On Flash Marriage A. Title: On Flash Marriage B. Word limit: 160-200 words (not including the given opening sentence) C. Your composition should be based on the OUTLINE below and should start with the given opening sentence: "As the pace of life nowadays is increasingly fast, flash marriage has also become a tendency." OUTLINE: 1. The problem of flash marriage 2. My opinion 3. Making a conclusion

Title: MONEYWord limit: 160—200 wordsTime limit: 40 minutesYou are required to develop your essay according to the given topic sentence of each paragraph.Outline:1. Money is considered by some people as the most powerful and important thing in life.2. But there are certain things that cannot be bought with money.3. Like everything else, money has two sides, positive and negative.

On July 16th at least 23 children in the Indian state of Bihar died after eating a midday meal that was provided for free by their school. Nearly as many are in critical condition in a local hospital. Tests have revealed that adulterated cooking oil, perhaps containing pesticides, is likely to blame. A government inquiry has determined that the principal of the school, who is in hiding, must be held responsible for the bad ingredients or unsafe methods used in preparing these meals. This event is horrific, without a doubt. Yet its damage could be even worse, if it raises too many doubts about the value of a largely successful program. The midday-meal scheme, which began on a small scale decades earlier, received the support of India"s Supreme Court in 2001. Since then most Indian states have adopted it, offering free meals to children in state-run or state-assisted schools. More than 120m children, including many who would otherwise go hungry, receive these meals every school day. According to a recent analysis by Farzana Afridi of Syracuse University and the Delhi School of Economics, at a cost of three cents per child per school day, the scheme "reduced the daily protein deficiency of a primary-school student by 100% , the calorie deficiency by almost 30% and the daily iron deficiency by nearly 10%. " Ms Afridi also found that, after controlling for all other factors, the meals scheme has boosted the school attendance of girls by 12%. Abhijeet Singh of Oxford University found that, in some parts of India where children were born during a drought, the health of those who had been brought into the meals scheme before the age of six was compensated for earlier nutritional deficits. What the disaster in Bihar has done, at the very least, is to highlight some of the pitfalls of the scheme. As with any programme of this size in a country rife with corruption, the meals scheme is riddled with problems. The corruptible state is not alone in funding the programme; it is joined by private companies and NGOs. Corruption exists not just among state entities but among the supporting agencies too, as was demonstrated in 2006 when a Delhi NGO was caught dipping into rice that was meant for midday meals. In the states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, where the levels of malnutrition are among the highest in the country, it was found that only three-fourths of the food meant for children reached them. Food is often stolen by the administrators" faking their students" attendance. Beyond that, reports of adulteration—not only with shoddy or unsafe foodstuffs, but including finding worms, lizards and snakes—are common. Next month, the Indian government will be voting on a food security bill which aims to provide food to 60% of the entire population, by means of a public distribution system. This one school"s tragedy comes at an especially crucial moment, when officials ought to be forced to inspect the leaky pipeline of distribution. At the same time it will be important to bear in mind: This scheme has done a lot more good than harm.

BSection II Reading Comprehension/B

BSection II Reading Comprehension/B

The clue lies in the Japanese name that has been adopted for them around the world: tsunami. (46) Formed from the characters for harbour and wave, and commemorated in the 19th-century woodblock print by Hokusai that decorates so many books and articles a bout the subject, the word shows that these sudden, devastating waves have mainly in the past occurred in the Pacific Ocean, ringed as it is by volcanoes and earthquake zones. Thanks to one tsunami in 1946 that killed 165 people, mainly in Hawaii, the countries around the Pacific have shared a tsunami warning centre ever since. (47) Those around the Indian Ocean have no such centre, being lucky enough not to have suffered many big tsunamis before and unlucky enough not to count the world"s two biggest and most technologically advanced economies, the United States and Japan, among their number. So when, on December 26th, the world"s strongest earthquake in 40 years shook the region, with its epicenter under the sea near the northernmost tip of the Indonesian archipelago, there was no established mechanism to pass warnings to the countries around the ocean"s shores. There would have been between 90 and 150 minutes in which to broad cast warnings by radio, television and loudspeaker in the areas most affected, the Indonesian province of Aceh, Sri Lanka and the Indian chain of the Andaman and Nicobar-islands. (48) Had such warnings been broadcast then many of the tens of thousands of lives lost would have been saved. (49) How many, nobody can know, for the task of evacuation would have been far from easy in many of these crowded, poor and low-lying coastal communities. Equally, though, it will probably never be known exactly how many people have died. (50) Whereas in many disasters the initial estimates of fatalities prove too high, the opposite is occurring in this case.

