For more than a decade, Dell has posted double-digit growth by selling computers directly to customers, most of them corporate clients. But two unfriendly trends have driven Dell to sell its computers at a place where chairman Michael Dell swore he would never be caught dead: a Dell retail store. 【F1】______"We"re seeing more andmore of our technology intersecting with home entertainment," says Ro Parra, a senior vice president of Dell"s home and small-business group. To attract gamesters and movie watchers, Dell has unveiled new models in its multimedia XPS line. The units range from a $3,500 desktop-notebook hybrid with a 20-in. screen and a remote, to a $2,270 gaming desktop with a swanky scarlet-and-gray exterior and high-end specs. Parra says Dell"s stores give consumers a chance to see its multimedia PCs and laptops in a home environment, paired with some of Dell"s other consumer goods like its flat-screen TV sets. The company expects to open more stores in the fall. The second reason for Dell to go retail is more prosaic. For years, Dell"s direct-shipment model proved especially good for selling to businesses, which generate 80% of its sales.【F2】______So everyday shoppers are powering the industry"sgrowth. The consumer market grew at twice the pace of the enterprise market last year, according to technology-research firm IDC. Many of the challenges facing Dell seem to spring from the very innovations that made it a power force. By selling direct, Dell keeps a lid on overhead and offers customized computers at competitive prices, with relatively swift delivery. As the price of computing dropped, Dell was consistently able to shed costs and maintain a price advantage over rivals. But this year Dell"s competitors have attacked that price gap.【F3】______Retailers have also cut prices, evenselling at cost and relying on upgrades and services for profits. One possibility that doesn"t exist is the ability to walk out of the store with a computer. The newstores won"t carry inventory, so consumers will have to wait a few days for delivery.【F4】______Even as the company speeds up its retail operation, Dell CEO KevinRollins still downplays the significance of the home market, saying "It"s a secondary priority compared to our corporate customers." And he argues that the move is really an expansion of the small booths that Dell has set up in malls to allow customers to place orders. Says Parra: "We have 160 booths that have been very successful, and all we are doing is expanding on that success." 【F5】______Dell is retraining its customer-support staffand offering a new service called Dell Direct, which allows a technician to connect to a customer"s computer to root out problems. That"s partly in response to harsh criticism after the company didn"t initially beef up customer support as business grew, leading to 30-min. waits to talk to a phone representative. Last year Dell also announced it would hire 1,500 more call-center workers. "What I am most excited about is the investment in customer support," says Rollins."It allows consumers who are not on a network directly, to connect with us the same way a big corporate client would." A.HP slashed thousands of jobs and reduced the number of assembly plants, streamlining its supply chain and enabling it to go head to head with Dell on low-end machines. B.The stores are part of a bigger program to make the company more user-friendly. C.That lowers operating costs, but Vitelli, senior vice president of consumer electronics, says the impatience of the gotta-have-it-now mall shopper is not on Dell"s side: "Are you going to go to the restaurant, look at the menu and say, "That"s great. Send me the meal in 10 days"?" D.But the business market is becoming more commoditized, and prices are in a free fall. On the other hand, the sale to individual customers has grown rapidly. E.Dell CEO Kevin Rollins considers the home market as its second priority because it generates less profit. F.The first trend is the ever popular commingling of computing and entertainment in your living room. Yet Dell lives at the office. G.The company is very confident that its retail stores will expand rapidly in the next few years.

[A] Title: GOOD HEALTH [B] Time limit: 40 minutes [C] Word limit: 120-150 words (not including the given opening sentence) [D] Your composition should be based on the OUTLINE below and should start with the given opening sentence: "The desire for good health is universal." [E] Your composition should be written neatly on ANSWER SHEET 2. (15 points) OUTLINE: 1. Importance of good health 2. Ways to keep fit 3. My own practices

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

Is it possible to persuade mankind to live without war? War is an ancient institution which has existed for at least six thousand years. It was always wicked and usually foolish, but in the past the human race managed to live with it. Modern ingenuity has changed this. Either Man will abolish war, or war will abolish Man. For the present, it is nuclear weapons that cause the gravest danger, but bacteriological or chemical weapons may, before long, offer an even greater threat. If we succeed in abolishing nuclear weapons, our work will not be done. It will never be done until we have succeeded in abolishing war. To do this, we need to persuade mankind to look upon international questions in a new way, not as contests of force, in which the victory goes to the side which is most skilful in massacre, but by arbitration in accordance with agreed principles of law. It is not easy to change age-old mental habits, but this is what must be attempted. There are those who say that the adoption of this or that ideology would prevent war. I believe this to be a profound error. All ideologies are based upon dogmatic assertions(主张)which are, at best, doubtful, and at worst, totally false. Their adherents believe in them so fanatically that they are willing to go to war in support of them. The movement of world opinion during the past two years has been very largely such as we can welcome. It has become a commonplace that nuclear war must be avoided. Of course very difficult problems remain in the international sphere, but the spirit in which they are being approached is a better one than it was some years ago. It has begun to be thought, even by the powerful men who decide whether we shall live or die, that negotiations should reach agreements even if both sides do not find these agreements wholly satisfactory. It has begun to be understood that the important conflict nowadays is not between East and West, but between Man and the H-bomb.

