Your friend Wang Yu, who you have not seen for quite some time, has obtained a promotion recently. Write him a letter. Because he was very kind to you in the past, you should recall some of his previous kindness and express your joy at his success. 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)

Like the flu, a person"s emotional state can be contagious. Watch someone cry, and you"ll likely feel sad; think about the elderly, and you"ll tend to walk slower. Now a study suggests that we can also catch someone else"s irrational thought processes. Anyone who"s lost money on a house in need of repair may have suc-cumbed to a classic economic fallacy known as "sunk costs." You make a bad investment in a home that"s never going to sell for more than you put in to it, yet you want to justify your investment by continuing to throw money into renovations. One way to avoid this hole is to get advice from someone who has no self-interest in the project. But is the outsider still somehow susceptible to your mindset? To find out, social psychologist Adam Galinsky of Northwestern University and colleagues asked college students to take over decision-making for a person they had never met—and who they didn"t know was fake. The volunteers were split into two groups: one that felt some connection with the decisionmaker and another that didn"t. In one experiment, the volunteers watched the following scenario play out via text on a computer screen: the fake decision-maker tried to outbid another person for a prize of 356 points, which equaled $4.45 in real money. The decision-maker started out with 360 points, and every time the other bidder raised the stakes by 40 points, the decision-maker followed suit. Volunteers were told that once the decision-maker bid over 356 points, he or she would begin to lose some of the $12 payment for participating in the study. When the decision-maker neared this threshold, the volunteers were asked to take over bidding. Objectively, the volunteers should have realized that—like the person who makes a bad investment in a house—the decision-maker would keep throwing good money after bad. But the volunteers who felt identification with the fake player made almost 60% more bids and were more likely to lose money than those who didn"t feel a connection. Galinsky believes that the results suggest that companies trying to reverse results of bad decisions should find true outsiders. He points to troubled automaker Ford as an example. Instead of hiring from within—as General Motors (GM) recently did—Ford made Alan Mulally from Boeing, an aerospace company, their chief executive officer. Many experts believe that Ford is now recovering quicker than GM. "It"s true that insiders have more knowledge," Galinsky says. "But when you are already down the road of a failed course of action, you really need... a true outsider."

The scientist who wants to predict the way which consumers will spend their money must study consumer behavior. He must 【B1】_______ data both on the resources of consumers and on the motive that 【B2】_______ to encourage or discourage money spending. If an economist were asked which of three groups borrow most—people with rising incomes,【B3】______incomes, or decreasing incomes—he would probably answer, those with 【B4】_______ incomes. 【B5】_______, the answer was: people with rising incomes. People with decreasing incomes were 【B6】_______ and people with stable incomes borrowed least. This shows us that traditional 【B7】_______ about the relation between earning and spending are not always【B8】______. Another traditional assumption is that if people who have money expect prices to go up, they will【B9】______to buy.【B10】______, research surveys have shown that this is not always true. The expectations of price increases may not【B11】______buying. One typical attitude was expressed【B12】______the wife of mechanic in an interview at a time of rising price. "In a few months," she said, "we’ll have【B13】______to spend on other things." Her family had been planning to buy a new car but they postponed this【B14】______. Furthermore, the rise in prices that has already taken place may be disliked and buyer' s【B15】______may be produced. This is shown by the following【B16】______comment: "I just don't pay these prices; they are too high." The investigations mentioned above were【B17】______in America. If prices have been stable and people consider that they are【B18】______, they are likely to buy. Thus, it appears that the common business policy of【B19】______stable prices is based on a correct understanding of consumer【B20】______.

It is raining.