Shopping habits in the United States have changed greatly in the last quarter of the 20th century.【B1】______in the 1900s most American towns and cities had a Main Street. Main Street was always in the heart of a town. This street was【B2】______on both sides with many【B3】______businesses. Here, shoppers walked into stores to look at all sorts of merchandise: clothing, furniture, hardware, groceries.【B4】______, some shops offered【B5】______. These shops included drugstores, restaurants, shoe-repair stores, and barber or hairdressing shops.【B6】______in the 1950s, a change began to【B7】______. Too many automobiles had crowded into Main Street【B8】______too few parking places were【B9】______shoppers. Because the streets were crowded, merchants began to look with interest at the open spaces【B10】______the city limits. Open space is what their car-driving customers needed. And open space is what they got【B11】______the first shopping centre was built. Shopping centres, or rather malls,【B12】______as a collection of small new stores【B13】______crowded city centres.【B14】______by hundreds of free parking space, customers were drawn away from【B15】______areas to outlying malls. And the growing【B16】______of shopping centres led【B17】______to the building of bigger and better stocked stores. 【B18】______the late 1970s, many shopping malls had almost developed into small cities themselves. In addition to providing the【B19】______of one-stop shopping, malls were transformed into landscaped parks,【B20】______benches, fountains, and outdoor entertainment.

Short stories are due a revival. In recent years, there have been critically【C1】______collections by American writers such as Lydia Davis and Junot Diaz. But few others manage to【C2】______the bestseller lists, and they are all too often【C3】______by novels. 【C4】______their heyday in the early 20th century, short stories are mostly viewed as trials or experiments before an author【C5】______with the real thing. John Burnside, a Scottish poet and novelist, 【C6】______, this fixed idea in his latest collection, "Something Like Happy". Over 13 stories, Mr Burnside shows the versatility of the condensed【C7】______. His stories take place mostly in Scotland, in flats "high up on the third floor of an apartment block in the middle of Dundee" or in the back room of a hardware shop, 【C8】______ men drink "sweet, milky coffee"【C9】______waiting for the results of the races. His men carry knives or conduct extramarital【C10】______; his women are often【C11】______housewives who drink, take up bell-ringing in their local church or fantasise about younger men【C12】______a way of filling in time. Happiness is the subject that【C13】______the collection together. In other hands, this could become sentimental. 【C14】______Mr Burnside, with only a few【C15】______, never allows that to happen. Instead, happiness【C16】______stays away from these figures; so much【C17】______they have almost ceased to【C18】______it. Rooted in the bleaker aspects of Scotland"s landscapes, it is something that his【C19】______continually search for, in these concise and poetic tales—yet【C20】______to find.

You have stayed with your friend Cathy for a whole week. Now you are going home. Write a message to her to 1) express your gratitude 2) show your appreciation of the good days you"ve had together 3) and give her your wishes. You should write about 100 words. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. You do not need to write the address.