"Forests are the lungs of our land," said Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Twenty years ago, the world"s lungs were diseased. Roughly half of all the planet"s once-luxuriant tropical forests had been felled and the further deterioration of the Earth"s green spaces seemed【C1】______. Over time countries【C2】______a "forest transition curve". They start in【C3】______with the land covered in trees. As they get richer, they fell the forest and the curve drops sharply until it reaches a low point when people decide to【C4】______whatever they have left Then the curve rises as reforestation【C5】______. At almost every point along the【C6】______, countries are now doing better defor-esters are【C7】______down less; reforesters are【C8】______more. This matters to everyone because of the extraordinary【C9】______that tropical forests make to reducing carbon emissions. Trees are carbon【C10】______. If you fell and burn them, you【C11】______carbon into the atmosphere. If you let them【C12】______they store carbon away in their trunks for centuries. Despite decades of【C13】______, tropical forests are still【C14】______about a fifth of emissions from fossil fuels each year. Encouraging countries to plant trees(or【C15】______them from logging)is by far the most【C16】______way of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.【C17】______Brazil had kept on felling trees as rapidly as it was cutting them【C18】______in 2005, it would, by 2013, have put an extra 3.2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. As a way of【C19】______the environment, protecting trees is hard to beat. It is in everyone"s interest to find out which forest policies work—and【C20】______them.

A young consultant"s life is tiring. A【C1】______week starts before dawn on Monday, with a rush to the airport and a【C2】______to wherever the client is based. He can【C3】______to stay in hotels at least three nights a week, gorging on minibar peanuts and gloomily texting a(n) 【C4】______lover. "It"s quite【C5】______to spend a year living out of a suitcase," sighs one London-based consultant. So the job【C6】______to "insecure overachievers" —a phrase【C7】______used in the industry—"who are always worried that they haven"t done enough work," jokes a consultant Some 60-65% of consultants are recent college-leavers. Most【C8】______out within a few years and take more settled jobs elsewhere in the business world,【C9】______their experience and contacts【C10】______them to slot in several levels above their less-travelled【C11】______. The elite consultancies have offices in big cities, which is where【C12】______young people want to live. The best-paid jobs are in places【C13】______London and New York. Such cities are also where the culture and dating opportunities are richest. Such attitudes are frustrating for firms in Portsmouth or Peoria.【C14】______consultancies benefit from it They【C15】______bright young things in the metropolis and then hire out their brains to firms in the sticks. This is one【C16】______why consultants have to travel so much. The system【C17】______, more or less, for everyone. Firms in the provinces get to【C18】______talent they could not【C19】______hire. And young consultants get to experience life in the real world before returning to the capital to party with their friends at the weekend. They have it all,【C20】______enough sleep.

A hundred years ago it was assumed and scientifically "proved" by economists that the laws of society made it necessary to have a vast army of poor and jobless people in order to keep the economy going. Today, hardly anybody would dare to voice this principle. It is generally accepted that nobody should be excluded from the wealth of the nation, either by the laws of nature or by those of society.【F1】 The opinions, which were current a hundred years ago, that the poor owed their conditions to their ignorance, or lack of responsibility, are outdated. In all Western industrial countries, a system of insurance has been introduced which guarantees everyone a minimum of subsistence in case of unemployment, sickness and old age. I would go one step further and argue that, even if these conditions are not present, everyone has the right to receive the means to subsist. In other words, he can claim this subsistence minimum without having to have any "reason".【F2】 I would suggest, however, that it should be limited to a definite period of time, let's say two years, so as to avoid the encouraging of an abnormal attitude, which refuses any kind of social obligation. This may sound like a fantastic proposal, but so, I think, our insurance system would have sounded to people a hundred years ago. The main objection to such a scheme would be that if each person were entitled to receive minimum support, people would not work. This assumption rests on the fallacy of the inherent laziness in human nature.【F3】 Actually, aside from abnormally lazy people, there would be very few who would not want to earn more than the minimum, and who would prefer to do nothing rather than work. 【F4】 However, the suspicions against a system of guaranteed subsistence minimum are not groundless from the standpoints of those who want to use ownership of capital for the purpose of forcing others to accept the work conditions they offer. If nobody were forced to accept work in order not to starve, work would have to be sufficiently interesting and attractive to induce one to accept it. Freedom of contract is possible only if both parties are free to accept and reject it; in the present capitalist system this is not the case. 【F5】 But such a system would not only be the beginning of real freedom of contract between employers and employees: its principal advantages would be the improvement of freedom in interpersonal relationships in every sphere of daily life.

You rent a house through an agency. The heating system has stopped working. You phoned the agency a week ago but it still has not been repaired. Write a letter to the agency. Your letter should be based on the following outline: 1) state your purpose; 2) explain the situation; 3) tell them what you want them to do about it. You should write about 100 words. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Fan Cheng" instead, You do not need to write the address.