Where is the second centre of Hollywood film making in Europe after London, Paris, or perhaps Berlin? Try Prague. Last year, Hollywood spent over $200m on shooting movies, commercials and pop videos in the Czech capital. This year, all the big studios will be in town. MGM has "Hart"s War" starring Bruce Willis; Disney is shooting "Black Sheep" with Anthony Hopkins; and Fox has just finished filming "From Hell", a Jack the Ripper saga starring Johnny Depp. Praguers take Tinseltown in their stride. Old ladies looked only slightly confused last month when the cobbled streets of Mala Strana, Prague"s old quarter, were cleared of real snow and sprayed with a more cinematically pleasing chemical alternative for Universal"s "Bourne Identity", a $50m thriller starring Matt Damon. The film"s producer, Pat Crowley, reckons a day filming in Prague costs him $100,000, against $250,000 in Paris. Czech crews, he says, are professional, English-speaking and numerous. They are also a bargain—40% cheaper than similar crews in London or Los Angeles, points out Matthew Stillman. the British boss of Stillking, a Prague-based production firm. Mr. Stillman founded Stillking in 1993 after arriving in Prague with $500 and a typewriter. Today, Hollywood producers come to the company for crews, catering, lights and much more. It claims to have about half of the local film-production business and this year hopes for revenues of over $50m. The biggest draw to Prague, however, is Barrandov—one of the largest film studios in Europe, with 11 sound-stages, onsite photo labs and top-notch technicians. It was founded during Czechoslovakia"s pre-war first republic by Milos Havel, an uncle of the present Czech president, Vaclav Havel. The Nazis expanded it as a production centre for propaganda flicks—the sound-stages are courtesy of Joseph Goebbels. Then came the Communists with their own propaganda and, admittedly, a few impressive homegrown directors such as Milos Forman, who began Hollywood"s march to Prague by filming "Amadeus" there. But it is partly thanks to Barrandov that Prague remains some way behind London as a film centre. The studio has suffered from doubtful management and is already stretched to capacity ("You can"t even get an office there", moans one producer). Its present owner, a local steel company, is keen to sell but talks with a Canadian institution have been thorny, not least because the Czech government holds a golden share. Should the Canadian deal fall through, Stillking says it would consider a bid of its own.

BSection II Reading Comprehension/B

The problem to be taken up and the point at which the search for a solution will begin are customarily prescribed by the investigator (1)_____ a subject participating in an (2)_____ on thinking (or by the programmer for a computer). (3)_____, prevailing techniques of (4)_____ in the psychology of thinking have invited (5)_____ of the motivational aspects of thinking. The conditions that determine when the person will begin to think in (6)_____ to some other activity, what he will think about, what direction his thinking will take, and when he will regard his search for a solution as successfully terminated (or abandon it as not worth pursuing further) (7)_____ are beginning to attract investigation. (8)_____ much thinking is aimed at (9)_____ ends, special motivational problems are raised by "disinterested" thinking, in which the (10)_____ of an answer to a question is a source of satisfaction in itself. For computer specialists, the detection of a mismatch between the formula that the program so far has (11)_____ and some formula or set of requirements that (12)_____ a solution is what impels continuation of the search and determines the direction it will (13)_____. Neo-behaviorists (like psychoanalysts) have made much of secondary (14)_____ value and stimulus generalization; i. e., the tendency of a stimulus pattern to become a source of satisfaction if it resembles or has (15)_____ accompanied some form of biological gratification. The insufficiency of this kind of explanation becomes apparent, (16)_____, when the importance of novelty, surprise, complexity, incongruity, ambiguity, and (17)_____ is considered. Inconsistency between beliefs, between items of incoming sensory information, or between one"s belief and an item of sensory information (18)_____ can be a source of discomfort impelling a (19)_____ for resolution through reorganization of belief (20)_____ or through selective acquisition of new information.

Year after year a dedicated Swedish chemist worked to find a substance which, when (1)_____ nitroglycerine(硝化甘油), would make explosives safer to handle (2)_____ weakening their force. He had a personal (3)_____ scientific reason to pursue his search, because his (4)_____ brother had been killed when a can of nitroglycerine (5)_____ exploded. The oily liquid had been (6)_____ for so many disasters that its (7)_____ had finally been outlawed by many countries. While (8)_____ a new formula one morning, the doctor broke a test tube and gashed(划开) his finger. He was daubing(涂搽) the (9)_____ with collodion(火棉胶), a coating solution of gun-cotton dissolved in ether-alcohol(乙醚), (10)_____ the idea struck him-mix collodion with the nitroglycerine! (11)_____ was the answer. The new mixture, (12)_____ blasting gelatine(爆胶), was not only (13)_____ safe to handle as dynamite, but it was also one-and-a-half times more powerful! In fact, so powerful (14)_____ that it paved the way for a whole new (15)_____ in construction and engineering. Mines were (16)_____, roads were built, and canals were cut at a speed once (17)_____ impossible. It had another use, also-death and destruction in warfare. Its inventor had believed that the power of his new (18)_____ would so awe the military mind that it would actually be a deterrent to war. (19)_____ it became a weapon that brought death to millions of soldiers and (20)_____.

