"It keeps you grounded, puts you in a situation that keeps you out of trouble, and puts you with a group that has the same mind-set," says Molly Skinner, a sophomore at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, appraising the nonathletic benefits she experienced while playing soccer in high school. According to one new study, suiting up for the high school team does seem to givegirls a boost when it comes to getting a college diploma. The recent study, conducted by professors from Brigham Young University (BYU) and West Chester University of Pennsylvania (WCUP), found that women who played sports in high school were 73 percent more likely to earn a bachelor"s degree within six years of graduating from high school than those who did not. (The study did not look at male athletes.) Their analysis of data from 5,103 women collected as part of a U.S. Department of Education study found that even among girls who face statistical challenges finishing college based on socioeconomic background, the athletes still had more than 40 percent higher college completion rates than nonathletes, regardless of whether they played at the college level. "In times when we worry about improving academic performance or outcomes, we wonder should we be devoting time and money to extracurricular activities?" asks BYU Prof. Mikaela Dufur, one of the study"s authors. "These are important arenas for—in our case—girls to make connections with others and adults who help encourage them to succeed." At the collegiate level, though, the measure of women"s sports remains as murky (unclear) as ever, thanks to the politics of Title DC Enacted in 1972, Title DC guarantees women equal opportunity in collegiate sports, but its critics contend that many schools reach that balance by cutting men"s teams rather than adding women"s.A July report on Title DC from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has done little to settle the debate. That study found increases in student participation in college athletics on both sides of the gender line, though the growth rate was higher for women"s teams and female athletes. Title DC critics say that the GAO report relies too heavily on National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) data, which can obscure the number of men"s teams cut from particular schools as more colleges join the NCAA verall. While the political debate continues, female athletes themselves seem to be focusing on the finish line. "I think that sports teaches you to persevere," says Virginia Tech-bound Rachel Plumb, who raced on her high school"s cross country team. "It teaches you to keep an eye on a goal."

Back in July 1965, the Mariner Four Space Probe transmitted the first close-up pictures of Mars and convinced many people that Mars was as dead as our own moon. Two later space probes seemed to confirm this. But then, in 1971, Mariner Nine raise hopes once again that there could be life on the planet—or at least that life might once have existed there. The range of experiments to be conducted were designed by mission scientists such as Chuck Klein: "It was like shooting blind, so to speak, to be trying to devise experiments to look for evidence of life. And we decide to try to use an instrument which could incorporate many different assumptions about what Martian biology might be like—what the bugs might be like or not like. But the fundamental proposition in each portion of our experiment was to look, over a period of time, for evidence of some process going on which we could attribute to biology." The scientists controlled the Viking experiments from a distance of almost 100 million kilometers. Cameras took pictures of the area a round the robot landers—in case anything moved into view. No aliens were spotted by the cameras, but other experiments seems to show signs of life. "Almost everything that we planned began to give us data of some kind—that is to say, it wasn"t like everything was dead. For many weeks, we were goaded by the media, who were terribly excited—they were constantly looking for a headline, you know. They Found Life! They Found Life! Every bit of information that we came up with was squeezed by them to try to put a positive twist on it. We really had to work very hard to maintain our cool and present the data just the way we saw it." But these apparent signs of life were deceptive. By repeating the experiments and double checking the results, the scientists eventually came to the conclusion that the whole planet was dead and would, in fact, be deadly to living organisms. Since 1976, there have been no further visits. A probe sent by NASA exploded before reaching the planet last year and it now doesn"t look as if there"ll be another Mars visit until the end of the decade. When we do get back there, will we find something new? And what about us? Could we ever live on Mars? This isn"t as strange an idea as it sounds according to astronomer Patrick Moorer. "It"s fair to say that, from a technical point of view, we could put men on Mars within the next few decades. Whether we actually do so or not depends very much more upon politics and finance than upon sheer science, but I think it could be done. And I"m quite prepared to believe that by this time in the next century, there will be flourishing colonies upon Mars."

