YouarerequiredtowriteanessayonthetopicWhichModeofTravelDoYouLike?Youshouldwritenolessthan200wordsandbaseyouressayontheoutlineandchartsbelow:1.Therearetwomodesoftravel.2.Comparetwomodesoftravelintermsof1)theattractionofpackagetravel;2)theattractionoftravelingonone"sown;3)thedisadvantageofboth.3.Yourpreference.

Title: Idol of This Age: Bill Gates or Lei FangOutline: the present state, your opinion, and your reasons.You should write about 160—200 words neatly.

Genius is said to have two forms. There are ordinary geniuses, whose achievements one can imagine others might have emulated, so long as they worked extremely hard and had a dollop of luck.【F1】 Then there are extraordinary geniuses whose insights are so astonishing and run so counter to received wisdom that it is hard to imagine anyone else devising them. Einsteinwas one such genius. Paul Dirac was another. He was quite probably the best British theoretical physicist since Isaac Newton. Dirac became one of the fathers of quantum mechanics at the age of 23.【F2】 The theory, which was developed in the 1920s and 1930s, makes seemingly bizarre statements, including the fundamental truth that it is impossible to know everything about the world. But while his colleagues struggled with the philosophical implications of their equations, Dirac thought words were unreliable and saw merit only in mathematics. For him, equations were beautiful. Dirac was notoriously reticent. He barely spoke and his silences were legendary. He was unwilling to collaborate with others.【F3】 He was emotionally withdrawn and showed a lack of social sensitivity, and to many of his colleagues, he appeared uninterested in anything other than mathematics; therefore, they were astonished when he married. Yet he was far more than a calculating machine, as Graham Farmelo"s biography shows. Dirac was a devotee of comic strips and he enjoyed Mickey Mouse films. Mr. Farmelo"s sympathetic portrait sketches Dirac"s unhappy family background. His parents appear to have loathed one another, and his elder brother committed suicide. Dirac blamed his father for the death. Certainly, some aspects of his father"s behavior warrant criticism. After Dirac won two scholarships to Cambridge, it appeared that he would lose his place for want of ￡5. Dirac"s father gave his son the money and made him understand that he had launched the boy"s career. Later Dirac learnt the truth.【F4】 After his father died in 1936, it emerged that he had not given Dirac the essential ￡5, although he could have done so, having saved more than ￡7,500, some 15 times his annual salary. The crucial fiver had come from the local education authority. Dirac went on to win the Nobel Prize in physics in 1933 for his discovery of antimatter.【F5】 of the small group of young men who developed quantum mechanics and revolutionized physics almost a century ago, Paul Dirac—a strange man in a strange world—truly stands out.

In the following text, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 41-45, choose the most suitable one from the list (A、B、C、D、E、F、G……) to fit into each of the numbered blank. There are several extra choices, which do not fit in any of the gaps. (10 points) Nike is one of the most powerful marketing companies in the business world today, but it had very small beginnings. The global giant company with revenues in 1996 of $US 6.4 billion and profits of $553 million started in the 1960s with the company"s founders selling cheap Japanese sports shoes to American high school athletes at school track meetings, using a supply of shoes they kept in their car. One of Nike"s founders, Phillip Hampson Knight had been a top athlete when he was at the University of Oregon. He moved on to become a student at Stanford Business School, but retained his interest in sport. (41)______. Subsequently, Knight visited Japan and discovered a manufacturer who fitted the model of the ideal firm—Onituska Tiger Company, which made its own inexpensive, high-quality running shoes. (42)______. He suggested to his old college track coach. Bill Bowerman, that they could work together using their skills and interests in sport and business, and capitalise on the cheaper cost of sports shoes from Japan. In 1964 they each, contributed $500 to import Tiger shoes, which Knight began selling from his car at high-school track meets. (43)______. Knight and Bowerman developed their own brand name, Nike, named after the Greek winged goddess of victory. They paid a local design student at Portland State University $35 to create the famous "Swoosh" logo, and Bowerman created the innovative pattern called the waffle-sole design, by using his wife"s waffle iron to impose the pattern on the sole of the shoe. By 1972 Nike began "designing its own shoes and was contracting production out to factories in Asia. With excellent timing and a fair share of good luck, the founders of Nike were perfectly placed to cash in on America"s sports leisure boom during the 1970s, when millions of Americans began jogging and running as part of their personal campaigns to keep fit and healthy. (44)______. But at the heart of its constant campaign is the star athlete, a principle that was put in place early in the huge American company"s marketing plans. (45)______. Other endorsements came soon after that, such as leading American tennis player Jimmy Connors who won the Wimbledon and the US Open Grand Slam tennis tournaments in 1974 wearing Nike tennis shoes. In 1985, the man who would become one of Nike"s biggest successes, Chicago Bulls rookie basketball player Michael Jordan, endorsed his first line of "Air Jordan" Shoes. The endorsements by star players, encouraging ordinary consumers to buy the sports gear of the stars and dream of being champions themselves, saw Nike selling close to $US I billion worth of running, basketball, and tennis shoes in 1986, while creating their first sports clothes under the Nike label.A. Nowadays, Nike"s products include not only basketball and tennis shoes, but also sports clothes, sports bags, sports caps, etc.B. Back in the US, Knight got to think that he could actually put his knowledge into practice, and make money.C. In 1973, the newly formed company implemented its first, and most important marketing strategy, endorsing its first star athlete, running star Steve Prefontaine who in turn used and praised Nike footwear.D. To reinforce its dominant worldwide presence, Nike spent $US 642 million in 1996 on advertising and promotion.E. The name of Nike comes from the goddess of victory in Greek mythology.F. At Stanford he brought his enthusiasm for track sports to his studies, writing a paper on how to create a cheaper, better running shoe using Japanese labour, which was cheaper than American.G. Worried that the Japanese company might find a more established distributor.

