It was an admission of cultural defeat; but then Hong Kong is nothing if not pragmatic about such things.【F1】 On June 6th its education minister lifted restrictions that forced four-fifths of the territory"s more than 500 secondary schools to teach in the "mother tongue", i.e. Cantonese, the main language of its residents. Schools may switch to English, the language of the former colonial oppressor, from next year. This reverses a decade-old policy adopted after Hong Kong"s reversion to China in 1997, in an assertion of independence from both former and present sovereign powers. Emotion may have played a large role in the decision. But it made some sense. Students speak Cantonese at home, and so using it is the easiest way to impart information and promote discussion.【F2】 It is also the first language of most teachers: a study done at the time concluded that schools labeled "English-medium" were actually teaching in Cantonese but using English-language textbooks. 【F3】 After much bureaucratic rearrangement, 20% of schools were permitted to continue teaching in English, which may have made sense to teachers and administrators, but not to ambitious parents. They know that their offspring will need English to get ahead. Those who could flee the public system for costly private schools, or for the eight semi-private schools run on the British system, did so. The rest made extraordinary efforts to enter the minority of English-language schools. They have huge waiting lists; Cantonese ones gaping holes. That helps explain the minister"s change of heart, for which no reason was given.【F4】 So does a survey published last year, which concluded that students from the Cantonese schools did far worse than their peers in getting into universities—a result that would horrify Hong Kong"s achievement-obsessed parents. And whatever the educators think, employers from coffee bars to banks either require people to be bilingual or pay more to those who are. Private schools offering supplementary English tuition have mushroomed. 【F5】 Hong Kong"s educational bureaucracy has devoted much thought to how English could be offered without harming other studies, and without sacrificing a generation of teachers with strong interest in a system based on their first language. The minister has skirted these difficult issues. A much debated but still undisclosed formula will allow an increasing number of subjects to be taught in English. Every step is controversial. Pragmatists want Hong Kong to drop Cantonese entirely in favor of English and Mandarin. But that may demand a level of cultural indifference which even Hong Kong cannot muster.

The environment protection club is going to organize some activities with the theme of "Creating Green Culture and Building Low-Carbon Campus". As the club leader, you will write a memo to the members to explain the importance and arrangements of those activities. You should write about 100 words on the ANSWER SHEET. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address. (10 points)

In the days before preschool academies were all but mandatory for kids under 5, I stayed home and got my early education from Mike Douglas. His TV talk show was one of my mother"s favorite programs, and because I looked up to my mother, it became one of my favorites too. Yet I quickly developed my own fascination with Douglas, who died lastweek. Maybe it was the plain set—a couple of chairs and little else—or maybe it was the sound of people talking about ideas and events rather than telling stories. Whatever it was, to my 4-year-old mind it was all terribly adult, like my mother"s morning coffee. It was—relatively. The grown-up world I live in now is another matter. Thanks in part to the proliferation and polarization of talk shows in the last 20 years or so—the generation after Douglas and his big-tent gentility went off the air—public conversations have become scary monsters indeed. Like other forms of entertainment, the programming of commercial talk shows today has moved beyond niche to hermetic. The idea of a host booking guests as varied as Jerry Rubin, Malcolm X and Richard Nixon—and treating them all with a certain deference, as Douglas did—is unheard of. Equally amazing is to consider that Douglas was a moderate; though he didn"t always share his guests" views, he nonetheless insisted on everybody having his or her say. What he did, in other words, was more important than who he was. That was probably an easy dictate for an old-schooL modest guy such as Douglas to follow. And now? Oprah Winfrey is sincere enough, but her viewership is a cult of personality, not of people or issues.like her contemporaries, Oprah chooses her guests and issues to suit her show, rather than allowing guests and issues to be the show. She prefers uplift and empowerment, which is more palatable than name-calling, the hallmark of Bill O"Reilly or Howard Stern. But spin is spin, and in her own way Oprah gets as tiresome as those guys. Ultimately, these shows fail to convey the fullness of the conversation, the sense that America is one place—or one host—with many voices at equal volume. That doesn"t mean everybody"s right. But to have everybody engaged and feeling a stake in the outcome of the discussion is priceless. Engagement is nothing less than national security: I felt that as a preschooler, watching Mike Douglas on TV, and I feel it now. The age of irony, they would say, fueled by information that moves at the speed of light, demands a different approach.

A Found Notice Write a found notice of about 100 words based on the following situation: You found a ring in the reading room of the library in your university. Now write a found notice to seek its owner. Do not sign your own name at the end of the notice. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address.