Over the last decade, demand for the most common cosmetic surgery procedures, like breast enlargements and nose jobs, has increased by more than 400 percent. According to Dr. Dai Davies, of the Plastic Surgery Partnership in Hammersmith, the majority of cosmetic surgery patients are not chasing physical perfection. Rather, they are driven to fantastic lengths to improve their appearance by a desire to look normal."【F1】 What we all crave is to look normal, and normal is what is prescribed by the advertising media and other external pressures. They give us a perception of what is physically acceptable and we feel we must look like that." 【F2】 In America, the debate is no longer about whether surgery is normal; rather, it centres on what age people should be before going under the knife. New York surgeon Dr. Gerard Imber recommends "maintenance" work for people in their thirties. "The idea of waiting until one needs a heroic transformation is silly," he says, "By then, you've wasted 20 great years of your life and allowed things to get out of hand." Dr. Imber draws the line at operating on people who are under 18, however. "It seems that someone we don't consider old enough to order a drink shouldn't be considering plastic surgery." In the UK cosmetic surgery has long been seen as the exclusive domain of the very rich and famous.【F3】 But the proportionate cost of treatment has fallen substantially, bringing all but the most advanced laser technology within the reach of most people. Dr. Davies, who claims to "cater for the average person", agrees. He says:"I treat a few of the rich and famous and an awful lot of secretaries. Of course, ￡3, 000 for an operation is a lot of money. But it is also an investment for life which costs about half the price of a good family holiday." 【F4】 Dr. Davies suspects that the increasing sophistication of the fat injecting and removal techniques that allow patients to be treated with a local anaesthetic in an afternoon has also helped promote the popularity of cosmetic surgery. 【F5】 Yet, as one woman who recently paid ￡2, 500 for liposuction to remove fat from her thighs admitted, the slope to becoming a cosmetic surgery Veteran is a deceptively gentle one. "I had my legs done because they'd been bugging me for years. But going into the clinic was so low key and effective it whetted my appetite. Now I don't think there's any operation that I would rule out having if I could afford it."

Improving the balance between the working part of the day and the rest of it is a goal of a growing number of workers in rich Western countries. Some are turning away from the ideals of their parents, for whom work always came first; others with scarce skills are demanding more because they know they can get it. Employers, Caught between a falling population of workers and tight controls on immigration, are eager to identify extra perks that will lure more "talent" their way. Just now they are focusing on benefits (especially flexible working) that offer employees more than just pay. Some companies saw the change of mood some time ago. IBM has more than 50 different programmes promoting work-life balance and Bank of America over 30. But plenty of other firms remain unconvinced and many lack the capacity to cater to such ideas even if they wanted to. Helen Muftis, with Hay Group, a human-resources consultancy, sees a widening gap between firms "at the creative end of employment" and those that are not. The chief component of almost all schemes to promote work-life balance is flexible working. This allows people to escape rigid nine-to-five schedules and work away from a formal office. IBM says that 40% of its employees today work off the company premises. For many businesses, flexible working is a necessity. Globalization has spread the hours in which workers need to communicate with each other and increased the call for flexible shifts. Nella Barkley, an American who advises companies on work-life balance, says that large firms ale beginning to understand the value of such schemes, "but only slowly". For most of them, they still mean little more than child care, health care and flexible working. To some extent, the proliferation of work-life-balance schemes is a function of today"s labour market. Companies in knowledge, based industries worry about the shortage of skills and how they are going to persuade talented people to work for them. Although white-collar workers are more likely to be laid off nowadays, they are also likely to get rehired. Unemployment among college graduates in America is just over 2%. The same competition for scarce. talent is evident in Britain. For some time to come, talented people in the West will demand more from employers, and clever employers will create new gewgaws to entice them to join. Those employers should note that for a growing number of these workers the most appealing gewgaw of all is the freedom to work as and when they please.

