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

BPart B/B

People used to think that learning two languages created confusion in the mind. Far【C1】______it was thought, to get one right than bother with two. An even more extreme and【C2】______view was that learning two languages caused a kind of mental illness or dual personality. Some studies did seem to【C3】______the idea that learning two languages could be problematic; early researchers noted that bilingual people tended to have smaller vocabularies and slower access to words. But these myths and【C4】______disadvantages have now been overshadowed by a【C5】______of new research showing the【C6】______psychological benefits of learning another language. And these extend way【C7】______being able to order a cup of coffee abroad or ask directions to your hotel. First, Language centers in the brain actually grow as a result of successful language learning. The better you learn, the more those【C8】______areas of the brain grow. Second, bilingualism【C9】______Alzheimer's disease in susceptible people by as much as five years. Seems unbelievable,【C10】______the studies are continuing to support this result. Third, being bilingual can lead to【C11】______listening skills, since the brain has to work harder to recognize different types of sounds in two or more languages. Fourth, you may become more language 【C12】______. Infants in bilingual households can distinguish languages they've never even【C13】______before. Just being 【C14】______the different sounds in, for example, Spanish and Catalan, helps them tell the difference between English and French. Fifth, it can【C15】______your memory. Babies brought up in a bilingual environment have stronger working memories than those brought up【C16】______only one language. Sixth, bilingual people can【C17】______from one task to another more quickly. Seventh, bilinguals have stronger control over their【C18】______and are better able to limit distractions. Furthermore, it can help develop new ways of seeing and improve your first language etc. These are all quite apart from the benefits of【C19】______yourself in another culture, and of seeing your own culture from the【C20】______of another. You may well get something like ' a second soul' from learning another language.

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

Writeanessaybasedonthefollowingchart.Inyouressay,youshould(1)interpretthechart,and(2)giveyourcomments.Youshouldwriteabout150wordsneatlyontheANSWERSHEET.(15points)

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

It's often said that the mark of a civilised society is how it treats its most vulnerable citizens in times of austerity. And in the past week, Britain has proved itself quite not so. Last Thursday a United Nations inquiry into disability rights in the UK ruled that the government is failing in its duties in everything from education, work and housing to health, transport and social security. Presented with overwhelming evidence of a range of regressive policies and multibillion-pound cuts to disability services, it described the treatment of disabled people in this country as a " human catastrophe " . Less than 24 hours later, Luke Davey lost his appeal against his local council cutting his care package almost in half. Luke is quadriplegic, has cerebral palsy and is registered blind. But in this climate of cuts to disability services, after 23 years of 24/7 support, his care hours have been suddenly gutted. Without enough funding for full-time personal assistants, his mother, Jasmine, is forced to fill in the gaps: sitting in the bungalow to ensure he's not alone, and lifting her 14-stone son into a hoist. Jasmine, it's worth noting, is 75 and has cancer. Bit by bit, the abuse of disabled people in Britain is being normalised. This isn't simply the result of newspapers and politicians dehumanising the "scrounging" disabled. It's that the hardship being witnessed is now so common, so widespread, it's as if it's not worth comprehension. Resisting this becomes almost an act of defiance: to say that it's not normal for a self-proclaimed global leader of disability rights to have to be shamed publicly by the United Nations over its treatment of disabled citizens; that it's not economically necessary for one of the wealthiest nations on Earth to cut benefits and social care so deeply that disabled people are housebound, hungry, or suicidal. When the " most vulnerable citizens " line is used by well-meaning voices, there's a secret second sentence that's rarely uttered: disabled people, truth be told, do not need to be vulnerable. Contrary to the myth sold by years of austerity, to be afraid, desperate or isolated is not a normal state of affairs for people with disabilities. Vulnerability comes when politicians choose to pull the support disabled people need in order to live dignified, fulfilling, independent lives—knowing full well the misery it will cause.

BSection II Reading Comprehension/B

The "Hard Out Here" video has racked up(获胜)over 27 millions views to date on YouTube. But the market for a pop star making clever, difficult songs is narrow, and Allen"s commercial prospects , at least in the U.S., aren"t as promising as they were eight years ago. Without the mass-market distribution channel of radio behind her, it"s tougher to get the message across. If Allen had it her way, she says, "Hard Out Here" would have been released to radio. "I think I"m justified in saying it would have made a hit ," she says. " Radio stations don"t want to play any music that has a message. Everyone"s worried they"re going to get fired. If they had, they would have seen a triumph. " Even though Allen uses top-notch producers—aside from Kurstin, the album makes use of hip-hop producer DJ Dahi and Shellback—her sensibilities are too English for superstar like that of Be-yonce, who released her own feminist song. It"s easy to dismiss Allen as the perpetual trash talker, criticizing the popular girls even as she aspires to be one of them, and yet there"s real value in her social message and the wit with which she dispenses it. Allen may not be the most famous among her peers, but she"s one of the more important—a cultural critic embedded within pop music, saying the things that her contemporaries won"t. "I change with the way the world changes," Allen says. "My music is always social commentary. I don"t know what the world is going to be like in five years" time, but as long as I"m not ashamed of what I"m putting out, then I"m happy. "

