their children and will sacrifice greatly for their children to get an education.【C13】______, the children are devoted to their parents, who often live nearby. Grown children who leave the country for economic reasons【C14】______send large parts of their income home to their parents. The Vietnamese family【C15】______people currently【C16】______as well as the spirits of the dead and of the as-yet unborn. Any【C17】______or actions are done from family considerations, not individual desires. People's behavior is judged【C18】______whether it brings shame or pride to the family. The Vietnamese do not particularly believe in self-reliance; in this way, they are the【C19】______of people in the United States. Many Vietnamese think that their actions in this life will influence their【C20】______in the next life.

We see a lot of advertisements almost everyday and everywhere. Some advertisements are good, but some are not so good. In this section, you are asked to write an essay on the positive/negative effects of some advertisements. You can take either stand and provide specific reasons and examples to support your idea. You should write at least 150 words.

BPart B/B

Recently you have seen an advertisement in China Daily to recruit the volunteers for the World Horticultural Expo in Beijing. You are supposed to write a letter to apply for it. You should write about 100 words on the ANSWER SHEET. Do not sign your own name. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address.(10 points)

BSection III Writing/B

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

BPart B/B

The highest anxiety moment in the holiday season must be the moment just before your loved ones unwrap their gifts. The ribbon comes untied, the paper falls to the floor—what will their expression be?【C1】______out the right gift can be very difficult, and we can easily make mistakes. Before【C2】______a gift, we all ask ourselves two questions: How much to spend and what to get.【C3】______both questions are complex, the more complex one by far is what to get. We may not know the exact【C4】______of the other person;【C5】______we know what kind of gift they would absolutely love, we might still not know the exact color, size, etc.【C6】______these risks, giving an ill-suited gift risks showing the other person exactly how little we really know them. And from there the path to a【C7】______relationship is short The risk of giving the wrong thing is【C8】______gift givers often end up giving consumables such as wine and chocolate. After all, these are unlikely to be the "wrong" gift for anyone. But there's a【C9】______: These safe gifts are not very "gifty" and are unlikely to strengthen our relationship with the recipient【C10】______, when we give jewelry, art, or furniture, we take a risk that the other person will not like the【C11】______. But these risky gifts are more "gifty" and, if they are successful, will【C12】______their goal of strengthening the social【C13】______between the person giving the gift and the person【C14】______it. So how much risk do most gift givers take? Not surprisingly, the majority of givers don't risk giving more risky gifts. But were they right in playing it【C15】______? In short: They were not. A research showed that, in general, gift givers don't【C16】______how much others will enjoy their gift.【C17】______, gift receivers preferred the riskier gift and wished that gift givers took more【C18】______. So perhaps this holiday season we should put an extra effort into gift giving. Let's throw caution to the winds,【C19】______the wine, chocolates, and gift certificates and give real gifts. The biggest risk is being【C20】______.