BSection II Reading Comprehension/B

The following paragraphs are given in a wrong order. For Questions 41-45, you are required to reorganize these paragraphs into a coherent article by choosing from the list A-G. Some of the paragraphs have been placed for you. (10 points)A. "For decades, the cognitive and neural sciences have treated mental processes as though they involved passing discrete packets of information in a strictly feed-forward fashion from one cognitive module to the next or in a string of individuated binary symbols—like a digital computer", said Spivey. "More recently, however, a growing number of studies, such as ours, support dynamical-systems approaches to the mind. In this model, perception and cognition are mathematically described as a continuous trajectory through a high-dimensional mental space; the neural activation patterns flow back and forth to produce nonlinear, self-organized, emergent properties—like a biological organism".B. The computer metaphor describes cognition as being in a particular discrete state, for example, "on or off" or in values of either zero or one, and in a static state until moving on. If there was ambiguity, the model assumed that the mind jumps the gun to one state or the other, and if it realizes it is wrong, it then makes a correction.C. In his study, 42 students listened to instructions to click on pictures of different objects on a computer screen. When the students heard a word, such as "candle", and were presented with two pictures whose names did not sound alike, such as a candle and a jacket, the trajectories of their mouse movements were quite straight and directly to the candle. But when the students heard "candle" and were presented with two pictures with similarly sounding names, such as candle and candy, they were slower to click on the correct object, and their mouse trajectories were much more curved. Spivey said that the listeners started processing what they heard even before the entire word was spoken.D. In a new study published online this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (June 27—July 1), Michael Spivey, a psycholinguist and associate professor of psychology at Cornell, tracked the mouse movements of undergraduate students while working at a computer. The findings provide compelling evidence that language comprehension is a continuous process.E. Whereas the older models of language processing theorized that neural systems process words in a series of discrete stages, the alternative model suggests that sensory input is processed continuously so that even partial linguistic input can start "the dynamic competition between, simultaneously active representations".F. "When there was ambiguity, the participants briefly didn"t know which picture was correct and so for several dozen milliseconds, they were in multiple states at once. They didn"t move all the way to one picture and then correct their movement if they realized they were wrong, but instead they traveled through an intermediate gray area", explained Spivey. "The degree of curvature of the trajectory shows bow much the other object is competing for their interpretation; the curve shows continuous competition. They sort of partially heard the word both ways, and their resolution of the ambiguity was gradual rather than discrete; it"s a dynamical system".G. "In thinking of cognition as working as a biological organism does, on the other hand, you do not have to be in one state or another like a computer, but can have values in between—you can be partially in one state and another, and then eventually gravitate to a unique interpretation, as in finally recognizing a spoken word", Spivey said.Order: D is the first paragraph and E is the last.

HowtoPreventHypertension?Writeanessayof160-200wordsbasedonthedrawing.Inyouressay,youshould1)describethedrawingbriefly,2)explainitsintendedmeaning,andthen3)giveyourcomments.

sum total

In a purely biological sense, fear begins with the body's system for reacting to things that can harm us—the so-called fight-or-flight response . "An animal that can't detect danger can't stay alive," says Joseph LeDoux. Like animals, humans evolved with an elaborate mechanism for processing information about potential threats. At its core is a cluster of neurons deep in the brain known as the amygdala. LeDoux studies the way animals and humans respond to threats to understand how we form memories of significant events in our lives. The amygdala receives input from many parts of the brain, including regions responsible for retrieving memories. Using this information, the amygdala appraises a situation—I think this charging dog wants to bite me—and triggers a response by radiating nerve signals throughout the body. These signals produce the familiar signs of distress: trembling, perspiration and fast-moving feet, just to name three. This fear mechanism is critical to the survival of all animals, but no one can say for sure whether beasts other than humans know they're afraid. That is, as LeDoux says, "if you put that system into a brain that has consciousness, then you get the feeling of fear." Humans, says Edward M. Hallowell, have the ability to call up images of bad things that happened in the past and to anticipate future events. Combine these higher thought processes with our hardwired danger-detection systems, and you get a near-universal human phenomenon: worry. That's not necessarily a bad thing, says Hallowell. "When used properly, worry is an incredible device ," he says. After all, a little healthy worrying is okay if it leads to constructive action—like having a doctor look at that weird spot on your back. Hallowell insists, though, that there' s a right way to worry. "Never do it alone, get the facts and then make a plan." He says. Most of us have survived a recession, so we're familiar with the belt-tightening strategies needed to survive a slump. Unfortunately, few of us have much experience dealing with the threat of terrorism, so it's been difficult to get fact about how we should respond. That' s why Hallowell believes it was okay for people to indulge some extreme worries last fall by asking doctors for Cipro and buying gas masks.