Smoking, inhalation and exhalation of the fumes of burning tobacco. Leaves of the tobacco plant are smoked in various ways. After a drying and curing process, they may be rolled into cigars or shredded for insertion into smoking pipes. Cigarettes, the most popular method of smoking, consist of finely shredded tobacco rolled in lightweight paper. About 50 million people in the United States currently smoke an estimated total of 570 billion cigarettes each year. But, is smoking a good habit? 1. Increased risk of cancer Some experts noticed that lung cancer, which was rare before the 20th century, had increased dramatically since about 1930, The American Cancer Society and other organizations initiated studies comparing deaths among smokers and nonsmokers over a period of several years. 2. More deaths from other diseases Smokers also run greater risk of dying from diseases apart from cancers. 3. Cigar and pipe smoke, as dangerous Cigar and pipe smoke contains the same toxic and carcinogenic compounds found in cigarette smoke. 4. The effect of environmental tobacco smoke Recent research has focused on the effects of environmental tobacco smoke(ETS), that is, the effect of tobacco smoke on nonsmokers who must share the same environment with a smoker. 5. Addiction at an early age The smoking habit and addiction to nicotine usually begins at an early age. This has led to particular concern over smoking in teenagers and young adults. There is no need to kill innocent human beings. Restricting tobacco use may be the only answer to a healthy world. Tobacco is harmful not only to us, but to the people in surrounding areas. Tobacco use has been passed on from generation to generation. It is now time to put a ban on smoking. With the help of thousands of people, smoking can be controlled. Now it is the time to start a tobacco battle. Smoking needs to become extinct worldwide. [A]A report by the National Cancer Institute concluded that the mortality rates from cancer of the mouth, throat, larynx, pharynx, and esophagus are approximately equal in users of cigarettes, cigars, and pipes. Rates of coronary heart disease, lung cancer, emphysema, and chronic bronchitis are elevated for cigar and pipe smokers and are correlated to the amount of smoking and the degree of inhalation. [B]In the United States, more than 70 percent of adults began smoking before the age of 18. From the early to mid-1990s the proportion of teenage smokers in the United States rose from one-quarter to one third, despite increasing warnings about the health hazards of smoking and widespread bans on smoking in public places. In 2001 surveys of students in grades 9 through 12 found that more than 38 percent of male students and nearly 30 percent of female students smoke. Although black teenagers have the lowest smoking rates of any racial group, cigarette smoking among black teens increased 80 percent in the late 1990s. [C]It is estimated that cigarettes are responsible for about 431, 000 deaths in the United States each year. Lung cancer accounts for about 30 percent of all cancer deaths in the United States, and smoking accounts for nearly 90 percent of lung cancer deaths. The risks of dying from lung cancer are 23 times higher for male smokers and 13 times higher for female smokers than nonsmokers. Additionally, smokers are at increased risk for cancer of the larynx, oral cavity, esophagus, bladder, kidney, and pancreas. [D]Research has shown that mothers who smoke give birth more frequently to premature or underweight babies, probably because of a decrease in blood flow to the placenta. [E]The United States Environmental Protection Agency(EPA)estimates that exposure to the environment that contains all the toxic agents exhaled by a smoker, causes 3, 000 cancer deaths and an estimated 40, 000 deaths from heart disease per year in nonsmokers. Secondhand smoke can aggravate asthma, pneumonia , bronchitis, and impaired blood circulation. [F]Smoking causes a fivefold increase in the risk of dying from chronic bronchitis and emphysema, and a twofold increase in deaths from diseases of the heart and coronary arteries. Smoking also increases the risk of stroke by 50 percent—40 percent among men and 60 percent among women.