Quitting a Job Two months ago, you got a job as an editor for the magazine Design & Fashion. But now you find that the work is not what you expected. You decide to quit. Write a letter to your boss, Mr. Wang, telling him your decision, stating your reason(s), and making an apology. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter, use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address.

Optimists outlive pessimists, a new study shows. Of nearly 100,000 women【C1】______in the Women"s Health Initiative, those who gave【C2】______answers on a personality test were 9% less likely to【C3】______heart disease within eight years—and 14% less likely to【C4】______—than women who got low optimism【C5】______on the test. TIME"S Alice Park wrote about an earlier【C6】______of this study in the spring. She writes: 【C7】______studies have indeed documented the life-extending benefits of optimism, 【C8】______most of that research has involved only men and has been【C9】______in small numbers. What"s more, not all studies have done a good job of【C10】______out potentially confusing factors such as health【C11】______and lifestyle. That"s【C12】______makes the new study different "Taking into【C13】______income, education, health behaviors like blood pressure and whether or not you are【C14】______active, whether or not you drink or smoke, we still see optimists with a decreased risk of death compared to pessimists," says Dr. Hilary Tindle, lead author of the study. "I was surprised that the relationship was【C15】______of all of these factors." The study also found an interesting and【C16】______disturbing difference in the way that attitude is related to【C17】______for black women vs. white women. Pessimistic black women in the study were 33% more likely to have died after eight years than optimistic black women, while white pessimists were only 13% more likely to have died than their optimistic【C18】______. The numbers in the study weren"t large enough to support any【C19】______explanations for this racial gap, but "there is definitely a suggestion that whites and blacks may be【C20】______in how optimism affects longevity," says Tindle.

A recent BBC documentary, "The Town That Never Retired", sought to show the effects of【C1】______ the state pension age by putting retirees back to work. 【C2】______the results were entertaining, they need not have【C3】______. Away from the cameras, 【C4】______numbers of older people are staying in work. Since the start of the recession, the number of 16- to 24-year-olds in work has fallen by 597,000. Over the same【C5】______the number of workers over the age of 65 has increased by 240,000. The【C6】______of the British workforce dates back to around 2001, 【C7】______when the proportion of older people working has nearly doubled. But it has【C8】______since the start of the recession. There are several【C9】______why. Happily, people are living longer and healthier lives, which makes staying in work less【C10】______than it was. 【C11】______happily, low interest rates, a stagnant stock market and the end of many defined-benefit pension schemes make it a financial 【C12】______. And changing attitudes, 【C13】______by rules against age discrimination, are making it easier than ever. Most older workers are simply【C14】______at the office: 63% of workers over state pension age have been with their employer for more than ten years. Over two-thirds of them work part-time, mostly doing jobs that they once【C15】______full-time. A big【C16】______is that they do not pay national insurance contributions—effectively a second income tax on younger workers. According to Stephen McNair, director of the Centre for Research into the Older Workforce, this【C17】______explains why older workers have not suffered so much in the slump. 【C18】______reducing the workforce, as in previous recessions, many firms have【C19】______recruitment and cut working hours. At small businesses【C20】______, keeping on older workers is cheaper and less risky than training replacements.

