Thought on Environmental Protection

BSection III Writing/B

"What a difference a word makes." The issue of semantics has been an ongoing complain against the media, which has been characterized by an increasing level of sensationalism and irresponsible reporting over the years, fostered by increasingly fierce competition and struggle for wider distributions and readerships. A focal point for the criticism is the coverage of high-profile criminal cases. With such headlines as "Mr. X Arrest for First-Degree Murder" prominently displayed across the front page, it has been argued that such provocative language influences public opinion, causing premature assumptions of guilt before the matter can be properly and legally decided in a court of law. The power of the media to influence public opinion and, by extension, legal and political perceptions, has long been established and recognized, spurring outcries when inaccurate or overly embellished stories result in unwarranted destruction of public image or intrusion into privacy of unwilling individuals. Reporters and editors take the utmost care in their choice of words for use in their articles, but with constant pressure to create provocative headlines in order to sell their papers, the distinction between respectable periodicals and trashy tabloids is becoming thinner every day. The dilemma is exacerbated by the public"s seeming short attention span, putting the papers under pressure to make their stories as attention-grabbing as they are accurate. Further obfuscating the situation is the fact that the same phrase can be interpreted in a myriad of different ways depending on who reads it, making it hard for one to judge whether a line is excessive or not. Whatever the causes and effects, however, the freedom of pres laws in the United States mean that any change to the style employed by the media must be self-imposed. In that respect, it appears that nothing will be changing in the near future, since the public"s insatiable hunger for controversy and scandal continues to dominate and set the pace for marketable reporting. As the sensationalism and its related effects continue into the longer term, however, there will no doubt be more outcry as the trend continues. This will possibly result in an upheaval of the system; favoring more accurate, unembellished reporting, consisting of hard facts with a minimum of supposition or commentary and devoid of rumors and other questionable sources of information. If and when that occurs, we can truly state with pride that our media industry is only a free one, bat a responsible and reliable one.

A multinational corporation is a corporate enterprise, which though headquartered in one country, conducts its operations through branches that it owns or controls around the world. The organizations, mostly based in the United States, Western Europe, and Japan, have become major actors on the international stage, for some of them are wealthier than many of the countries they operate in. The less developed countries often welcome the multinationals because they are a source of investment and jobs. Yet their presence has its drawbacks, for these organizations soon develop immense political and economic influence in the host countries. Development becomes concentrated in a few industries that are oriented to the needs of the outsiders; profits are frequently exported rather than reinvested; and local benefits go mainly to a small ruling group whose interests are tied to those of the foreigners rather than to those of their own people. The effect is to further increase export dependency and to limit the less developed countries" control of their own economies. It seems that both the modernization and world-system approaches may be valid in certain respects. The modernization model does help us make sense of the historical fact of industrialization and of the various internal adjustments that societies undergo during this process. The world-system model reminds us that countries do not develop in isolation. They do so in a context of fierce international political and economic competition, a competition whose outcome favors the stronger parties. Today, the less developed countries are struggling to achieve in the course of a few years the material advantages that the older industrialized nations have taken generations to gain. The result is often a tug-of-war between the forces of modernization and the sentiments of tradition, with serious social disturbance as the result. The responses have taken many different forms: military overthrow by army officers determined to impose social order; fundamentalist religious movements urging a return to absolute moralities and certainties of the past; nationalism as a new ideology to unite the people for the challenge of modernization. And sometimes social change takes place in a way that is not evolutionary, but revolutionary.

In the United States today, coffee is a more popular drink (1)_____ tea, but tea played (2)_____ interesting part in the history of the United States. Before they won their (3)_____ from Britain, the colonists were forced to (4)_____ taxes on many goods imported into America. The tax money was (5)_____ to support colonial governors and officials sent to the colonies by the British. In 1770 the British Prime Minister had repealed most of the taxes, but King George (6)_____ on retaining the tax (7)_____ tea. The King saw the tax as a (8)_____ of the British right to tax the colonies. American merchants (9)_____ smuggled nine-tenths of America"s tea into the country and (10)_____ paying the taxes. (11)_____ the tax savings, the price of tea remained expensive due. to (12)_____ shipping costs. When the British Parliament (13)_____ a new law which would allow British companies to import tea more (14)_____ than American shipping companies, the (15)_____ were alarmed and they (16)_____ a protest. In Boston citizens and merchants, who (17)_____ disguised as Indians, boarded a British ship and (18)_____ $15,000 worth of tea into the harbor. This protest (19)_____ Great Britain is known as the Boston Tea Party. It was one of the earliest acts of (20)_____ against British rule.