The following paragraphs are given in a wrong order. You are required to reorganize these paragraphs into a coherent article by choosing from the list A—G. The first and the last paragraphs have been placed for you.A. By contrast, somewhat more than 25 percent of the earth"s population can be found in the industrialized societies. They lead modern lives. They are products of the first half of the twentieth century, molded by mechanization and mass education, brought up with lingering memories of their own country"s agricultural past. They are, in effect, the people of the present.B. The remaining 2 or 3 percent of the world"s population, however, are no longer people of either the past or the present. For within the main centers of technological and cultural change, in Santa Monica, California and Cambridge, Massachusetts, in New York and London, and Tokyo, are millions of men and women who can already be said to be living the way of life of the future. Trend-makers often without being aware of it, live today as millions will live tomorrow. And while they account for only a few percent of the global population today, they are already from an international nation of the future in our midst. They are the advanced agents of man, the earliest citizens of the worldwide super-industrial society now in the throes of birth.C. It is, in fact, not too much to say that the pace of life draws a line through humanity, dividing us into camps, triggering bitter misunderstanding between parent and child, between Madison Avenue and Main Street, between men and women, between American and European, between East and West.D. What makes them different from the rest of mankind? Certainly, they are richer, better educated, more mobile than the majority of the human race. They also live longer. But what specifically marks the people of the future is the fact that they are already caught up in a new, stepped-up pace of life. They "live faster" than the people around them.E. The inhabitants of the earth are divided not only by race, nation, religion or ideology, but also, in a sense, by their positions in time. Examining the present population of the globe, we find a tiny group who still live, hunting and food-foraging, as men did millennia ago. Others, the vast majority of mankind, depend not on bear-hunting or berry-picking, but on agriculture. They live, in many respects, as their ancestors did centuries ago. These two groups taken together compose perhaps 70 percent of all living human beings. They are the people of the past.F. Some people are deeply attracted to this highly accelerated pace of life—going far out of their way to bring it about and feeling anxious, tense or uncomfortable when the pace slows. They want desperately to be "where the action is". James A. Wilson has found, for example, that the attraction for a fast pace of life is one of the hidden motivating forces behind the much-publicized "brain-drain"—the mass migration of European scientists and engineers who migrated to the U.S. and Canada. He concluded that it was no higher salaries or better research facilities alone, but also the quicker tempo that lure them. The migrants, he writes, "are not put off by what they indicated as the "faster pace~ of North America; if anything, they appear to prefer this pace to others".G. The pace of life is frequently commented on by ordinary people. Yet, oddly enough, it has received almost no attention from either psychologists or sociologists. This is a gaping inadequacy in the behavioral sciences, for the pace of life profoundly influences behavior, evoking strong and contrasting reactions from different people.Order: G is the first paragraph and F is the last.Notes:gaping是gape的现在分词；gape vi. 裂开。not too much 一点也不多，一点也不过分。Madison Avenue麦迪逊街(纽约一条街道的名字。美国主要广告公司、公共关系事务所集中于此。常用以表示此等公司之作风、做法等)。Main Street 实利主义社会。food-foraging 觅食的。millennium 千年。trend-maker (=trend-setter) 领导新潮的人。in the throes of为…而苦干、搏斗。be caught up in陷入。going far out of their way to bring it about 远远没有阻碍它的诞生。brain-drain (高科技)人才流动(从欧洲到美洲)。

BSection III Writing/B

You know you have to read "between the lines" to get the most out of anything. I want to persuade you to do something equally important in the【C1】______of your reading. I want to persuade you to "write between the lines".【C2】______you do, you are not likely to do the most【C3】______kind of reading. I【C4】______, quite bluntly, that marking up a book is not an act of mutilation but of love. There are two ways in which one can own a book. The first is the【C5】______right you establish by paying for it, just as you pay for clothes and furniture.【C6】______this act of purchase is only the【C7】______to possession. Full ownership comes【C8】______you have made it a part of yourself, and the best【C9】______to make yourself a part of it is by writing in it. A(n)【C10】______may make the point clear. You buy a beefsteak and【C11】______it from the butcher"s icebox to your own. But you do not own the beefsteak in the most important sense until you【C12】______it and get it into your bloodstream. I am arguing that books, too, must be【C13】______in your bloodstream to do you【C14】______. There are three kinds of book owners. The first has all the standard【C15】______and bestsellers—unread, untouched. The second has【C16】______books—a few of them read through, most of them【C17】______, but all of them as clean and shiny as the day they【C18】______. The third has a few books or many—every one of them dogeared and dilapidated, shaken and【C19】______by continual use, marked and【C20】______in from front to back. This man owns books.