Drug use is rising dramatically among the nation"s youth after a decade of decline. From 1993 to 1994, marijuana use among young people (1)_____ from 12 to 17 jumped 50 percent. One in five high school seniors (2)_____ marijuana daily. Monitoring the Future, which (3)_____ student drug use annually, reports that negative attitudes about drugs have declined for the fourth year in a row. (4)_____ young people see great risk in using drugs. Mood-altering pharmaceutical drugs are (5)_____ new popularity among young people. Ritalin, (6)_____ as a diet pill in the 1970s and now used to (7)_____ hyperactive children, has become a (8)_____ drug on college campuses. A central nervous system (9)_____, Ritalin can cause strokes, hypertension, and seizures. Rohypnol, produced in Europe as a (10)_____ tranquilizer, lowers inhibitions and suppresses short-term memory, which has led to some women being raped by men they are going out with. (11)_____ taken with alcohol, its effects are greatly (12)_____. Rock singer Kurt Cobain collapsed from an (13)_____ of Rohypnol and champagne a month before he committed (14)_____ in 1994. In Florida and Texas, Rohypnol has become widely abused among teens, who see the drug as a less expensive (15)_____ for marijuana and LSD. Alcohol and tobacco use is increasing among teenagers, (16)_____ younger adolescents. Each year, more than one million teens become regular smokers, (17)_____ they cannot legally purchase tobacco. By 12th grade, one in three students smokes. In 1995, one in five 14-year-olds reported smoking regularly, a 33 percent jump (18)_____ 1991. Drinking among 14-year-olds climbed 50 percent from 1992 to 1994, and all teens reported substantial increases in (19)_____ drinking. In 1995, one in five 10th graders reported having been drunk in the past 30 days. Two-thirds of high school seniors say they know a (20)_____ with a drinking problem.

Few men who find themselves cast as heroes early in life continue to command universal esteem till the end. Sir Edmund Hillary was one. To be the first to reach the top of the world"s highest mountain ensured international celebrity and a place in history, but the modesty of a slightly awkward New Zealand beekeeper never departed him. Nor was mountaineering, or indeed beekeeping, his only accomplishment Two views are often expressed about his life. One is that conquering Everest was everything. No one would play down the role of Tenasing Norgay, the Sherpa who reached the peak with him, possibly even before him; their partnership was like that of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. But it was Sir Edmund who first struggled his way up a crack in the 12-metre(40-foot)rockface that had to be overcome after the south summit if the real one was to be achieved, and below which only oblivion awaited. News of the British-led expedition"s triumph on May 29th 1953 reached the world through a report in the London Times four days later. The Times, a sponsor of the expedition, had used an elaborate code to trick any rivals monitoring the radio waves. Its scoop was indeed a coup: June 2nd was the day of Queen Elizabeth"s coronation, at Which her majesty was crowned. Sir Edmund was a man of action. After Everest came more expeditions in Nepal, a race to the South Pole and further adventures in the Antarctic, the Himalayas and India. But for some onlookers neither these nor even the Everest expedition was especially remarkable: fitness and physical courage are all very well, they argued, but the world"s highest peak was simply waiting to be scaled, and a steady traffic nowadays makes its way to the top unnoticed, except for the litter it leaves. Both the indifferent and the awe-struck, however, agree that Sir Edmund"s other life was wholly admirable, and he himself said he was prouder of it than of anything else. This was his tireless work for the Sherpas, of whom he had become so fond. Through his efforts, and those of Tenzing, hospitals, clinics, bridges, runways and nearly 30 schools have been built in the Solo Khumbu region of Nepal just south of Everest. If New Zealand claimed Sir Edmund"s loyalty, Nepal, and especially its Sherpas, could surely claim his heart.

Telecommuting, Internet shopping and online meetings may save energy as compared with in-person alternatives, but as the digital age moves on, its green reputation is turning a lot browner. Last year, E-mailing consumed as much as 1.5 percent of the nation"s electricity—half of which comes from coal. In 2005 the computers of the world ate up 123 billion kilo-watt hours ofenergy. As a result, the power bill to run a computer over its lifetime will surpass the cost of buying the machine in the first place—giving Internet and computer companies a business reason to cut energy costs, as well as an environmental one. One of the biggest energy sinks comes not from the computers themselves but from the air-conditioning needed to keep them from overheating. For every kilowatt-hour of energy used for computing in a data center, another kilowatt-hour is required to cool the furnace like racks of servers. For Internet giant Google, this reality has driven efforts such as the installation of a solar array that can provide 30 percent of the peak power needs of its headquarters as well as increasing purchases of renewable energy. But to deliver Web pages within seconds, the firm must maintain hundreds of thousands of computer servers in cavernous buildings. "We are actively working to maximize the efficiency of our data centers, which account for most of the energy Google consumes worldwide." remarks Google"s green energy czar Bill Weihl. Google will funnel some of its profits into a new effort, dubbed RE

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