Mounting financial and legal woes are giving Merck a prescription-strength headache. With Chief Executive Officer Ray Gilmartin testifying on Capitol Hill about what Merck knew about Vioxx and when, it is easy to overlook the drug giant"s ongoing efforts to treat and cure disease. Before its stock price sagged 40 percent and both litigators and regulators began circling overhead, Merck invited several journalists to its 415-acre research and development center 30 miles from Philadelphia. As other pharmaceutical investigators can attest, Merck"s 10,000 scientists and support personnel here help explain why new drugs often cost so much. Standing in the middle of his $4 million lab, Dr. Graham Smith points to an LCMS Mass Spectrometer that atomizes test compounds and evaluates them for healing properties. "Of the 1,200 molecules tested here last year," Dr. Smith says, "eight went on to the next step. And not all of those will go on to become drugs." Dr. Smith and his team of analytic chemists fail steadily, on average, for 6 weeks before discovering a potential therapy. Another 32 days usually pass before that happens again. Merck is not alone in throwing most of its darts straight into the floor. According to John T. Kelly, M.D., of the Washington-based Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, "Only 5 in 5,000 compounds that enter preclinical testing make it to human testing. And only 1 of these 5 tested in people is approved for sale. Citing Tufts University data, Dr. Kelly added: "On average, it costs a company $802 million to get one new medicine from the laboratory to US patients. This process normally takes 10 to 15 years." Eliav Bart, M.D., Merck"s senior director for clinical research, works on a vaccine to prevent the Human Papillomavirus. Sooner or later, HPV afflicts 50 to 75 percent of sexually active adults. HPV causes genital warts, as well as cancers of the cervix, vulva and anus. So far, tests have found the vaccine 100 percent effective against HPV 16, one of the virus" particularly menacing strains. None of this comes cheap, either. "Several hundred people are working on this exclusively around the world for Merck," Dr. Barr says. Consequently, the company has built clinics in Iceland, Peru and Thailand. "Merck put equipment in, and we"ll leave it in," Dr. Barr says. This will provide a steady stream of scientific data for obstetricians and gynecologists. Merck also has built a $100 million structure specifically to manufacture the HPV vaccine. If approved, the drug"s price will reflect, in part, this huge up-front investment. But if it fails to secure Food and Drug Administration approval, Merck will be the proud owner of a gleaming, $100 million white elephant. This sunk cost will have to be spread across the rest of Merck"s product line. Alternatively, this money could be subtracted from shareholder dividends, employee salaries, or new research and development. These are lame long term strategies. That, and more, adds up. The vaccine against this ailment is for pharmaceutical companies to teach Americans-starting with Washington"s bipartisan political class—a simple but viral truth: Those little pills do not invent themselves.

High oil prices have not yet produced an economic shock among consuming countries, but further rises, especially sharp (1)_____, would undoubtedly hurt the world economy, and (2)_____ would inevitably harm producers, too. Beyond this obvious point, (3)_____, higher prices could even do harm to both oil firms and producers.Big oil firms (4)_____ rolling in money today, but that disguises the fact that their longer-term prospects are (5)_____. Behind the reserves-accounting scandal at Royal Dutch/ Shell (6)_____ a problem bedeviling all of the majors: replacing their dwindling reserves. (7)_____ existing fields in Alaska and the North Sea are rapidly declining, OPEC countries and Russia are (8)_____ them out. (9)_____ they are to survive in the long term, the big oil firms must embrace other sources of energy (10)_____ oil. (11)_____ it is to believe, higher oil prices could be bad news for producing countries (12)_____. Political leaders in Russia, Venezuela and other oil-rich countries are bending laws to crack (13)_____ on foreign firms and to strengthen their grip on oil (14)_____ through state-run firms. This may be convenient for the political leaders themselves. Alas, it is (15)_____ to do much for their countrymen. For years corruption and inefficiency (16)_____ the typical results of government control of oil resources. Producing countries should (17)_____ embrace open markets. (18)_____ one thing, shutting out foreign investment will only hurt their own oil output by (19)_____ the sharpest managers and latest technologies. For another, economic liberalisation (including reform of bloated welfare states) would help OPEC countries (20)_____ their economies—as the NAFTA trade deal has done for oil-rich Mexico—and so prepare them for the day when the black gold starts running out.