The housing market has been for two years propping up consumers" spirits while the rest of the economy lies exhausted on the floor, still trying to struggle to its feet. According to the National Association of Realtors, the national median existing-home price ended the year at $164,000, up 7.1 percent from 2001. That"s the strongest annual increase since 1980. Although residential real estate activity makes up less than 8% of total U.S. GDP, a housing market like this one can make the difference between positive and negative growth. Most significantly, consumer spending is 66% of GDP, and the purchase of a new home tends to have an "umbrella effect" on the homeowner"s spending as he has to stock it with a washer/ dryer, a new big-screen TV, and maybe a swing set for the yard. The main factor in housing"s continued strength is a classic economic example of zero-sum boom: the persistent weakness everywhere else. As the 2003 recovery continues to be more forecast than reality. Falling stock prices raised investor appeal for U.S. Treasury Bonds, which in turn, allowed most interest rates to drift even lower. But there are not many signs that there"s a bubble ready to burst. December"s new record in housing starts, for example, was nicely matched by the new record in new home sales. If you build it, they will buy and even if an economic pickup starts to reduce housing"s relative attractiveness, there"s no reason why modest economic growth and improved consumer mood can"t help sustaining housing"s strength. "The momentum gained from low mortgage interest rates will carry strong home sales into 2003, with an improving economy offsetting modestly higher mortgage interest rates as the year progresses", said David Lereah, chief economist at the National Association of Realtors. Just as housing has taken up much of the economic slack for the past two years, both as a comforting investment for fretting consumers and a driver of consumer spending itself, a big bump elsewhere in the economy in 2003 could be housing"s downfall. If stocks roar back this spring, capital inflows could steal from the bond market, pushing up long-term interest rates. Or Alan Greenspan and the Fed could do the same to short-term rates, as a way to hit the brakes on a recovery that is heating up too fast. In other words, if everything possible goes wrong for housing, homeowners should have plenty to compensate them in terms of job security and income hikes.

Are women really advancing? In Africa, HIV/AIDS has set them back, while in India, pregnant women (1)_____ prefer boys they abort half a million females a year. And in Britain, which saw a (2)_____ female prime minister during the 1980s, a report by the nation"s Equal Opportunities Commission says gender equality in public life is "decades away". (3)_____ about 10% of senior positions in large companies and law enforcement are held by women, while the (4)_____ for women in Parliament is so slow that equality may (5)_____ a couple centuries. In Britain, as in America, there"s a (6)_____ that discrimination plays (7)_____ of a role in women"s progress in public life as more women stay in favor of motherhood (8)_____ careers in what"s called "choice feminism". These "choices", however, are often (9)_____.by the high cost of day care or its unavailability. In Japan, (10)_____ discrimination against women still remains strong, (11)_____ a 1985 law against it. But now that nation, with its low birth rate, faces a labor (12)_____ as it ages rapidly, and the government is (13)_____ new measures to encourage mothers to return to work after childbirth. The new measures (14)_____ more work flexibility for such returning workers, (15)_____ day care, and support women entrepreneurs. The Arab world has only recently begun to recognize the untapped potential of women as leaders. Iraq"s new Constitution required every (16)_____ candidate in the recent election to be a woman and that its parliament be 25 percent female. (17)_____ the charter also gives a (18)_____ role to Islam in writing new laws. (19)_____ many measures, from politics to poverty, women still have a long way to go toward equality and (20)_____.

You are going to read an article which is followed by a list of examples or headings. Choose the most suitable one from the list A-F for each numbered position(41-45). There may be certain extra which you do not need to use. (10 points) You are going to read a list of headings and a text about The Secret of American Colleges and Universities" Success.A. Education for the massesB. The key to successC. The character of America"s system of higher education.D. Promoting diversityE. Competition breeds successF. Investing in the future For more than two centuries, America"s colleges and universities have been the backbone of the country"s progress. They have educated the technical, managerial and professional work force and provided generation after generation of national leaders. Their unparalleled capacity for research has put the United States at the cutting edge of science and of scholarship in the humanities and social sciences. Without this vast network of universities, the nation would never have achieved its current preeminence. (41)______. The decentralization, diversity, academic freedom and shared governance that have evolved over the past two centuries have made America"s system of higher education one of the most accessible and democratic in the world. Today educators from around the globe are turning to U. S. institutions of higher learning for inspiration. They are apt to find many reasons for the excellence of American universities, including America"s tradition of philanthropy, but four historic acts stand out as watersheds: (42)______. In 1862 Congress enacted the Land-Grant College Act (also known as the Morrill Act, after the congressman who proposed it), which essentially extended the opportunity of higher education to all Americans—including such disenfranchised groups as women and minorities. Each state was permitted to sell large tracts of federal land and use the proceeds to endow at least one public college. (43)______. Over the years, the decentralization and diversity of America"s colleges and universities have promoted competition for students and resources. Competitive pressure first arose during the Civil War, when President Abraham Lincoln created the National Academy of Sciences to advise Congress on "any subject of science or art." The academy"s impact really grew after World WarⅡ, when a landmark report commissioned by President Franklin D. Roosevelt argued that it was the federal government"s responsibility to provide adequate funds for basic research—and that the nation"s universities were, by nature, best suited to take the lead. This turned out to be a brilliant policy. Instead of being centralized in government laboratories-d-as in other parts of the world—scientific research became decentralized in American universities and generated increasing investment. It also gave graduate students research opportunities and helped spread scientific discoveries far and wide, to the benefit of industry, medicine and society as a whole. (44)______. The end of World War Ⅱ saw passage of the Servicemen"s Readjustment Act of 1944, better known as the GI Bill of Rights. The law, which provided for college or vocational education for returning veterans, made an already democratic higher-education system accessible in ways that were inconceivable in Europe, opening the doors of the best universities to men and women who had never dreamed of going to college. (45)______. The creation of federal loan guarantees and subsidy programs, as well as outright grants for college students, brought much-needed diversity, to higher education and further helped to democratize access. Since its founding in 1965, the Federal Family Education Loan Program has funded more than 74 million student loans worth more than $180 billion. These five factors, coupled with private philanthropy, have helped foster the diversity, dynamism and competitiveness that make, American higher education the best—and most democratic—in the world. Enrollment in higher education grew from just 4 percent of the college-age population in 1900 to more than 65 percent by the end of the century.