Write a reply to this business letter. Office Supplies Company ABC Engineering Company, 222 Nathan Road 77 An Nei Jie, Wuhan Kowloon, Hong Kong 17th JanuaryDear Sir/Madam, I saw your advertisement in China Daily for your new fax machines. Would you please send me more information and a price list. I would also appreciate a visit to one of from sales people in the near future to discuss our requirements for business machines. Thank you. Yours sincerely, Li Wei You should write about 100 words and do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead.

The robots are coming. The second decades of the 21th century will see the rise of merchandized army that will revolutionize the private and public life as radically as the internet and social media have shaken up the past ten years. Or so says Marina Gorbis, futurologist and head of Califor-nian think-tank the Institute for the Future (IFTF). Gorbis says robots will increasingly dominate everything. Robots are likely to prompt a political storm to equal the row over immigration as they increasingly replace workers. But it' s not bad news."When the IBM's Deep Blue became the first computer to beat the chess grand master Gary Kasparov, as a person that's it, computers are smarter than people," she says." But it doesn't mean that at all . It seems they are processing things faster not that they are thinking better." Working together she believes robots and humans will be able to create a world of new possibilities impossible before our new industrial revolution. Inevitably the rise of the robots will put people out of work. Gorbis believes that this and other trend will mean unemployment will remain around 10% in many parts of the developed world of the coming year. We are in the transition. It is similar to when we mechanized agriculture. After that we went through a period of high unemployment as people transitioned to new kinds of jobs. People learn to do other things. Robots get a bad press. With a few cute exceptions the robot has been an evil character in movies going back to Fritz Lang's Metropolis in 1927. In Japan and Korea, where many of the great robot innovators are likely to come from, attitudes are more positive. We too are likely to become more robotic, Gorbis believes. "We have been modifying ourselves with technology forever. We are going to see more of that. Sensors are going to on our bodies, in our bodies letting us and others know what we are doing, what is going on with our health. All kinds of applications we haven't even thought of yet. But "with all information being bombarded at us it so no wonders that people worry," she said. "I feel paradoxical myself. Half time I feel really depressed when I look at say climate changed or the potential to misuse technology." So the technology needs an easy access to the right guide of humans.

For centuries, men and women have worked tirelessly to fit the physical molds of their time. Diets, which have【B1】______ from the【B2】______ to the colorful and kind of silly, have【B3】______ a wide range of results—and all sorts of followings. Not long ago, the Atkins diet made carbohydrates wicked and convinced millions to【B4】______ starches of any kind. Today, the Paleo diet, which means to【B5】______ the eating habits and digestive systems of ancient humans who lived for many【B6】______ years than people on average do today, is【B7】______ the most popular—or at least talked about— dietary fad. Soon there will be another fad that the dieting sweeps【B8】______ . And another one. The question that seems to revolve【B9】______ all this diet talk is whether any of the【B10】______ weight loss schemes has worked. If one had, shouldn't it have【B11】______ the test of time? And if we've gone this long【B12】______ a diet that has been shown to work— according to science, not simply the sellers of the fad—will one ever emerge【B13】______ actually does? The short answer is no, according to Traci Mann, who has been studying eating【B14】______, self-control and dieting for more than 20 years. 【B15】______ the course of her research, largely 【B16】______ at the University of Minnesota's Health and Eating Lab, Mann has【B17】______ asked these sorts of questions, and always found the same【B18】______ answers. Her findings, introduced in her newly published book Secrets from the Eating Lab, offer a fascinating【B19】______ for why dieting over the long term is actually【B20】______.

The book seems to be more a dictionary than a grammar book.

The moral high ground has always been female territory. Men, after all, lie and cheat and rob and pollute the environment and disproportionately populate the prisons, while women do their best to appreciate their good qualities. Some women, at least. But with the rise of feminism, the assaults on men"s moral integrity have become more frequent, and the belief in their arrogance and lack of concern for anything but their own selfish ends has become a truism. It"s the men who are greedy. It"s the men who are disloyal. It"s the men who will do anything for money. It"s the men who are immature. In the world of sport, male athletes are whipping boys of talk radio. They have graced the cover of Sports Illustrate, and on the inside have been spoken evil of for sins, among them greed, disdain for the fans who pay their unreasonably high salaries, and a lack of respect for the game that the fans love and that has made them rich. Female athletes, on the other hand, have been placed on a pedestal—but it has been a pretty easy one to climb. For one thing, there hasn"t been enough money to get greedy about. For another, there haven"t been any fans. And for third, those who didn"t love the game had absolutely no reason to keep playing. But thanks to the rise of women"s basketball, female basketball player are going to find themselves tempted by the same vanities that have seduced so many men—and though we know some will give in, we don"t know how many. For women"s basketball to become a major sport in America, as opposed to a profitable one like arena football, something is going to be offered other than just pure skill. That something should be, and in fact will have to be, a different attitude, a purer sense of sport, than the men deliver. It may be asking too much of women to withstand the temptations that have sucked male athletes into prima donna poses, but then again it may be true that women have occupied the high moral ground for so long because they actually are more sensitive to what"s important in the long run. I honestly don"t know how this drama will play out, but the process will tell us about more than just the fate of women"s basketball. If women, who are steadily gaining more and more control in this world, can truly respond in a more reasoned way to the pull of power, then there is hope for the 21st century. But if women, as a gender, can do no better than men when given the chance, then in basketball as in life, we can only look ahead to more of the same.