It is commonly supposed that the health of Long Island Sound is chiefly the responsibility of the shoreline communities in Long Island, Westchester County and Connecticut. This is largely true. It is also true, however, that New York City has long been a major contributor to the environmental ills that torture this noblest of American estuaries. The main reason is four old municipal sewage treatment plants on the East River. Every day of every year, these plants deposit hundreds of thousands of gallons of partly treated wastewater into the river, which then, with tidal certainty, propels the polluted water into the Sound itself The most damaging of the pollutants leaving the plants is nitrogen—useful as a fertilizer on land but, in sufficient quantities, fatal to bodies of water like the Sound, where it stimulates the growth of bacteria and algae and robs the water of oxygen. This condition is known as hypoxia, and it suppresses marine life. Roughly half the nitrogen comes from treatment plants and other sources in about 80 shoreline communities, the other half comes from the New York City plants. It is thus cause for great celebration that the city agreed last week to settle a longstanding legal action and spend at least $700 million to upgrade these four plants, cutting their nitrogen output by nearly 60 percent by 2017. Audubon New York, a leader among the environmental groups that helped shape the agreement and move it forward, when negotiations seemed to falter, called the agreement an historic moment in the struggle to restore the Sound to good health. In retrospect, the most important moment in that struggle the moment from which all else has flowed, including last week"s agreement—came m 1994, when New York and Connecticut. after sustained pressure from the federal Environmental Protection Agency, approved a comprehensive plan to clean up the Sound. The city"s main responsibility was to modernize its sewage treatment plants. The Giuliani administration left the bulk of the task to Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Alarmed by the project"s estimated $1.3 billion price tag, Mr. Bloomberg dispatched Christopher Ward, then the environmental commissioner, to Europe and elsewhere to find new, more cost-efficient waste treatment technologies. In due course, Mr. Ward and his counterpart in Albany, Erin Crotty, reached an agreement in principle to reform the plants at well under the original cost. Mr. Ward and Ms. Crotty left public service, but after further debating aimed partly at ensuring that future city administrations could not wiggle out of the deal, and after further prodding by Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, their successors. Emily Lloyd and Denise Sheehan, brought the matter to a close. This does not mean the Sound is no longer at risk. The Sound passes through the densest population corridor in the country, and will remain forever stressed by the 20 million people who live within 50 miles of its shores. Thus the shoreline communities in Long Island, Westchester and Connecticut must do more than ever to contain pollution.

One of the oft-repeated mantras of the global warming crowd is that there is no longer any debate in the scientific community about the threat of global warming. That is just not true. While there are many scientists who firmly believe global warming is real and it is a threat, there are many other scientists who have serious reservations about that judgment. One who sticks out in the debate on global warming is Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg. Five years ago, Lomborg who views himself as an environmentalist, ignited a firestorm of controversy with his book The Skeptical Environmentalist. In it, Lomborg pointed out, as he has continued to explain since, "that actually a lot of the things we are doing to the environment are making it better". On global warming, he told the online site TechCentralStation; "Global warming is an important issue and one which we should address. But there is no sense of proportion either in environmental terms, or indeed in terms of the other issues facing the world." According to Lomborg, millions die each year from lack of clean drinking water and proper sanitation and indoor air pollution kills millions more, but a warmer world poses no such threat. "One of the top climate change economists has modelled—and several papers that came out a couple of weeks ago essentially point out -that climate change will probably mean fewer deaths, not more deaths. It is estimated that climate change by about 2050 will mean about 800,000 fewer deaths. " Another critic of the standard model of global warming is MIT professor of meteorology Richard S. Lindzen. A giant in climate science, Lindzen has published literally hundreds of scientific papers. In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in 2001, writing about a National Academy of Sciences report on climate change in which he participated, Lindzen noted: "We are quite confident(1)that global mean temperature is about 0. 5 degrees Celsius higher than it was a century ago;(2)that atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide have risen over the past two centuries; and(3)that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas whose increase is likely to warm the earth(one of many, the most important being water vapor and clouds). But—and I cannot stress this enough we are not in a position to confidently attribute past climate change to carbon dioxide or to forecast what the climate will be in the future. That is to say, contrary to media impressions, agreement with the three basic statements tells us almost nothing relevant to policy discussions. "

A Thank-you Letter for Hospitality Write a letter of about 100 words based on the following situation: Last weekend you went to Brian's home and enjoyed hospitality from his family. Now write a letter to thank him. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address.

TheCompetitionofDiplomaorParents?Studythepicturecarefullyandwriteanessayof160-200words,youshould1)describethepicturebriefly,2)interpretthesocialphenomenonreflectedbyit,and3)giveyourcomments.

