In his 1979 book, The Sinking Ark, biologist Norman Myers estimated that (1)_____ of more than 100 human-caused extinctions occur each clay, and that one million species (2)_____ by the century"s end. Yet there is little evidence of (3)_____ that number of extinctions. For example, only seven species on the (4)_____ species list have become extinct (5)_____ the list was created in 1973. Bio-(6)_____ is an important value, according to many scientists. Nevertheless, the supposed mass extinction rates bandied about are (7)_____ by multiplying (8)_____ by improbables to get imponderables. Many estimates, for instance, rely a great deal on a "species-area (9)_____", which predicts that twice as many species will be found on 100 square miles (10)_____ on ten square miles. The problem is that species are not distributed (11)_____, so bow much of a forest are destroyed may be as important as (12)_____. (13)_____, says Ariel Lugo, director of the International Institute of Tropical Forestry in Puerto Rico, "Biologists who predict high (14)_____ rates (15)_____ the resiliency of nature". One of the main muses of extinctions is deforestation. According to the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, what destroys tropical trees is not commercial logging, (16)_____ "poor farmers who have no other (17)_____ for feeding their families than slashing and burning a (18)_____ of forest". In countries that practice modern (19)_____ agriculture, forests are in (20)_____ danger. In 1920, U.S. forests covered 732 million acres. Today they cover 737 million.

(46) A recent phenomenon in present-day science and technology is the increasing trend towards "directed" or "programmed" research; i.e. research whose scope and objectives are predetermined by private or government organizations rather than researchers themselves. Any scientist working for such organizations and investigating in a given field therefore tends to do so in accordance with a plan or program designed beforehand. At the beginning of the century, however, the situation was quite different. At that time there were no industrial research organizations in the modern sense: the laboratory unit consisted of a few scientists at the most, assisted by one or two technicians. (47) Nevertheless, the scientist, often working with inadequate equipment in unsuitable rooms, was free to choose any subject for investigation he liked, since there was no predetermined program to which he had to conform. (48) As the century developed, the increasing magnitude and complexity of the problems to be solved made it impossible, in many cases, for the individual scientist to deal with the huge mass of new data, techniques and equipment that were required for carrying out research accurately and efficiently. The increasing scale and scope of the experiments needed to test new hypotheses and develop new techniques and industrial processes led to the setting up of research groups or teams using highly-complicated equipment in elaborately-designed laboratories. (49) Owing to the large sums of money involved, it was then felt essential to direct these human and material resources into specific channels with clearly-defined objectives. In this way it was considered that the quickest and most practical results could be obtained. This, then, was programmed (programmatic) research, One of the effects of this organized and standardized investigation is to cause the scientist to become increasingly involved in applied research (development), especially in the branches of science which seem most likely to have industrial applications. Private industry and even government departments tend to concentrate on immediate results and show comparatively little interest in long-range investigations. (50) In consequence, there is a steady shift of scientists from the pure to the applied field, where there are more jobs available, frequently more highly-paid and with better technical facilities than jobs connected with pure research in a university. Owing to the interdependence between pure and applied science, it is easy to see that this system, if extended too far, carries considerable dangers for the future of science—and not only pure science, but applied science as well.

NeverGiveUpWriteanessayof160-200wordsbasedonthedrawing.Inyouressay,youshould1)describethedrawingbriefly,2)interpretitsintendedmeaning,and3)giveyourcomments.

Until such time as mankind has the sense to lower its population to the points whereas the planet can provide a comfortable support for all, people will have to accept more "unnatural food."

CrowdedRoadsWriteanessayof160-200wordsbasedonthedrawing.Inyouressay,youshould1)describethedrawingbriefly,2)explainitsintendedmeaning,and3)giveyourcomments.

How to Provide a Better Life for Senior Citizens?