[A]YoumayhavetoimpressthecompanyHRrepresentativesaswell.HRrepsaretypicallytrainedtoaskveryspecificandpersonalquestions,likewhatsalaryyouexpectandwhatyou'vemadeinthepast.Theymightaskyouaboutyourimpressionsofthecompanyandthepeoplewhointerviewedyou.Theymightalsoaskifyouhaveotheroffers.Ifso,chancesaregoodthattheyarewillingtocompeteforyou.Butifyousaythatyouhaveotheroffers,bepreparedtobackitupwiththewho,whatandwhen,becausetheymightchallengeyou.TheHRrepsarealsothepeoplewhowillconductorarrangereferenceandbackgroundchecks.Theymighthavethefinalsay.[B]Besidesmanagement,youmightalsointerviewwithoneormoreofyourfuturecoworkers.Regardlessofthequestionstheyask,whattheymostreallywanttoknowishowwellyou'llfitintotheteam,ifyou'llcausethemmoreworkinsteadofless,andiftheyshouldfeelthreatenedbyyou.Whenanswering,beeagerenoughtoshowthatyouareagoodteamplayerandwillpullyourload,butnotsoeagerastoappeartobeaback-stabbingladderclimber![C]Alwaysresearchacompanybeforeyouinterview,andrememberthatattire,bodylanguageandmannerscount,bigtime.Trytoavoidcommonmistakes.Youmaythinkthatthisiscommonsense,butcrazystuffreallyhappens![D]JobinterviewingisoneofthemostpopularcareertopicsontheWeb.Butnocareeradvisorcantellyouexactlywhattosayduringajobinterview.Interviewsarejusttooup-closeandpersonalforthat.Aboutthebestthatcareeradvisorscando,istogiveyousometipsaboutthetypicalquestionstoexpect,soyoucanpracticeansweringthemaheadoftime.But,whiletherearemanycannedinterviewquestions,therearefewcannedanswers.Therestisuptoyou.[E]Bepreparedtoattendasecondinterviewatthesamecompany,andmaybeevenathirdorfourth.Ifyou'recalledbackformoreinterviews,itmeansthatthey'reinterestedinyou.But,itdoesn'tmeanyou'reashoo-in.Mostlikely,theyarenarrowingthecompetition,sokeepupthegoodwork![F]Toputyousomewhatatease,manyinterviewersreallydon'tknowhowtointervieweffectively.Frontlineinterviewersaretypicallymanagersandsupervisorswhohaveneverbeenorarebarelytrainedininterviewingtechniques.They'realittlenervoustoo,justlikeyou.Somedon'tevenprepareinadvance.Thismakesiteasierforyoutotakecontroloftheinterview,ifyouhaveprepared.Butincontrollinganinterview,it'snotagoodideatotrytodominate.Instead,trytosteerittowardlandingthejob.[G]Afterinterviewing,immediatelysendathankyoulettertoeachofyourinterviewers.It'sprofessionalandexpected,andmightevenbethedecidingfactorinyourfavor.[H]Remember,it'satwo-waystreet.It'stheemployer'schancetojudgeyou,butit'salsoverymuchyourchancetojudgetheemployer.Infact,ifyouhandleyourselfwellandasktherightquestions,you'llputtheinterviewerinthepositionofsellingthecompanytoyou.Ifthishappens,you'reprobablydoingwell.Order:

We thus easily get into great difficulties from the necessity of viewing culture, at one moment, as a part of the man and, at another moment, as a part of the environment.