BSection II Reading Comprehension/B

Crippling health care bills, long emergency-room waits and the inability to find a primary care physician just scratch the surface of the problems that patients face daily. Primary care should be the backbone of any health care system. Countries with appropriate primary care resources score highly when it comes to health outcomes and cost. The U. S. takes the opposite approach by emphasizing the specialist rather than the primary care physician. A recent study analyzed the providers who treat Medicare beneficiaries (老年医保受惠人). The startling finding was that the average Medicare patient saw a total of seven doctors—two primary care physicians and five specialists—in a given year. Contrary to popular belief, the more physicians taking care of you don't guarantee better care. Actually, increasing fragmentation of care results in a corresponding rise in cost and medical errors. How did we let primary care slip so far? The key is how doctors are paid. Most physicians are paid whenever they perform a medical service. The more a physician does, regardless of quality or outcome, the better he's reimbursed(返还费用). Moreover, the amount a physician receives leans heavily toward medical or surgical procedures. A specialist who performs a procedure in a 30-minute visit can be paid three times more than a primary care physician using that same 30 minutes to discuss a patient's disease. Combine this fact with annual government threats to indiscriminately cut reimbursements, physicians are faced with no choice but to increase quantity to boost income. Primary care physicians who refuse to compromise quality are either driven out of business or to cash-only practices, further contributing to the decline of primary care. Medical students are not blind to this scenario. They see how heavily the reimbursement deck is stacked against primary care. The recent numbers show that since 1997, newly graduated U. S. medical students who choose primary care as a career have declined by 50% . This trend results in emergency rooms being overwhelmed with patients without regular doctors.How do we fix this problem? It starts with reforming the physician reimbursement system. Remove the pressure for primary care physicians to squeeze in more patients per hour, and reward them for optimally (最佳地) managing their diseases and practicing evidence-based medicine. Make primary care more attractive to medical students by forgiving student loans for those who choose primary care as a career and reconciling the marked difference between specialist and primary care physician salaries. We're at a point where primary care is needed more than ever. Within a few years, the first wave of the 76 million Baby Boomers will become eligible for Medicare. Patients older than 85, who need chronic care most, will rise by 50% this decade. Who will be there to treat them?

Going hungry is a major contributor to ill health, particularly among children, and a new report reveals how long-lasting the damage can be. Researchers at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the University of Calgary performed the first longterm study on the【C1】______of hunger on general health,【C2】______children from birth to 21 years. Most studies to date have【C3】______only snapshots of childhood health,【C4】______the short-term impact of hunger【C5】______a period of time. In the new analysis, the scientists found that children who went hungry at least once in their lives were 2i-times more likely to have【C6】______overall health 10 to 15 years later, compared with those who never had to【C7】______food. "Our research shows that hunger and food insecurity are really damaging【C8】______children"s life chances," says lead author Sharon Kirkpatrick, a visiting fellow at NCI. The study supports earlier findings that【C9】______episodes of hunger are more likely to cause ill health than an isolated experience of starvation: children in Kirkpatrick"s analysis who experienced two or more periods of hunger were more than four times as likely to report ill health than those who never went hungry. The relationship, she says, remained strong even after the team accounted【C10】______other factors that could influence health, such as age, sex and household characteristics like income. 【C11】______one experience of hunger can have lasting effects on a child"s health, a fact that is especially troubling in light of the sobering rise in U.S. households that were【C12】______to do without food in 2008: 15% of American families reported some【C13】______in the amount or quality of food they consumed,【C14】______from 11% the previous year. 15 this study did not probe into the【C16】______mechanism by which hunger affects long-term health, Kirkpatrick【C17】______that both psychological and physiological factors may be at work. Aside from the obvious negative impact that missing key nutrients and calories can have on growth and development, she says, the psychological【C18】______of food insecurity—not being able to afford a【C19】______and high-quality source of food—can be【C20】______to youngsters as well.

Suppose your younger sister is going to the United States for further education. Write an affidavit of support for her to 1) state that you will financially support her, and 2) give the evidence of your financial resources. You should write about 100 words. Do not use your own name. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write your address.