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) Science is committed to the universal. A sign of this is that the more successful a science becomes, the broader the agreement about its basic concepts: there is not a separate Chinese or American or Soviet thermodynamics(热力学),for example, there is simply thermodynamics (41)______. (42)______. This is why the spread of technology makes the world look ever more homogeneous. Architectural styles, dress styles, musical styles, even eating styles, tend increasingly to be world styles. The world looks more homogeneous because it is more homogeneous. Children who grow up in this world therefore experience it as a sameness rather than a diversity, and because their identities are shaped by this sameness, their sense of differences among cultures and individuals diminishes. (43)______. The automobile illustrates the point with great clarity. A technological innovation like streamlining or all-welded body construction may be rejected initially, but if it is important to the efficiency or economics of automobiles, it will reappear in different ways until it is not only accepted but universally regarded as an asset. (44)______. If man creates machines, machines in turn shape their creators. As the automobile is universalized, it universalizes those who use it. Like the World Car he drives, modem man is becoming universal. No longer quite an individual, no longer quite the product of a unique geography and culture, he moves from one climate-controlled shopping mall to another, one airport to the next, from one Holiday Inn to its successor three hundred miles down the road; but somehow his location never changes. He is cosmopolitan(四海为家者). The price he pays is that he no longer has a home in the traditional sense of the world. (45)______. The universalizing, imperative of technology is irresistible. Barring the catastrophe of nuclear war, it will continue to shape both modem culture and the consciousness of those who inhabit that culture.A. Thermodynamics belongs to physics that deals with the relationships between heat and other forms of energy.B. As the corollary(必然结果) of science, technology also exhibits the universalizing tendency.C. Today"s automobile is no longer unique to a given company or even to a given national culture, its basic features are found, with variations, in automobiles in general, no matter who makes them.D. Genetics is the branch of biology that deals with heredity, especially the mechanisms of hereditary transmission and the variation of inherited characteristics among similar or related organisms.E. As buildings become more alike, the people who inhabit the buildings become more alike. The result is described precisely in a phrase that is already familiar: the disappearance of history.F. For several decades of the twentieth century there was a Western and a Soviet genetics(遗传学), the latter associated with Lysenko"s theory that environmental stress can produce genetic mutations(变化). Today Lysenko"s theory is discredited, and there is now only one genetics.G. The benefit is that he begins to suspect home in the traditional sense is another name for limitations, and that home in the modem sense is everywhere and always surrounded by neighbors.

Write a letter to invite a friend, Michelle, to travel abroad with you. In the letter, you should 1) tell her the reason(s) you intend to travel, 2) what' s your plan for the travel, and 3) explain the reason(s) you invite her. 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)

Erroneous virtues are running out of control in our culture. I don"t know how many times my 13-year-old son has told me about classmates who received $10 for each "A" grade on their report cards—hinting that I should do the same for him should he ever receive an A. Whenever he approaches me on this subject, I give him the same reply: forget it! This is not to say that I would never praise my son for doing well in school. But my praise is not meant to reward or elicit future achievements, but rather to express my genuine delight in the satisfaction he feels at having done his best. Doling out $10 sends out the message that the feeling alone isn"t good enough. As a society, we seem to be on the brink of losing our internal control—the ethical boundaries that guide our actions and feelings. Instead, these ethical standards have been eclipsed by external "stuff" as a measure of our worth. We pass this obscene message on to our children. We offer them money for learning how to convert fractions to decimals. Refreshments are given as a reward for reading. In fact, in one national reading program, a party awaits the entire class if each child reads a certain number of books within a four-month period. We call these things incentives, telling ourselves that if we can just reel them in and get them hooked, then the internal rewards will follow. I recently saw a television program where unmarried, teenage mothers were featured as the participants in a program that offers a $10 a week "incentive" if these young women don"t get pregnant again. Isn"t the daily plight of being a single, teenaged mother enough to discourage them from becoming pregnant again? No, it isn"t, because we as a society won"t allow it to be. Nothing is permitted to succeed or fail on its own merits anymore. A staple diet of candy bars makes an ordinary apple or orange seem sour. Similarly, an endless parade of incentives corrodes our ability to feel a genuine sense of inner peace (or inner conflict). The simple virtues of honesty, kindness and integrity suffer from an image problem and are in desperate need of better publicity. One way to do this is by example. I fear that in our so-called upwardly mobile world we are on a downward spiral towards becoming morally bankrupt. We may soon render ourselves worthless inside, while desperately clinging to a shell of appearances.

There was great public interest when a big hole mysteriously appeared in the middle of a field. Army mechanics and engineers were called in to explain how it had got there. They referred various explanations but were not at all sure how the hole had been caused. It was thought that a large shell which must have lain buried under the ground for many years had suddenly exploded, but it was not possible to prove this. A "simple", but highly improbable, explanation was offered by a man who claims to be especially well-informed about "flying saucers—the strange objects which are round in shape and are said to visit the earth occasionally from outer space. The man"s explanation may have been nonsense, but at least it was imaginative. At any rate, it was far more interesting than the one given by the army. After examing the ground carefully, the man claimed to have seen special marks on the soil quite near the hole. These, he said, could only have been caused by a flying saucer. Moreover, the leaves on some bushes nearby had turned yellow because of a strange hot gas which had come from the saucer just before it landed. Even a small tree some way off appeared to have been burnt slightly. A small piece of metal found in the hole itself provided further proof that a strange object had been there. According to the man, it was quite clear that people from another world had been circling the earth trying to pick up information, when something had gone wrong. Because of this they had been forced to land in a field so that the damage could be repaired. The hole had been caused when the saucer struck the earth, while the strange marks nearby were made when it took off again. This, said the man, was the simplest explanation of how the hole had appeared. Judging from the interest the public took in the matter, there must be quite a few people who secretly believe or hope that this "simple" explanation is the true one.