Here in the U.S. a project of moving the government a few hundred miles to the southwest proceeds apace, under the supervision of Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia. Apart from the usual highways and parks, Byrd has taken a special interest in transplanting pieces of federal agencies from metropolitan Washington to his home state. Strangely, Byrd"s little experiment in de-Washingtonization has become the focus of outrage among the very people who are otherwise most Critical of Washington and its ways. To these critics, it is the very symbol of congressional arrogance of power, isolation from reality, contempt for the voters, and so on, and demonstrates the need for term limits if not lynching. Consider the good-government advantages of (let"s call it) the Byrd Migration. What better way to symbolize an end to the old ways and commitment to reform than physically moving the government? What better way to break up old bureaucracies than to uproot and transplant them, files and all? Second, spreading the government around a bit ought to reduce that self-feeding and self-regarding Beltway culture that Washington-phobes claim to dislike so much. Of course there is a good deal of hypocrisy in this anti Washington chatter. Much of it comes from politicians and journalists who have spent most of their adult lives in Washington and wouldn"t care to live anywhere else. They are not rushing to West Virginia themselves, except for the occasional quaint rustic weekend. But they can take comfort that public servants at the Bureau of the Public Debt, at least, have escaped the perils of inside-the-Beltway insularity. Third, is Senator Byrd"s raw spread-the-wealth philosophy completely illegitimate? The Federal Government and government-related private enterprises have made metropolitan Washington one of the richest areas of the country. By contrast, West Virginia is the second poorest state, after Mississippi. The entire country"s taxes support the government. Why shouldn"t more of the country get a piece of it? As private businesses are discovering, the electronic revolution is making it less and less necessary for work to be centralized at headquarters. There"s no reason the government shouldn"t take more advantage of this trend as well. It is hardly enough, though, to expel a few thousand midlevel bureaucrats from the alleged Eden inside the Washington Beltway. Really purging the Washington culture enough to satisfy its noisiest critics will require a mass exodus on the order of what the Khmer Rouge instituted when they took over Phnom Penh in 1975. Until the very members of the TIME Washington bureau itself are traipsing south along I-95, their word processors strapped to their backs, the nation cannot rest easy. But America"s would-be Khmer Rouge should give Senator Byrd more credit for showing the way.

Each advance in microscopic technique has provided scientists with new perspectives on the function of living organisms and the nature of matter itself. The invention of the visible-light microscope late in the sixteenth century introduced a previously unknown realm of single celled plants and animals. In the twentieth century, electron microscope have provided direct views of viruses and minuscule surface structures. Now another type of microscope, one that utilizes X rays rather than light or electrons, offers a different way of examining tiny de tails; it should extend human perception still farther into the natural world. The dream of building an X-ray microscope dates to 1895; its development, however, was virtually halted in the 1940"s because the development of the electron microscope was progressing rapidly. During the 1940"s, electron microscopes routinely achieved resolution better than that possible with a visible-light microscope, while the performance of X-ray microscopes resisted improvement. In recent years, however, interest in X-ray microscopes has revived, largely because of advances such as the development of new sources of X-ray illumination. As a result, the brightness available today is millions, of times that of X-ray tubes, which, for most of the century, were the only avail able sources of soft X-rays. The new X-ray microscopes considerably improve on the resolution provided by optical microscopes. They can also be used to map the distribution of certain chemical elements. Some can form pictures in extremely short times; others hold the promise of special capabilities such as three-dimensional imaging. Unlike conventional electron microscopy, X-ray microscopy enables specimens to be kept in air and in water, which means that biological samples can be studied under conditions similar to their natural state. The illumination used, so-called soft X rays in the wavelength range of twenty to forty angstroms (an angstrom is one ten-billionth of a meter), is also sufficiently penetrating to, image intact biological cells in many cases. Because of the wavelength of the X rays used, soft X-ray microscopes will never match the highest resolution possible with electron microscopes. Rather, their special properties will make possible investigations that will complement those performed with light-and-electron-based instruments.

At school we went over our social networking guidelines.【C1】______the obvious—don't be inappropriate with students through texting and Facebooking—we were further【C2】______to "always think and write like an educator" and "never use a blog to【C3】______your job duties" and "never blog or write about extremely personal【C4】______". The handout told us that any Facebook pictures that show "the use of alcohol or anything students are prohibited from doing," could【C5】______dis-cipline. All of this is because "community members may hold you to a【C6】______standard of conduct than the【C7】______person." It is also advised that teachers should【C8】______"discussion or revealing【C9】______students personal matters about their private lives" making me【C10】______every piece of writing I have ever shared with my students. Educators have been expected to be super-heroes for a while now,【C11】______poverty, dysfunction,【C12】______curriculums, and time. But now we are expected to be the faultless and faceless【C13】______opinions or personal lives. I understand the Public Face and I have gotten pretty good at【C14】______it. And I【C15】______am not forgiving inappropriate behavior with or around children. But with policies like this, I am【C16】______to buy beer at the grocery store or wear clothes【C17】______break dress code out in public on hot days. But while the rest of the population gets to【C18】______into their averageness(【C19】______President Obama can drink beer in public without losing his job), teachers are expected to live their average lives behind【C20】______doors.