Women have long been more in number than men on college campuses. They also hold more advanced degrees than their male【C1】______. So it makes sense that women would also score higher on IQ tests. But for the last 100 years, they"ve lagged behind men by as much as five points—【C2】______their scores have been rising. Finally, according to IQ expert James Flynn, women have【C3】______ the IQ gap and are in fact scoring higher than men, reports the Telegraph. IQ, the most widely used measure of【C4】______and is determined based on the difference between one"s IQ score and the【C5】______IQ score of a certain age group. It"s thought to be a product of both environmental and【C6】______factors, and is a statistically reliable【C7】______of future educational achievement, job【C8】______and income. But the reasons for differences in IQ— for example, between races or genders—have long been widely【C9】______. There are many【C10】______reasons that women finally surpassed men in IQ after a century of【C11】______, according to Flynn, who is writing a book about IQ and gender. One【C12】______is that women have【C13】______been capable of scoring higher but, because of gender stereotypes, never realized their own【C14】______. Gender-based differences in education,【C15】______ and social roles have historically set the【C16】______lower for women. "This【C17】______ is more noticeable for women than for men【C18】______they were socially and economically【C19】______ in the past," Flynn told the Telegraph. Now if only women could close in on that annoying 【C20】______gap.

Giving Advice to a Younger Cousin Write an e-mail of about 100 words based on the following situation: Your cousin Ann will finish the high school course this month. She is undecided whether to take a college course or to accept a job. Now write her an e-mail to give her your advice. Do not sign your own name at the end of the e-mail. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address.

BSection III Writing/B

The human nose is an underrated tool. Humans are often thought to be insensitive smellers compared with animals,【C1】______this is largely because,【C2】______animals, we stand upright. This means that our noses are 【C3】______to perceiving those smells which float through the air,【C4】______the majority of smells which stick to surfaces. In fact,【C5】______, we are extremely sensitive to smells, 【C6】______we do not generally realize it. Our noses are capable of【C7】______human smells even when these ar【C8】______to far below one part in one million. Strangely, some people find that they can smell one type of flower but not another,【C9】______others are sensitive to the smells of both flowers. This may be because some people do not have the genes necessary to generate【C10】______smell receptors in the nose. These receptors are the cells which sense smells and send【C11】______to the brain. However, it has been found that even people insensitive to a certain smell【C12】______can suddenly become sensitive to it when【C13】______to it often enough. The explanation for insensitivity to smell seems to be that the brain finds it【C14】______to keep all smell receptors working all the time but can【C15】______new receptors if necessary. This may【C16】______explain why we are not usually sensitive to our own smells—we simply do not need to be. We are not【C17】______of the usual smell of our own house, but we【C18】______new smells when we visit someone else"s. The brain finds it best to keep smell receptors【C19】______for unfamiliar and emergency signals【C20】______the smell of smoke, which might indicate the danger of fire.

Writeanessayof160-200wordsbasedonthefollowingdrawing.Inyouressay,youshould1)describethedrawingbriefly,2)explainitsintendedmeaning,andthen3)giveyourcomments.YoushouldwriteneatlyontheANSWERSHEET.(20points)

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

BSection I Use of EnglishDirections: Read the following text. Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C or D./B