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

【F1】 The majority of successful senior managers do not closely follow the classical rational model of first clarifying goals, assessing the problem, formulating options, estimating likelihoods of success, making a decision, and only then taking action to implement the decision. 【F2】 Rather, in their day-by-day tactical maneuvers, these senior executives rely on what is vaguely termed intuition to manage a network of interrelated problems that require them to deal with ambiguity, inconsistency, novelty, and surprise; and to integrate action into the process of thinking. Generations of writers on management have recognized that some practicing managers rely heavily on intuition. In general, however, such writers display a poor grasp of what intuition is. Some see it as the opposite of rationality; others view it as an excuse for capriciousness. Isenberg's recent research on the cognitive processes of senior managers reveals that managers' intuition is neither of these. Rather, senior managers use intuition in at least five distinct ways. First, they intuitively sense when a problem exists. Second, managers rely on intuition to perform well-learned behavior patterns rapidly. This intuition is not arbitrary or irrational, but is based on years of painstaking practice and hands-on experience that build skills. A third function of intuition is to synthesize isolated bits of data and practice into an integrated picture, often in an Aha! experience. Fourth, some managers use intuition as a check on the results of more rational analysis.【F3】 Most senior executives are familiar with the formal decision analysis models and tools, and those who use such systematic methods for reaching decisions are occasionally leery of solutions suggested by these methods which run counter to their sense of the correct course of action. Finally, managers can use intuition to bypass in-depth analysis and move rapidly to engender a plausible solution. Used in this way, intuition is an almost instantaneous cognitive process in which a manager recognizes familiar patterns. One of the implications of the intuitive style of executive management is that thinking is inseparable from acting. Since managers often know what is right before they can analyze and explain it, they frequently act first and explain later.【F4】 Analysis is inextricably tied to action in thinking-acting cycles, in which managers develop thoughts about their companies and organizations not by analyzing a problematic situation and then acting, but by acting and analyzing in close concert. 【F5】 Given the great uncertainty of many of the management issues that they face, senior managers often instigate a course of action simply to learn more about an issue. They then use the results of the action to develop a more complete understanding of the issue. One implication of thinking-acting cycles is that action is often part of defining the problem, not just of implementing the solution.

Being a man has always been dangerous. There are about 105 males born for every 100 females , but this ratio drops to near balance at the age of maturity, and among 70-year-olds there are twice as many women as men. But the great universal of male mortality is being changed. Now, boy babies survive almost as well as girls do. This means that, for the first time, there will be an excess of boys in those crucial years when they are searching for a mate. More important, another chance for natural selection has been removed. Fifty years ago, the chance of a baby (particularly a boy baby) surviving depended on its weight. A kilogram too light or too heavy meant almost certain death. Today it makes almost no difference. Since much of the variation is due to genes, one more agent of evolution has gone. There is another way to commit evolutionary suicide: stay alive, but have fewer children. Few people are as fertile as in the past. Except in some religious communities, very few women has 15 children. Nowadays the number of births, like the age of death, has become average. Most of us have roughly the same number of offspring. Again, differences between people and the opportunity for natural selection to take advantage of it have diminished. India shows what is happening. The country offers wealth for a few in the great cities and poverty for the remaining tribal peoples. The grand mediocrity of today—everyone being the same in survival and number of offspring—means that natural selection has lost 80% of its power in upper-middle-class India compared to the tribes. For us, this means that evolution is over; the biological Utopia has arrived. Strangely, it has involved little physical change. No other species fills so many places in nature. But in the past 100,000 years—even the past 100 years—our lives have been transformed but our bodies have not. We did not evolve, because machines and society did it for us. Darwin had a phrase to describe those ignorant of evolution; they "look at an organic being as a savage looks at a ship, as at something wholly beyond his comprehension." No doubt we will remember a 20th century way of life beyond comprehension for its ugliness. But however amazed our descendants may be at how far from Utopia we were, they will look just like us.