If I Have an Introverted Friend Extroverts and introverts usually perform differently in their social lives. Extroverts get energized by being around people, while social activity, on the other hand, can exhaust introverts. Some people might think introverts is not easy-going and stay away from them, but that's misleading. If you have an introverted friend, what will you do? Write a composition of 160-200 words.

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It seems unlikely that Andrew Speaker, the Atlanta lawyer who has been widely reviled for traveling by air after being diagnosed with drug-resistant tuberculosis, infected anyone. Notably, both those who condemn Speaker"s recklessness and those who sympathize with him agree the relevant question is the danger he posed to other people, which was the justification for his forcible isolation in a Denver hospital. The case, of the TB-infected traveler helps clarify the grounds for government interventions aimed at preventing disease or injury. When Speaker left for his wedding and honeymoon in Europe on May 12, he knew he had a drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis but did not know he had extensively drug-resistant(XDR)TB, a rare variety that"s very hard to treat. He had no fever, he was not coughing, and tests of his sputum found no TB bacteria. He says his doctors had assured him he was not contagious. According to Speaker, local public health officials, while recommending that he not fly, repeatedly told him he would not pose a significant threat to fellow passengers. That account is confirmed by Speaker"s father, who says he has an audio recording to prove it. While Speaker was in Rome, the CDC informed him he had XDR TB, told him he was on the U. S. "no fly" list, and recommended that he report to an Italian hospital for indefinite isolation. Knowing his best shot at successful treatment was in Denver, Speaker took a circuitous route home, flying to Montreal and driving across the U. S. border. Speaker and his family insist he never would have traveled if he thought he might transmit tuberculosis to others. In situations like this, there is room for argument about how to balance the safety of bystanders against the civil liberties of disease carriers. But at least in dealing with potentially deadly microorganisms that move from person to person, the rationale for government action is to prevent people from harming each other. By contrast, much of what passes for "public health" today is aimed at preventing people from harming themselves. Activists and politicians use the language of public health to legitimize government efforts to discourage a wide range of risky habits, including smoking, drinking, overeating, underexercising, gambling, driving a car without a seat belt, and riding a motorcycle without a helmet. Unlike tuberculosis, the risks associated with these activities are not imposed on people; they are voluntarily assumed. In a society that loses sight of that crucial distinction, the government has an open-ended license to meddle in what used to be considered private decisions. Anyone who exposes himself to the risk of disease or injury becomes a menace to public health.