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

We sometimes think humans are uniquely vulnerable to anxiety, but stress seems to affect the immune defenses of lower animals too. In one experiment, for example, behavioral immunologist Mark Laudenslager, at the University of Denver, gave mild electric shocks to 24 rats. Half the animals could switch off the current by turning a wheel in their enclosure, while the other half could not.The rats in the two groups were paired so that each time one rat turned the wheel it protected both itself and its helpless partner from the shock. Laudenslager found that the immune response was depressed below normal in the helpless rats but not in those that could turn off the electricity. What he has demonstrated, he believes, is that lack of control over an event, not the experience itself, is what weakens the immune system. Other researchers agree. Jay Weiss, a psychologist at Duke University School of Medicine, has shown that animals who are allowed to control unpleasant stimuli don"t develop sleep disturbances or changes in brain chemistry typical of stressed rats. But if the animals are confronted with situations they have no control over, they later behave passively when faced with experiences they can control. Such findings reinforce psychologists" suspicions that the experience or perception of helplessness is one of the most harmful factors in depression. One of the most startling examples of how the mind can alter the immune response was discovered by chance. In 1975 psychologist Robert Ader at the University of Rochester School of Medicine conditioned mice to avoid saccharin by simultaneously feeding them the sweetener and injecting them with a drug that while suppressing their immune systems caused stomach upsets. Associating the saccharin with the stomach pains, the mice quickly learned to avoid the sweetener. In order to extinguish this dislike for the sweetener, Ader reexposed the animals to saccharin, this time without the drug, and was astonished to find that those mice that had received the highest amounts of sweetener during their earlier conditioning died. He could only speculate that he had so successfully conditioned the rats that saccharin alone now served to weaken their immune systems enough to kill them.

(46) The American sociologist Talcott Parsons believed that the two most important functions of the modern family are the primary socialization of children and the stabilization of adult personalities through marriage and the raising of children. His own concern was particularly with the middle-class American family, but these important aspects of family life are also applicable much more widely. In the present context it is worthwhile to look especially at primary socialization. (47) Primary socialization refers to the training of children during their earliest years, whereas secondary socialization refers to later influences on the development of the child"s personality and learning activities, such as his involvement with teachers and with other children at school. Primary socialization is in most societies carried out essentially within the family as part of child rearing. In the modern family, parents take responsibility for raising and teaching their children such basic things as language and correct behavior. Toilet training, teaching children how to eat correctly, and encouraging children to get along with others are all aspects of child rearing. However, it is not only these more mundane aspects of behavior that children learn. Children are also implicitly encouraged to develop the values of the parents and of the society in which they live. In American society, which was Parsons" main concern, these values include independence, motivation for achievement, and competition. In other societies, different values, such as cooperation and egalitarianism, may be stressed. (48) Yet the principle behind primary socialization in different societies is the same: the development of social values must be achieved in an environment of love and security, as is found in the ideal family anywhere in the world. However, few families are ideal. Studies of the families of emotionally disturbed children have shown that unsatisfactory relationships between husbands and wives can have detrimental effects on children. Sometimes a child is used as a scapegoat. The parents blame or even physically abuse the child in order to cover up their own difficulties. (49) In such a ease, the child often fails to develop the values the parents wish to instill in him, developing instead antisocial habits leading to deviant behavior in later life. Indeed, the cycle may be repeated if such a person in time marries, has a family of his own, and treats his children in the same way. Nonetheless, there is no reason to suppose that all children of unsatisfactory marriages are treated in such a way or fail to overcome the difficulties they have as children. (50) Some social scientists have even suggested that the isolated nuclear family, as it exists in Western industrialized societies, is to blame for the social ills found in those societies. They claim that in the past more support was offered from the wider kin network and from the community as a whole—as is still the case in less-developed parts of the world, The British psychiatrists R.D. Laing and David Cooper suggested that the modern family is dysfunctional in that, by its very nature, it forces upon children an undue emphasis on obedience to authority. These negative viewpoints aside, most experts as well as most parents agree that the primary socialization process in the modern family offers benefits both t6 the child and to the parents.