Appealing for a Donation Write a letter of about 100 words based on the following situation: There was a terrible earthquake in Taiwan last week, and people there suffered a lot. Now write a letter to your schoolmates to appeal them to donate money to the disaster-stricken area. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "The Student Union" instead. Do not write the address.

It was a foolish question to ask. It (1)_____ more sense for me to have learned if she had (2)_____ or a point of view, but it was (3)_____ for that now and I supposed that the (4)_____ Relations Office had (5)_____ her before granting the interview. I didn"t have time this week to read (6)_____ pieces about corporate rainmakers, and their golden parachutes or women at mid-town law firms (7)_____ six times my salary but whining about breaking the (8)_____ ceiling. "I won"t waste your time," she (9)_____, "If the details on your (10)_____ are accurate and the articles Laura (11)_____ me have correct background, we won"t have to (12)_____ that." I (13)_____ in approval. She was obviously a (14)_____, and an intelligent one (15)_____. It was always (16)_____ to sit for a (17)_____ when the questioner spent the first hour asking what schools I had (18)_____, how long (19)_____, and whether I liked my job. "Is it all right (20)_____ you if we start with some information about the Sex Crimes Prosecution Unit"? "I"d like that." I replied.

With its sandy beaches, picturesque ruins and blue waters, the Isle of Wight is an idyllic spot off England's southern coast. Wealthy Londoners sail their boats there. It seems odd that such a place should contain some of the worst-performing schools in England. But it does; and in this, the Isle of Wight is not quite as strange as it seems. Provisional figures show that in 2013 just 49% of 16-year-olds on the island got at least five C grades, including in English and maths, in GCSE exams. That is fewer than in any of London's 32 boroughs, or indeed anywhere in the southern half of England apart from nearby Portsmouth. In the previous year the Isle of Wight was second to bottom in the whole country. Just 23% of pupils entitled to free school meals got five decent grades, compared with a national average of 36%. In September the island's schools were deemed so bad that Hampshire County Council took them over. Part of the explanation is distinctively local. Luring good teachers to an out-of-the-way spot is hard. In 2011 the island endured a muddled transition from the sort of three-tier school system common in America, with primary, middle and secondary schools, to the two-tier one that is standard in England. But its results were bad even before that change. The Isle of Wight's real problems are structural. It suffers from three things that might appear to be advantages but are actually the opposite. The island lacks a large city; it has some, but not many, poor children; and it is almost entirely white. But these days pupils, including poor ones, often fare better in inner cities than elsewhere. In Tower Hamlets, an east London borough that is the third most deprived place in England, children entitled to free school meals do better in GCSE exams than do all children in the country as a whole. Bangladeshis, who are concentrated in that borough, used to perform considerably worse than whites nationally; now they do better.

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. "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". In America, the debate is no longer about whether surgery is normal; rather, it centers 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. 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". 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. 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".

The "standard of living" of any country means the average person"s share of the goods and services which the country produces. A country"s standard of living, (1)_____, depends first and (2)_____ on its capacity to produce wealth". Wealth" in this sense is not money, for we do not live on money (3)_____ on things that money can buy. "Goods" such as food and clothing, and "services" such as transport and " (4)_____ ". A country"s capacity to produce wealth depends upon many factors, most of (5)_____ have an effect on one another. Wealth depends (6)_____ a great extent upon a country"s natural resources. Some regions of the world are well supplied with coal and minerals, and have a fertile soil and a (7)_____ climate; other regions possess none of them. Next to natural resources (8)_____ the ability to turn them to use. China is perhaps as well (9)_____ as the USA in natural resources, but suffered for many years from civil and (10)_____ wars, and (11)_____ this and other reasons was (12)_____ to develop her resources. (13)_____ and stable political conditions, and (14)_____ from foreign invasion, enable a country to develop its natural resources peacefully and steadily, and to produce more wealth than another country equally well (15)_____ by nature but less well ordered. A country"s standard of living does not only depend upon the wealth that is produced and consumed (16)_____ its own borders, but also upon what is indirectly produced through international trade. (17)_____, Britain"s wealth in foodstuffs and other agricultural products would be much less if she had to depend only on (18)_____ grown at home. Trade makes it possible for her surplus manufactured goods to be traded abroad for the agricultural products that would (19)_____ be lacking. A country"s wealth is, therefore, much influenced by its manufacturing capacity, (20)_____ that other countries can be found ready to accept its manufactures.