Niall FitzGerald would have liked to leave Unilever in a blaze of glory when he retires at the end of September. The co-chief executive of the Anglo-Dutch consumer-goods group was one of the godfathers of Unilever"s "Path to Growth" strategy of focusing on its brands, which was launched live years ago. But the plan failed to deliver on many of its promises. On September 20th, Unilever warned that it would not report its promised double-digit growth in profits this year. It is a tough time for producers of branded consumer goods. Unilever and its competitors have to cope with pressure on prices and stiff competition from supermarkets" own brands, Colgate-Palmolive warned of lower profits on the "same day, Nestle recently disappointed investors with its latest results. Even so, Unilever admits the bulk of its troubles are self-inflicted. The "Path to Growth" strategy aimed to make the firm more efficient. Unilever saved about 4 billion euro ($4.9 billion) in costs over the past five years and reduced its portfolio of brands front 1,600 to some 450, but it still failed to meet its targets for profit and sales, reporting a sales decline of 0.7% for the second quarter of this year. Andrew Wood at Sanford Bernstein, an investment-research firm, thinks the main problem is under-investment in advertising and marketing, an infatuation with brands and unrealistic performance targets. Unilever cut its ad and marketing expenditure at the worst moment, says Mr. Wood. Commoditised products are especially vulnerable to the onslaught of retailers" own brands. In margarine, for instance, retailers" own brands now capture as much as one-fifth of the market. Unilever also over extended some successful brands, for instance Bertolli"s olive oils and pasta sauces. According to Mr. Wood, Unilever can sustainably grow its business about 3% a year; it was shooting for 5-6%. Unilever"s chief financial officer (CFO) counters that consumers look for a product and then buy a brand, so his firm needs to focus on brands. Unilever intends to step up its marketing efforts, al though ad spending is supposed to remain at current levels. At present, Unilever spends 14.5% of sales on ads. But even the CFO admits the company has "issues of competitiveness". After seven quarters of disappointing performance, it needs to regain credibility with investors. Over the next few months, management will rethink its strategy for the next five-year plan. Patrick Cescau, a Frenchman who will take over from Mr. FitzGerald, is inheriting a tricky legacy.

[A]An Elemental Curriculum [B]Expectations of Early Teachers [C]Education as a Preparation for Working Life [D]Escalating Teacher Expectations [E]Teachers as Cleaners [F]Students Being Classroom Researchers [G]Teaching as a Mirror of Social faith In the late 1800s and early 1900s, teaching was very different from today. Rules for teachers at the time in the USA covered both the teacher' s duties and their conduct out of class as well. Teachers at that time were expected to set a good example to their pupils and to behave in a very virtuous and proper manner. Women teachers should not marry, nor should they "keep company with men". They had to wear long dresses and no bright colours and they were not permitted to dye their hair. No teachers were allowed to drink alcohol. They were allowed to read only good books such as the Bible? 【C1】______ As well as this long list of "dos" and "don'ts," teachers had certain duties to perform each day. In country schools, teachers were required to keep the coal bucket full for the classroom fire, and to bring a bucket of water each day for the children to drink. They had to make the pens for their students to write with and to sweep the floor and keep the classroom tidy. However, despite this list of duties, little was stipulated about the content of the teaching, nor about assessment methods. 【C2】______ Teachers would have been expected to teach the three "r"s—reading, writing and arithmetic, and to teach the children about Christianity and read from the Bible every day. Education in those days was much simpler than it is today and covered basic literacy skills and religious education. They would almost certainly have used corporal punishment such as a stick or the strap on naughty or unruly children. They would have been expected to sit quietly and to do their work, copying long rows of letters or doing basic maths sums. 【C3】______ Compare this with a country school in the USA today! If you visited today, you would see the children sitting in groups round large tables, or even on the floor. They would be working together on a range of different activities, and there would almost certainly be one or more computers in the classroom. Children nowadays are allowed and even expected to talk quietly to each other while they work, and they are also expected to ask their teachers questions and to actively engage in finding out information for themselves, instead of just listening to the teacher. 【C4】______ There are no rules of conduct for teachers out of the classroom, and they are not expected to perform caretaking duties such as cleaning the classrooms or making pens, but nevertheless their jobs are much harder than they were in the 1900s. Teachers today are expected to work hard on planning their lessons, to teach creatively and to stimulate children's minds, and there are strict protocols about assessment across the whole of the USA. 【C5】______ These changes in educational methods and ideas reflect changes in our society in general. Children in western countries nowadays come from all parts of the globe and they bring different cultures, religions and beliefs to the classroom. It is no longer considered acceptable or appropriate for state schools to teach about religious beliefs. Ideas about the value and purpose of education have also changed and with the increasing sophistication of workplaces and life skills needed for a successful career, the curriculum has also expanded to try to prepare children for the challenges of a diverse working community.