In the following text, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 1-5, choose the most suitable one from the list A-G to fit into each of the numbered blanks. There are two extra choices, which do not fit in any of the blanks. How does your reading proceed? Clearly you try to comprehend, in the sense of identifying meanings for individual words and working out relationships between them, drawing on your implicit knowledge of English grammar. 【C1】______You begin to infer a context for the text, for instance, by making decisions about what kind of speech event is involved. Who is making the utterance, to whom, when and where. The ways of reading indicated here are without doubt kinds of comprehension. But they show comprehension to consist not just of passive assimilation but of active engagement in inference and problem-solving. You infer information you feel the writer has invited you to grasp by presenting you with specific evidence and clues.【C2】______ Conceived in this way, comprehension will not follow exactly the same track for each reader. What is in question is not the retrieval of an absolute, fixed or "true" meaning that can be read off and checked for accuracy, or some timeless relation of the text to the world.【C3】______ Such background material inevitably reflects who we are. 【C4】______ This doesn"t, however, make interpretation merely relative or even pointless. Precisely because readers from different historical periods, places and social experiences produce different but overlapping readings of the same words on the page—including for texts that engage with fundamental human concerns—debates about texts can play an important role in social discussion of beliefs and values. How we read a given text also depends to some extent on our particular interest in reading it. 【C5】______Such dimensions of reading suggest—as others introduced later in the book will also do—that we bring an implicit (often unacknowledged) agenda to any act of reading. It doesn"t then necessarily follow that one kind of reading is fuller, more advanced or more worthwhile than another. Ideally, different kinds of reading inform each other, and act as useful reference points for and counterbalances to one another. Together, they make up the reading component of your overall literacy, or relationship to your surrounding textual environment.[A] Are we studying that text and trying to respond in a way that fulfils the requirement of a given course? Reading it simply for pleasure? Skimming it for information? Ways of reading on a train or in bed are likely to differ considerably from reading in a seminar room.[B] Factors such as the place and period in which we are reading, our gender, ethnicity, age and social class will encourage us towards certain interpretations but at the same time obscure or even close off others.[C] If you are unfamiliar with words or idioms, you guess at their meaning, using clues presented in the context. On the assumption that they will become relevant later, you make a mental note of discourse entities as well as possible links between them.[D] In effect, you try to reconstruct the likely meanings or effects that any given sentence, image or reference might have had: These might be the ones the author intended.[E] You make further inferences, for instance, about how the text may be significant to you, or about its validity—inferences that form the basis of a personal response for which the author will inevitably be far less responsible.[F] In plays, novels and narrative poems, characters speak as constructs created by the author, not necessarily as mouthpieces for the author"s own thoughts.[G] Rather, we ascribe meanings to texts on the basis of interaction between what we might call textual and contextual material: between kinds of organization or patterning we perceive in a text"s formal structures (so especially its language structures) and various kinds of background, social knowledge, belief and attitude that we bring to the text.

The more women and minorities make their way into the ranks of management, the more they seem to want to talk about things formerly judged to be best left unsaid. The newcomers also tend to see office matters with a fresh eye, in the process sometimes coming up with critical analyses of the forces that shape everyone"s experience in the organization. Consider the novel view of "Harvey Coleman of Atlanta on the subject of getting ahead. Coleman is black. He spent 11 years with IBM, half of them working in management development, and now serves as a consultant to the likes of AT&T, Coca-Cola, and Merth. Coleman says that based on what he"s seen at big companies, he weighs the different elements that make for long-term career success as follows: performance counts a mere 10%, image, 30%, and exposure, a full 60%. Coleman concludes that excellent performance is so common these days that while doing your work well may win you pay increases, it won"t secure you the big promotion. He finds that advancement more often depends on how many people know you" and your work, and how high they are. Ridiculous beliefs? Not to many people, especially many women and members of minority races who, like Coleman, feel the scales have dropped from their eyes. "Women and blacks in organizations work under false beliefs," says Kaleel Jamison, a New York-based management consultant who helps corporations deal with these issues. "They think that if you work hard, you"ll get ahead—that someone in authority will reach down and give you a promotion," she adds. "Most women and blacks are so frightened that people will think they"ve gotten ahead because of their sex or color that they play down their visibility." Her advice to those folks: learn the ways that white males have traditionally used to find their way into the spotlight.

Our life, from the very beginning, to our destiny, has already been fated. We are all given a spiritual soul in our mother"s womb and a physical body to experience the journey to our destiny. Our fate is controlled by our parents until we are of age to exert upon our own journey in life. Coincidences are controlled by fate, in a sense, that we never know what is going to really happen in our future. The path to our destiny is fated by quite a few coincidences to guide us in the right direction. Sometimes we miss the cues by not paying enough attention to the signs. As we are learning from our mistakes, we may briefly start down the wrong path sometimes due to free will and wrong choices we make. This does not mean we won"t find our way back to our destined path, because life coincidences will align you once again by corresponding with what is fated for you eventually. We may never know the timing of these events, or actually what is in store for us, but we can be sure of whatever our fate is to be, coincidences will keep us accountable and humble our resistance without us even knowing sometimes. A combination of coincidence and fate is insight into an unknown realm. We can" t predict when something is going to happen to us, but little coincidences may lead you to clues about yourself to prevent any more harm to you or your body. A freak minor accident at work takes you to the emergency room, they find something else wrong with you that with corrective medication, it" s treatable. Is this coincidence It would seem like it, would it? This combination of coincidence and fate can be described as you don"t know what your fate would have been if you hadn"t had the accident and gone to the hospital. What a coincidence! Things do happen to us for a reason! We don"t always understand why some things seem bad, or some things turn out for the good, but they are fated to be the way they are. If we can be patient, maintain grace through our hardships, loss, and difficulties, our journey to our destination will be rewarded. It"s extraordinary that a mere coincidence can change the course of our lives by a fated chance or opportunity. Subtle forces are always guiding us to our true destiny. Pay close attention.