One factor that can influence consumers is their mood state. Mood may be defined【B1】______a temporary and mild positive or negative feeling that is generalized and not tied【B2】______any particular circumstance. Moods should be 【B3】______ from emotions which are usually more intense, 【B4】______to specific circumstances, and often conscious. 【B5】______ one sense, the effect of a consumer' s mood can be thought of in 【B6】______ the same way as can our reactions to the 【B7】______ of our friends—when our friends are happy and "up", that tends to influence us positively, 【B8】______ when they are "down", that can have a 【B9】______ impact on us. Similarly, consumers operating under a【B10】______mood state tend to react to stimuli in a direction【B11】______with that mood state. Thus, for example, we should expect to see【B12】______in a positive mood state evaluate products in more of a【B13】______manner than they would when not in such a state.【B14】______, mood states appear capable of【B15】______a consumer' s memory. Moods appear to be【B16】______influenced by marketing techniques. For example, the rhythm, pitch, and【B17】______of music has been shown to influence behavior such as the【B18】______of time spent in supermarkets or【B19】______to purchase products. In addition, advertising can influence consumers' moods which, in【B20】______, are capable of influencing consumers' reactions to products.

The Earth's daily clock, measured in a single revolution, is twenty-four hours. The human clock, 【B1】______ , is actually about twenty-five hours. That's 【B2】______ scientists who study sleep have determined from human subjects who live for several weeks in observation chambers with no 【B3】______ of day or night. Sleep researchers have 【B4】______ other surprising discoveries as well. We spend about one-third of our lives asleep, a fact that suggests sleeping, 【B5】______ eating and breathing, is fundamental life process. Yet some people almost never sleep, getting by on as 【B6】______ as fifteen minutes a day. And more than seventy years of 【B7】______ into sleep deprivation, in which people have been kept 【B8】______ for three to ten days, has yielded only one certain findings: Sleep loss makes a person sleepy and that's about all; it causes no lasting ill 【B9】______ . Too much sleep, however, may be 【B10】______ for you. These findings 【B11】______ some long-held views of sleep, and they raise questions about its fundamental purpose in our lives. In 【B12】______ , scientists don't know just why sleep is necessary. "We get sleepy, and when we sleep, that sleepiness is reversed," Dr. Howard Roffwarg of the University of Texas in Dallas explains. "We know sleep has a function, 【B13】______ we feel it has a function. We can't put our finger on it, but it must, 【B14】______ in some way, direct or indirect, have to do with rest and restitution." Other scientists think sleep is more the result of evolutionary habit than 【B15】______ actual need. Animals sleep for some parts of the day perhaps because it is the 【B16】______ thing for them to do: it keeps them 【B17】______ and hidden from predators; it's a survival tactic. Before the advent of electricity, humans had to spend at least some of each day in 【B18】______ and had little reason to question the reason or need for 【B19】______ But the development of the electroencephalograph and the resulting discovery in 1937 of dramatic 【B20】______ in brain activity between sleep and wakefulness opened the way for scientific inquiry in the subject.

It is widely believed that our never-ending quest for material goods is part of the basic character of human beings. According to the popular belief, we may not like it, but there"s little we can do about it. Despite its popularity, this view of human nature is wrong. While human beings may have a basic desire to strive towards something, there is nothing inevitable about material goods. There are numerous examples of societies in which things have played a highly restricted rule. In medieval Europe, the acquisition of goods was relatively unimportant. The common people, whose lives were surely poor by modern standards, showed strong preferences for leisure rather than money. In the nineteenth-and early twentieth-century United States, there is also considerable evidence that many working people also exhibited a restricted appetite for material goods. Materialism is not a basic trait of human nature, but a specific product of capitalism. With the development of the market system, materialism "spilled over", for the first time, beyond the circles of the rich. The growth of the middle class created a large group of potential buyers and the possibility that mass culture could be oriented around material goods. This process can be seen not only in historical experiences but is now going on in some parts of the developing world, where the growth of a large middle class has contributed to extensive materialism and the breakdown of traditional values. In the United States, the turning point was the 1920s—the point at which the "psychology of shortage" gave way to the "psychology of abundance". This was a crucial period for the development of modern materialism. Economy and discipline were out; waste and excess were in. Materialism flourished—both as a social ideology and in terms of high rates of real spending. In the midst of all this buying, we can detect the origins of modern consumer discontent. This was the decade during which the American dream, or what was then called "the American standard of living", captured the nation"s imagination. But it was always something of an illusion. Americans complained about items they could not afford—despite the fact that in the 1920s most families had telephones, virtually all had purchased life insurance, two-thirds owned their own homes and took vacations, and over half had motor cars. The discontent expressed by many Americans was promoted—and to a certain extent even created—by manufacturers. The explosion of consumer credit made the task easier, as automobiles, radios, electric refrigerators, washing machines—even jewelry and foreign travel—could be paid for in installments. By the end of the 1920s, 60 percent of cars, radios, and furniture were being purchased this way. The ability to buy without actually having money helped encourage a climate of instant satisfaction, expanding expectations, and ultimately, materialism.