Scientists have long warned that some level of global warming is a done deal—due in large part to heat-trapping greenhouse gases humans already have pumped skyward. Now, however, researchers are fleshing out how much future warming and sea-level rise the world has triggered. The implicit message: "We can"t stop this, so how do we live with it?" says Thomas Wigley, a climate researcher at NCAR. One group, led by Gerald Meehl at NCAR, used two state-of-the-art climate models to explore what could happen if the world had held atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases steady since 2000. The results: Even if the world had slammed on the brakes five years ago, global average temperatures would rise by about 1 degree Fahrenheit by the end of the 21st century. Sea levels would rise by another 4 inches over 20th-century increases. Rising sea-levels would continue well beyond 2100, even without adding water from melting glaciers and ice sheets. The rise highlights the oceans" enormous capacity to absorb heat and its slow reaction to changes in atmospheric conditions. The team ran each model several times with a range of "what if" concentrations, as well as ob served concentrations, for comparison. Temperatures eventually level out, Dr. Meehl says in reviewing his team"s results. "But sea-level increases keep ongoing. The relentless nature of sea-level rise is pretty daunting." Dr. Wigley took a slightly different approach with a simpler model. He ran simulations that capped concentrations, at 2000 levels. If concentrations are held constant, warming could exceed 1.8 degrees F. by 2400. The two researchers add that far from holding steady, concentrations of greenhouse gases continue to rise. Thus, at best, the results point to the least change people can expect, they say. The idea that some level of global climate change from human activities is inevitable is not new. But the word has been slow to make its way into the broader debate. "Many people don"t realize we are committed right now to a significant amount of global warming and sea-level rise. The longer we wait, the more climate change we are committed to in the future," Meehl says. While the concept of climate-change commitment isn"t new, these fresh results "tell us what"s possible and what"s realistic" and that for the immediate future, "prevention is not on the table," says Roger Pielke Jr., director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research. To Pielke and others, this means adaptation should be given a much higher priority that it"s received to date. "There"s a cultural bias in favor of prevention," he says. But any sound policy includes preparation as well, he adds. "We have the scientific and technological knowledge we need to improve adaptation and apply that knowledge globally."

The following paragraphs are given in a wrong order. For Questions 41-45, you are required to reorganize these paragraphs into a coherent article by choosing from the list A-G. Some of the paragraphs have been placed for you. (10 points)A. Why is foreign text "rendered meaningless" when passed through an online translation tool? According to Sabine Reul, who runs a Frankfurt-based translation company, translation tools have limited uses, and problems arise when web users expect too much from them. "A translation tool works for some things," says Reul. "Say a British company wants to order a box of screws from a German supplier. A sentence like We need one box of a certain type of screw" is something that a machine could translate reasonably accurately—though primitively."B. Yet when it comes to translating blocks of text-words and sentences that convey thoughts and sentiments, online tools are bound to fail, she adds. "Beyond simple sentences, the online process simply doesn"t work because machines don"t understand grammar and semantics, never mind idiom and style." "Language is not a system of signs in the mechanical sense of the word", says Reul. "It is a living medium that is used to convey thought. And that is where machines fail. Human input is indispensable as long as computers cannot think." Reul and other translators look forward to the day when clever computers might help to ease their workload—but that time has not arrived yet.C. Earlier this month the small German town of Homberg-an-der-Efze, north of Frankfurt, had to pulp an entire print run of its English-language tourism brochure after officials used an Internet translating tool to translate the German text. According to one report, the brochure was "rendered meaningless" by the online tool. Martin Wagner, mayor of Homberg-an-der-Efze, admits that the town made a "blunder". As a result of officials trying to save money by getting the Internet to do a translator"s job, a total of 7500 brochures had to be binned.D. It would be nice if computers could do the job. And certainly the quest for machine translation has prompted a lot of linguistic research that may prove valuable in unforeseen ways. But experience to date confirms that even the most subtle computer program doesn"t think and you need to be able to think in order to translate."E. This story highlights some of the pitfalls of translating online. There are many instant translation tools on the web, but they are best used for individual words and short phrases, rather than for brochures, books or anything complex. For example, one of the joys of the web is that it grants you access to an array of foreign news sources. Yet if you were to use a translation tool to try to make sense of such reports, you could end up with a rather skewed and surreal view of the world.F. Until the dawn of thinking computers, online translation tools are best reserved for words, basic sentences and useful holiday phrase. For tourism brochures, newspaper reports and the rest, you will have to rely on some old-fashioned "human input".G. Relying on online translation tools can be a risky business, especially if you expect too much of it. For the time being, might translation be something best left to the humans?Order: G is the 1st paragraph, and F is the last.

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