The family is the center of most traditional Asians' lives. Many people worry about their families welfare, reputation, and honor. Asian families are often【B1】______, including several generations related by 【B2】______ or marriage living in the same home. An Asian person' s misdeeds are not blamed just on the individual but also on the family—including the dead【B3】______. Traditional Chinese, among many other Asians, respect their elders and feel a deep sense of duty【B4】______them. Children repay their parents'【B5】______by being successful and supporting them in old age. This is accepted as a【B6】______part of life in China.【B7】______, taking care of the aged parents is often viewed as a tremendous【B8】______in the United States, where aging and family support are not 【B9】______ highly.【B10】______, in the youth-oriented United States, growing old is seen as a bad thing, and many old people do not receive respect. Filipinos, the most Americanized of the Asians, are【B11】______extremely family-oriented. They are【B12】______to helping their children and will sacrifice greatly for their children to get an education.【B13】______, the children are devoted to their parents, who often live nearby. Grown children who leave the country for economic reasons【B14】______send large parts of their income home to their parents. The Vietnamese family【B15】______people currently【B16】______as well as the spirits of the dead and of the as-yet unborn. Any【B17】______or actions are done from family considerations, not individual desires. People' s behavior is judged【B18】______whether it brings shame or pride to the family. The Vietnamese do not particularly believe in self-reliance; in this way, they are the【B19】______of people in the United States. Many Vietnamese think that their actions in this life will influence their【B20】______in the next life.

The abortion debate has raged since 1973, when the Supreme Court gave abortion constitutional protection, but the basic law of the land has proved immutable . Abortion is legal, and it"s going to remain legal for a long time. Laws often alter attitudes, inducing people to accept things—such as racial integration—they once rejected. But sometimes, attitudes move in the opposite direction, as people see the consequences of the change. That"s the case with abortion. The news that the abortion rate has fallen to its lowest level in 30 years elicits various explanations, from increased use of contraceptives to lack of access to abortion clinics. But maybe the chief reason is that the great majority of Americans, even many who see themselves as pro-choice, are deeply uncomfortable with it. In 1992, a Gallup/Newsweek poll found 34 percent of Americans thought abortion "should be legal under any circumstances," with 13 percent saying it should always be illegal. Last year, only 26 percent said it should always be allowed, with 18 percent saying it should never be permitted. Sentiments are even more negative among the group that might place the highest value on being able to escape an unwanted pregnancy: young people. In 2003, Gallup found, one of every three kids from age 13 to 17 said abortion should be illegal in all circumstances. More revealing yet is that 72 percent said abortion is "morally wrong". The report on abortion rates from the Guttmacher Institute suggests that the evolution of attitudes has transformed behavior. Since 1990, the number of abortions has dropped from 1. 61 million to 1. 21 million. The abortion rate among women of childbearing age has declined by 29 percent. Those changes could be the result of other factors, such as more use of contraception: If fewer women get pregnant, fewer will resort to abortion. But the shift is equally marked among women who do get pregnant. In 1990, 30. 4 percent of pregnancies ended in abortion. Last year, the figure was 22. 4 percent. Pro-choice groups say women are having fewer abortions only because abortion clinics are growing scarcer. But abortion clinics may be growing scarcer because of a decline in demand for their services and a public opinion climate that has gotten more inhospitable. This growing aversion to abortion may be traced to better information. When the Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973, most people had little understanding of fetal development. But the proliferation of ultrasound images from the womb, combined with the dissemination of facts by pro-life groups, has lifted the veil. The prevailing view used to be: Abortion may be evil, but it" s necessary. Increasingly, the sentiment is: Abortion may be necessary, but it"s evil.

You are preparing an opening remark at a discussion on "Books are our best friends". Your remark should cover: 1) the value of books and 2) what a good book may be. You should write about 100 words. Do not sign your own name. Use "Li Ming" instead. You do not need to write the address.

WhenTechnologyDoesEverythingforUsWriteanessayof160-200wordsbasedonthedrawing.Inyouressay,youshould1)describethedrawingbriefly,2)explainitsintendedmeaning,and3)giveyourcomments.