Ellen Pao spent the last few years spotlighting the technology industry's lack of diversity, in court and beyond. Erica Baker caused a stir at Google when she started a spreadsheet last year for employees to share their salaries, highlighting the pay disparities between those of different genders doing the same job. Laura I. Gomez founded a start-up focused on improving diversity in the hiring process. Now the three are starting an effort to collect and share data to help diversify the rank-and-file employees who make up tech companies. The nonprofit venture, called Project Include, was unveiled on Tuesday. As part of Project Include, the group plans to extract commitments from tech companies to track the diversity of their work forces over time and eventually share that data with other start-ups. The effort will focus on start-ups that employ 25 to 1,000 workers, in the hope of spurring the companies to think about equality sooner rather than later. The project will also ask for participation from venture capital firms that advise and mentor the start-ups. Project Include aims to have 18 companies as part of its first cohort; a few have already signed up. The group will meet regularly for seven months to define and track specific metrics. At the end of that period, the group will publish an anonymized set of results to show the progress—or lack thereof—that the start-ups have made around diversity. The group' s push is intended to cut through tech' s slow pace of change on diversity. Large companies, including Google, Facebook and Microsoft, have openly admitted their failings in creating diverse work forces, and some have started programs to move the needle . But that has not seemed to spur much movement in views on the issue. In December, for instance, Michael Moritz, a partner at the venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, made headlines when he said in an interview that his firm—which had no female investment partners in the United States—would focus on hiring women but would not "lower its standards" to do so. He also said the firm was blind to gender and race. "It is this incredibly self-serving mythology that we are the best and the brightest, and that the best ideas rise to the top and will get funded," said Ms. Kapor Klein, noting there is plenty of data to show that minority access to tech programs and networks is worse than that of white males. "Despite an avalanche of rigorous data to the contrary, the belief in pure meritocracy persists."

Nationally, an ageing population is a problem. But locally it can be a boon. The over-50s control 80% of Britain's wealth, and like to spend it on houses and high-street shopping. The young "generation rent", by contrast, is poor, distractible and liable to shop online. People aged between 50 and 74 spend twice as much as the under-30s on cinema tickets. Between 2000 and 2010 restaurant spending by those aged 65-74 increased by 33%, while the under-30s spent 18% less. And while the young still struggle to find work, older people are retiring later. During the financial crisis full-time employment fell for every age group but the over-65s, and there has been a rash of older entrepreneurs. Pensioners also support the working population by volunteering: some 100 retirees in Christchurch help out as business mentors. Even if they wanted to, most small towns and cities could not capture the cool kids. Mobile young professionals cluster, and greatly prefer to cluster in London. Even supposed meccas like Manchester are ageing: clubs in that city are becoming members-only. Towns that aim too young, like Bracknell and Chippenham, can find their high streets full of closed La Senzas (a lingerie chain) and struggling tattoo parlours. Companies often lag behind local authorities in working this out. They are London-obsessed, and have been slow to appreciate the growing economic heft of the old—who are assumed, often wrongly, to stick with products they learned to love in their youth. But Caroyln Freeman of Revelation Marketing reckons Britain could be on the verge of a marketing surge directed at the grey pound, "similar to what we saw with the pink". The window will not remain open forever: soon the baby boomers will start to ail, and no one else alive today is likely to have such a rich retirement. Meanwhile, with the over-50s holding the purse strings, the towns that draw them are likely to grow more and more pleasant. Decent restaurants and nice shops spring up in the favoured haunts of the old, just as they do in the trendy, revamped boroughs of London. Latimer House, a Christchurch furniture store full of retro clothing and 1940s music, would not look out of place in Hackney. Improved high streets then entice customers of all ages. Indeed, gentrification and gerontification can look remarkably similar. Old folk and young hipsters are similarly fond of vinyl and typewriters, and wander about in outsized spectacles. Some people never lose their edge.