Self-recommendation Write an e-mail of about 100 words based on the following situation: You want to apply for a part-time job in your university as a teaching assistant. Write a self-recommendation to earn a chance of an interview for yourself. Do not sign your own name at the end of the e-mail. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address.

BSection II Reading Comprehension/B

Thomas Huxley (""Darwin"s bulldog") is said to have come up with the most famous defense of the atheist belief that life was created by chance. In a debate at Oxford, he is reported to have stated that if enough monkeys randomly pressed typewriter keys for a long enough time, sooner or later Psalm 23 would emerge. Not all atheists use this argument, but it accurately represents the atheist belief that with enough time and enough solar systems, you"ll get you, Bach"s cello suites, and me. This belief has always struck me as implausible, and although I fully acknowledge the great challenge to theism—the rampant and seemingly random unfairness built into human life, no intellectually honest atheist should deny the great challenge to atheism—the existence of design and intelligence. Scientists have taken up Huxley"s proposition and found from experiments with monkeys near a typewriter that very few even ended up hitting any key. After the experiment, mathematicians then calculated that each monkey typed a steady 120 characters a minute it would take 10 to the 813th power (10 followed by 813 zeros) monkeys about five years to knock out a decent version of Shakespeare"s Sonnet. The finite number of years in the universe"s existence would not come close to producing a few sentences, let alone a Shakespeare play. Professor Robert Jastrow, one of the greatest living astronomers, head of the Mount Wilson Observatory, and an agnostic, best explained the atheism of many scientists. Jastrow tells of his surprise when so many fellow astronomers refused to accept the Big Bang hypothesis for the origins of the universe. In fact, Jastrow writes, many astronomers were actually unhappy about it. Why? Because the Big Bang implied a beginning to the universe, and a beginning implies a Creator, something many scientists passionately reject. This led Jastrow to the sobering conclusion that many scientists have vested, nonscientific interests in some of their beliefs, especially the non-existence of a Creator. Neither maths nor science argues that all came about randomly, without a Creator. Only a keen desire to deny one explains such a belief, a belief that should be laid to rest.

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

When Melissa Mahan and her husband visited the Netherlands, they felt imprisoned by their tour bus. It forced them to see the city according to a particular【C1】______as well as a specific【C2】______—but going off on their own meant【C3】______ the information provided by the guide. On their return home, they started a new company called Tour Coupes. Now, when tourists in San Diego【C4】______one of their small, brightly coloured three-wheeled vehicles, they are【C5】______to a narration over the stereo system【C6】______the places they pass, triggered by Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite technology. This is just one example of how GPS is being used to provide new services to tourists. A tourism firm began offering a【C7】______service in Montgomery, Alabama The city is【C8】______with sites associated with two important【C9】______ in American history, the civil war of the 1860s and the civil-rights movement a century later. Montgomery has a 120-year-old streetcar system, called the Lightning Route, which【C10】______around the downtown area and is【C11】______used by tourists. On the Lightning Route streetcars, GPS-triggered audio clips point out historical【C12】______. If such services can prove【C13】______, the use of audio-guide devices could give way【C14】______a different approach. Now, a(n) 【C15】______number of mobile phones have built-in GPS or can determine their【C16】______using other technologies. Information for tourists delivered 【C17】______phones could be updated in real time. "Location-based services", such as the ability to call up a list of nearby banks or pizzerias, have been talked about for years【C18】______have never taken off. Aiming such services【C19】______tourists makes sense—since people are more likely to want information when in a(n) 【C20】______place. It could give mobile roaming a whole new meaning.

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