"Poverty", wrote Aristotle, "is the parent of crime." But was he right? Certainly, poverty and crime are【C1】______. And the idea that a lack of income might drive someone to【C2】______sounds plausible. But research by Amir Sari-aslan casts【C3】______on the chain of causation— at least as far as violent crime and the misuse of【C4】______are concerned. Sariaslan consulted the【C5】______collected by Scandinavian governments which contained information about people's annual family incomes and criminal【C6】______. In Sweden the age of criminal responsibility is 15, so Sariaslan【C7】______his subjects from the dates of their 15th birthdays【C8】______, for an average of three-and-a-half years. When he looked at families which had started poor and got richer, the younger children—those born into relative【C9】______—were just as likely to misbehave as the elder children. Family income was, in itself not the【C10】______factor. That suggests two【C11】______. One is that a family's culture, once established, is "【C12】______"— that you can take the kid out of the neighborhood,【C13】______not the neighborhood out of the kid.【C14】______children's inclination to imitate elder brothers or sisters whom they admire, that sounds【C15】______plausible. The other is that genes which make them susceptible to criminal behavior are common at the【C16】______of society, perhaps because the lack of impulse-control also tends to reduce someone's earning capacity. Neither of these conclusions is likely to be welcome to【C17】______reformers. They suggest that merely【C18】______people's incomes will not by itself address questions of bad behavior. Such conclusions will need to be【C19】______by others. If they are confirmed, the fact that they are【C20】______will be no excuse for ignoring them.

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

You are a college graduate and try to find a job in a joint venture. You find from an advertisement that there is a company suiting you very well. Write a letter of application based on the following outline: 1) a brief information about yourself, 2) your ability to take the job, 3) other necessary introduction. You should write about 100 words. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. You do not need to write your address.

Yasuhisa Shizoki, a 51-year-old MP from Japan"s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), starts tapping his finger on the dismal economic chart on his coffee table. "Unless we change the decision-making process," he says bluntly, "we are not going to be able to solve this kind of problem." With the economy in such a mess, it may seem a bit of a diversion to be trying to sort out Japan"s political structures as well as its economic problems. Since co-writing a report on political reform, which was released by an LDP panel last week, Mr. Shizoki has further upset the party"s old guard. Its legionaries, flanked by columns of the bureaucracy, continue to hamper most attempts to overhaul the economy. Junichiro Koizumi was supposed to change all that, by going over their heads and appealing directly to the public. Yet nearly a year after becoming prime minister, Mr. Koizumi has precious little to show for his efforts. His popularity is now flagging and his determination is increasingly in doubt. As hopes of immediate economic reform fade, optimists are focusing on another potential benefit of Mr. Koizumi"s tenure. They hope that his highly personalized style of leadership will pave the way for a permanent change in Japanese politics: towards more united and authoritative cabinets that are held directly accountable for their policies. As that happens, the thinking goes, real economic reforms will be able to follow. Unfortunately, damage-limitation in the face of scandal too often substitutes for real reform. More often, the scandals serve merely as distractions. What is really needed is an overhaul of the rules themselves. A leading candidate for change is the 40-year-old system—informal but religiously followed-through which the LDP machinery vets every bill before it ever gets to parliament. Most legislation starts in the LDP"s party committees, which mirror the parliamentary committee structure. Proposals then go through two higher LDP bodies, which hammer out political deals to smooth their passage. Only then does the prime minister"s cabinet get fully involved in approving the policy. Most issues have been decided by the LDP mandarins long before they reach this point, let alone the floor of parliament, leaving even the prime minister limited influence, and allowing precious little room for public debate and even less for accountability. As a result, progress will probably remain slow. Since they know that political reform leads to economic reform, and hence poses a threat to their interests, most of the LDP will resist any real changes. But at least a handful of insiders have now brought into one of Mr. Koizumi"s best slogans: "Change the LDP, change Japan."

Writeanessayofl60~200wordsbasedonthefollowingdrawing.Inyouressay,youshould:1)describethedrawingbriefly;2)explainitsintendedmeaning,andthen3)stateyourpointsofview.YonshouldwriteneatlyonANSWERSHEET2.(20points)