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

As a young bond trader, Buttonwood was given two pieces of advice, trading rules of thumb, if you will: that bad economic news is good news for bond markets and that every utterance dropping from the lips of Paul Volcker, the then chairman of the Federal Reserve, and the man who restored the central bank's credibility by stomping on runaway inflation, should be respected than Pope's orders. Today's traders are, of course, a more sophisticated bunch. But the advice still seems good, apart from two slight drawbacks. The first is that the well-chosen utterances from the present chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, is of more than passing difficulty. The second is that, of late, good news for the economy has not seemed to upset bond investors all that much. For all the cheer that has crackled down the wires, the yield on ten-year bonds—which you would expect to rise on good economic news—is now, at 4.2% , only two-fifths of a percentage point higher than it was at the start of the year. Pretty much unmoved, in other words. Yet the news from the economic front has been better by far than anyone could have expected. On Tuesday November 25th, revised numbers showed that America's economy grew by an annual 8.2% in the third quarter, a full percentage point more than originally thought, driven by the ever-spendthrift American consumer and, for once, corporate investment. Just about every other piece of information coming out from special sources shows the same strength. New houses are still being built at a fair clip. Exports are rising, for all the protectionist crying. Even employment, in what had been mocked as a jobless recovery, increased by 125 000 or thereabouts in September and October. Rising corporate profits, low credit spreads and the biggest-ever rally in the junk-bond market do not, on the face of it, suggest anything other than a deep and long-lasting recovery. Yet Treasury-bond yields have fallen. If the rosy economic backdrop makes this odd, making it doubly odd is an apparent absence of foreign demand. Foreign buyers of Treasuries, especially Asian central banks, who had been swallowing American government debt like there was no tomorrow, seem to have had second thoughts lately. In September, according to the latest available figures, foreigners bought only $ 5.6 billion of Treasuries, compared with $ 25.1 billion the previous month and an average of $ 38.7 billion in the preceding four months. In an effort to keep a lid on the yen's rise, the Japanese central bank is still busy buying dollars and parking the money in government debt. Just about everybody else seems to have been selling.[A] fairly well-chosen[B] rising rather slowly[C] setting a limit on yen's rise[D] buying American government debt bravely[E] spending more and more cautiously[F] carelessly selected[G] domestic consumers

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.

Visiting Oxford Street, a road filling with tatty shops and overcrowded with people, is plainly a trial. Less plainly, levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO 2 ) , a noxious gas, have been found to be around three times higher there than the legal limit. In 2013 the annual mean concentration of NO 2 on the street was one of the highest levels found anywhere in Europe. British air is far cleaner than it was a few decades ago. Fewer people use coal-burning stoves; old industrial plants have been decommissioned. But since 2009 levels of nitrogen oxides and particulate matter, coarse or fine particles that are linked to lung cancer and asthma, have fallen more slowly. The exact number of deaths caused by dirty air is unknown. But in 2010 a government advisory group estimated that removing man-made fine particulate matter from the atmosphere would increase life expectancy for those born in 2008 by an average of six months. Much of the slowdown is the result of fumes from diesel cars, which were championed by successive governments because they use less fuel and thus produce less carbon dioxide than petrol cars. In 2001 only 14% of all cars ran on diesel; by 2013 the proportion had increased to 35%. (Greener "hybrid" and electric cars have increased nine fold since 2006, but account for just 0. 5% of the entire fleet.) Second-hand cars are particularly noxious, but even newer ones have not been as clean as hoped. Many cars that let out few pollutants in tests produced more on the roads. Government's hesitation has not helped. Part of the problem is that several departments are responsible for air pollution. This means nobody has taken a lead on it, complains Joan Walley, a Labour MP who chairs an environmental committee that has released a series of damning reports. And few politicians are keen to fire drivers. However, some improvements have been made. In 2008 a "low-emission zone" was created in London, which targets large vans and coaches. A smaller "ultra low-emission zone" has been proposed for 2020, which would charge all vehicles that are not of a certain standard 12. 50 pounds a day. European Commission fines for breaching limits may encourage cities to do more. But other countries are more ambitious; 60 such zones exist in Germany, targeting private cars as well as vans. In December Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, announced that she wanted to ban diesel cars by 2020.

When the government talks about infrastructure contributing to the economy the focus is usually on roads, railways, broadband and energy. Housing is seldom mentioned. Why is that? To some extent the housing sector must shoulder the blame. We have not been good at communicating the real value that housing can contribute to economic growth. Then there is the scale of the typical housing project. It is hard to shove for attention among multibillion-pound infrastructure projects, so it is inevitable that the attention is focused elsewhere. But perhaps the most significant reason is that the issue has always been so politically charged. This government does not want to see a return to large-scale provision of council housing, so it is naturally wary of measures that will lead us down that route. Nevertheless, the affordable housing situation is desperate. Waiting lists increase all the time and we are simply not building enough new homes. The comprehensive spending review offers an opportunity for the government to help rectify this. It needs to put historical prejudices to one side and take some steps to address our urgent housing need. There are some indications that it is preparing to do just that. The communities minister, Don Foster, has hinted that George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer, may introduce more flexibility to the current cap on the amount that local authorities can borrow against their housing stock debt. Evidence shows that 60,000 extra new homes could be built over the next five years if the cap were lifted, increasing GDP by 0.6%. Ministers should also look at creating greater certainty in the rental environment, which would have a significant impact on the ability of registered providers to fund new developments from revenues. But it is not just down to the government. While these measures would be welcome in the short term, we must face up to the fact that the existing ￡ 4.5bn programme of grants to fund new affordable housing, set to expire in 2015, is unlikely to be extended beyond then. The Labour party has recently announced that it will retain a large part of the coalition' s spending plans if it returns to power. The housing sector needs to accept that we are very unlikely to ever return to the era of large-scale public grants. We need to adjust to this changing climate.