When Ted Kennedy gazes from the windows of his office in Boston, he can see the harbor"s "Golden Stairs", where all eight of his great-grandparents first set foot in America. It reminds him, he told his Senate colleagues this week, that reforming America"s immigration laws is an "awesome responsibility". Mr. Kennedy is the Democrat most prominently pushing a bipartisan bill to secure the border, ease the national skills shortage and offer a path to citizenship for the estimated 12m illegal aliens already in the country. He has a steep climb ahead of him. As drafted, the bill seeks to mend America"s broken immigration system in several ways. First, and before its other main provisions come into effect, it would tighten border security. It provides for 200 miles (320 km) of vehicle barriers, 370 miles of fencing and 18,000 new border patrol agents. It calls for an electronic identification system to ensure employers verily that all their employees are legally allowed to work. And it stiffens punishments for those who knowingly hire illegals. As soon as the bill was unveiled, it was stoned from all sides. Christans, mostly Republicans, denounced it as an "amnesty" that would encourage further waves of illegal immigration. Tom Tancredo, a Republican congressman running for president (without hope of success) on an anti-illegal-immigration platform, demanded that all but the border-security clauses be scrapped. Even these he "derided as "so limited it"s almost a joke". Conservative talkradio echoed his call. No one is seriously proposing mass deportation, but Mr. Tancredo says the illegals will all go home if the laws against hiring them are vigorously enforced. Most labor unions are skeptical, too. The AFL-CIO denounced the guest-worker program, which it said would give employers "a ready pool of labor that they can exploit to drive down wages, benefits, health and safety protections" for everyone else. Two Democratic senators tried to gut the program. One failed to abolish it entirely; another succeeded in slashing it from 400 000 to 200,000 people a year. Employers like the idea of more legal migrants but worry that the new system will be cumbersome. Many object to the idea that they will have to check the immigration status of all their employees. The proposed federal computer system to sort legal from illegal workers is bound to make mistakes. Even ff only one employee in a hundred is falsely labeled illegal, that will cause a lot of headaches. And the points system has drawbacks, too. Employers are better placed than bureaucrats to judge which skills are in short supply. That is why the current mess has advantages—illegal immigrants nearly always go where their labor is in demand. Other groups have complaints, too. Immigrant-rights groups say that the path to citizenship would be too long and arduous and too few Hispanics would qualify. Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House, fretted that the new stress on skills would hurt families, adding that her party is "about families and family values". Some people worry that House Democrats will kill it to prevent Mr. Bush from enjoying a domestic success. Despite the indignation, public opinion favors the underlying principles. At least 60% of Americans want to give illegals a chance to become citizens if they work hard and behave.

In October 2002, Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank【B1】______a new electronic market for economic indices that 【B2】______ substantial economic risks, such as nonfarm payroll (a measure of job availability) and retail sales. This new market was made possible by a 【B3】______ rating technology, developed by Longitude, a New York company providing software for financial markets,【B4】______the Parimutuel Digital Call Auction. This is "digital" 【B5】______ of a digital option: i.e., it pays out only if an underlying index lies in a narrow, discrete range. In effect, Longitude has created a horse race, where each "horse" wins if and 【B6】______ the specified index falls in a specified range. By creating horses for every possible 【B7】______ of the index, and allowing people to bet 【B8】______ any number of runners, the company has produced a liquid integrated electronic market for a wide array of options on economic indices. Ten years ago it was【B9】______impossible to make use of electronic information about home values. Now, mortgage lenders have online automated valuation models that allow them to estimate values and to【B10】______the risk in their portfolios. This has led to a proliferation of types of home loan, some of【B11】______have improved risk-management characteristics. We are also beginning to see new kinds of【B12】______for homes, which will make it possible to protect the value of【B13】______, for most people, is the single most important【B14】______of their wealth. The Yale University-Neighbourhood Reinvestment Corporation programme,【B15】______last year in the city of Syracuse, in New York state, may be a model for home-equity insurance policies that【B16】______sophisticated economic indices of house prices to define the【B17】______of the policy. Electronic futures markets that are based on econometric indices of house prices by city, already begun by City Index and IG Index in Britain and now【B18】______developed in the United States, will enable home-equity insurers to hedge the risks that they acquire by writing these policies. These examples are not impressive successes yet. But they【B19】______as early precursors of a technology that should one day help us to deal with the massive risks of inequality that【B20】______will beset us in coming years.