Mothers interfere with their children"s lives even more than most offspring realize. That they nag about eating habits is well known. What goes unnoticed is that mothers leave cells inside their children"s bodies, which may help with repairs when a child"s own cells go disorderly. This form of maternal interference is called microchimerism—the presence of a small number of cells that originate from another individual and therefore genetically distinct from the cells of the host individual. A mother"s cells can endure until a child reaches adulthood and perhaps throughout life. But scientists do not know exactly how common microchimerism is. It is detected more often in people with autoimmune conditions, which has led to the suggestion that the maternal cells could trigger those diseases. But healthy people have them too, seemingly with no ill effects. Lee Nelson, of the University of Washington, suspects that everybody has a few maternal cells. Her most recent work argues that, at least in some cases, they help rather than harm. Dr Nelson and her colleagues took blood samples from three groups of young volunteers and their mothers. The first group comprised 94 young volunteers who had type 1 diabetes; the second were 54 of their healthy siblings(brothers or sisters); and a further 24 were children without diabetes who were not related to anyone else in the study. The researchers then compared DNA from the mothers and their children. Because mothers pass copies of about half their genes to their children, some genes in any child-mother pairs will be unique to the mother—those that the child has not inherited from her. Others—versions of genes that came from dad—will be unique to the child. Dr Nelson used the uniquely maternal genes to find mothers" cells in the volunteers" blood. The technique found maternal cells in about half the diabetics" samples, but in only about one-third of the healthy siblings" samples and in less than one-fifth of those from the unrelated volunteers. Moreover, the microchimerism was not only more common but also more pronounced in diabetics. Dr Nelson also looked for signs that the maternal cells had caused the diabetes but found no evidence. So, contrary to established opinion, she believes maternal cells can do children good. These cells may help any bodily organ work better, she says, apart from the reproductive kind. Mothers" protective interference goes on—seen and unseen.

Mercedes estate cars and Fiat runarounds are being used to test up to 22 different monitors designed to detect if a driver is falling asleep at the wheel and trigger a series of devices designed to wake them up. The aim of the project, funded by ￡4 million of European Union money as well as private investment, is to reduce the estimated 30% of fatal accidentswhich are caused in Europe each year by drivers drifting off at the wheel. The test cars have been fitted with infrared cameras which monitor eye movement, touch-pad sensors that measure the driver"s grip on the steering wheel and chassis monitors which check for veer. Should drivers start to doze off they can be quickly woken by a sudden blast of air-conditioned cold air. At the same time a vibrating alarm will sound and the driver"s seat will be made to shake. Daimler Chrysler, owner of Mercedes, as well as Fiat, will own the patent of the awake system,which could be installed in cars as soon as this year. If the trials are successful the EU is considering introducing a directive which would make the system compulsory in long-distance lorries—a leading cause of road accidents. According to transport department figures, more than 300 people die each year in Britain in accidents thought to be caused by drivers falling asleep at the wheel. Ten people died in the Selby rail crash last year when a car driver fell asleep on a motor-way, crashed onto a railway line and derailed a passenger train. Motoring organizations said the new system might prevent accidents such as Selby but were cautious as to whether it would prove practical. The safety system also monitors braking frequency and can detect eye movement towards the rear and side mirrors. As no one drives in exactly the same way, the system must "learn" the individual characteristics of its owner or owners. The researchers had considered systems that squirted a refined version of smelling salts at the dozy motorist, opened the windows and activated the brakes automatically. However, such ideas have been abandoned as potentially dangerous, startling a driver and leading to sudden changes in steering.