关于宇宙起源的科学发现 ——1998年英译汉及详解 They were, by far, the largest and most distant objects that scientists had ever detected: a strip of enormous cosmic clouds some 15 billion light years from earth.【F1】 But even more important, it was the farthest that scientists had been able to look into the past, for what they were seeing were the patterns and structures that existed 15 billion years ago. That was just about the moment that the universe was born. What the researchers found was at once both amazing and expected; the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration"s Cosmic Background Explorer satellite—Cobe—had discovered landmark evidence that the universe did in fact begin with the primeval explosion that has become known as the Big Bang(the theory that the universe originated in an explosion from a single mass of energy). 【F2】 The existence of the giant clouds was virtually required for the Big Bang, first put forward in the 1920s, to maintain its reign as the dominant explanation of the cosmos. According to the theory, the universe burst into being as a submicroscopic, unimaginable dense knot of pure energy that flew outward in all directions, emitting radiation as it went, condensing into particles and then into atoms of gas. Over billions of years, the gas was compressed by gravity into galaxies, stars, plants and eventually, even humans. Cobe is designed to see just the biggest structures, but astronomers would like to see much smaller hot spots as well, the seeds of local objects like clusters and superclusters of galaxies. They shouldn"t have long to wait.【F3】 Astrophysicists working with ground based detectors at the South Pole and balloon borne instruments are closing in on such structures, and may report their findings soon. 【F4】 If the small hot spots look as expected, that will be a triumph for yet another scientific idea, a refinement of the Big Bang called the inflationary universe theory. Inflation says that very early on, the universe expanded in size by more than a trillion trillion trillion trillion fold in much less than a second, propelled by a sort of antigravity.【F5】 Odd though it sounds, cosmic inflation is a scientifically plausible consequence of some respected ideas in elementary particle physics, and many astrophysicists have been convinced for the better part of a decade that it is true.

Iron is more useful than any other metal.

Machines and foreign competition will replace millions of American jobs. But work will be plentiful for people trained in the occupations of the future. The Labor Department predicts a net increase of 25 million new jobs in the United States in 1995 with service-industry jobs growing three times as rapidly as factory jobs. "Work will shift its emphasis from the fatigue and monotony of the production line and the typing pool to the more interesting challenge of the electronic service center, the design studio, the research laboratory, the education institute and the training school", predicts Canadian economist Calvert. Jobs in high-tech fields will multiply fastest, but from a low base. In terms of actual numbers, more mundane occupations will experience the biggest surge: custodians, cashiers, secretaries, waiters and clerks. Yet much of the drudge work will be taken on by robots. The number of robots performing blue-collar tasks will increase from 3,000 in 1981 to 40,000 in 1990, says John E. Taylor of the Human Resources Research Organization in Alexandria, Va. Robots might also be found on war zones, in space- even in the office, perhaps making coffee, opening mail and delivering messages. One unsolved problem, what to do with workers displaced by high technology and foreign competition. Around the world "the likelihood of growing permanent unemployment is becoming more accepted as a reality among social planners", notes David Macarov, associate professor of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Meantime at the percentage of time people spend on the job is likely to continue to fall. Robert Theobald, author of Avoiding in 1984, fears that joblessness will lead to increasing depression, bitterness and unrest. "The dramatic consequences of such a shift on the Western psyche, which has made the job the way we value human beings, are almost incalculable", he comments. Because of the constantly changing demand for job skills, Ron Kutschner, associate commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, offers this advice for today"s high school students: "Be prepared with a broad education, like the kind pre-college students get—basic math. science and English. Prepare yourself to handle each new technology, as it comes down the road. Then get technology training for your first job. That is the best stepping stone to the second and third jobs".

You are going to leave America, and are applying for the passport. You are required to write a letter to the Passport Officer to tell your condition: 1. you are ready for the application for the passport; 2. the time for you to leave U.S.A.; 3. the necessity for your visa. You should write about 100 words and do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Martin" instead. You do not need to write the address.