The key fact is that all three dictionaries can be seen to have a distinctly "cultural" as well as language learning content. That being said, the way in which they approach the cultural element is not i-dentical, making direct comparisons between the three difficult.

This eye on the consumer approach is known as the marketing concept, which simply means that instead of trying to sell whatever is easiest to produce or buy for resale, the makers and dealers first endeavor to find out what the consumer wants to buy and then go about making it available for purchase.

The dot-com collapse may have been a disaster for Wall Street, but here in Silicon Valley, it was a blessing. It was the welcome end to an abnormal condition that very nearly destroyed the area in an overabundance of success. You see, the secret to the Valley"s astounding multiple decade boom is failure. Failure is what fuels and renews this place. Failure is the foundation for innovation. The valley"s business ecology depends on failure the same way the tree-covered hills around us depend on fire it wipes out the old growth and creates space for new life. The valley has always been in danger of drowning in the unwelcome waste products of success too many people, too expensive houses, too much traffic, too little office space and too much money chasing too few startups. Failure is the safety valve, the destructive renewing force that frees up people, ideas and capital and recombines them, creating new revolutions. Consider how the Internet revolution came to be. After half a decade of start-up struggles, for example, hundreds of millions of Hollywood dollars were going up in smoke. It all seemed like a terrible waste, but no one noticed that the collapse left one very important byproduct, a community of laid-off C++ programmers who were now expert in multimedia design, and out on the street looking for the next big thing. These media geeks were the pioneer of the dot-com revolution. They were the Web"s business pioneers, applying their newfound media sensibilities to create one little company after another. Most of these start-ups failed, but even in failure they advanced the new medium of cyberspace. A few geeks, like Silicon Graphics founder Jim Clark, succeeded and utterly changed our lives. In 1994 Clark was unemployed after leaving the company be founded, doggedly trying to develop a new interactive-TV concept. He approached Marc Andreessen, the co developer of Mosaic, the first widely used Internet browser, in hope of persuading Andreessen to help him design his new system. Instead, Andreessen opened Clark"s eyes to the Web"s potential. Clark promptly tossed his TV plans in the trash, and the two co-founded Netscape, the cornerstone of the consumer-Web revolution. Like the interactive-TV refugees and generations of innovators before them, the dot-comers are already hatching new companies. Many are revisiting good ideas executed badly in the 1990s, while others are striking out into entirely new spaces. This happy chaos is certain to mature into a new order likely to upset an establishment, as it delivers life-changing wonders to the rest of us. But this is just the start, for revolutions give birth to revolutions. So let"s hope for more of Silicon Valley"s successful failures.

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

Studythefollowingpicturecarefullyandwriteanessayofabout160—200words.Youressaymustbewrittenclearlyandyouressayshouldmeettherequirementsbelow:1.Deducewhatisintendedinthepicture,2.Andpointoutitsimplicationsinourlife.

A weather map is an important tool for geographers. A succession of three of four maps presents a continuous picture of weather changes. Weather forecasts are able to determine the speed of air masses and fronts; to determine whether an individual pressure area is deepening or becoming shallow and whether a front is increasing or decreasing in intensity. They are also able to determine whether an air mass is retaining its original characteristics or taking on those of the surface over which it is moving. Thus, a most significant function of the map is to reveal a synoptic picture of conditions in the atmosphere at a given time. All students of geography should be able to interpret a weather map accurately. Weather maps contain an enormous amount of information about weather conditions existing at the time of observation over a large geographical area. They reveal in a few minutes what otherwise would take hours to describe. The United States weather Bureau issues information about approaching storms, floods, frosts, droughts, and all climatic conditions in general. Twice a month it issues a 30-day "outlook" which is a rough guide to weather conditions likely to occur over broad areas of the United States. These 30-day outlooks are based upon an analysis of the upper air levels with often set the stage for the development of air masses, fronts, and storms. Considerable effort is being exerted today to achieve more accurate weather predictions. With the use of electronic instruments and earth satellites, enormous gains have taken place recently in identifying and tracking storms over regions which have but few meteorological stations. Extensive experiments are also in progress for weather modification studies. But the limitations of weather modification have prevented meteorological results except in the seeding of super-cooled, upslope mountainous winds which have produced additional orographical precipitation on the windward side of mountain ranges. Nevertheless, they have provided a clearer understanding of the fundamentals of weather elements.

The person who can see a ship without some feeling of excitement must have very little imagination. Even the idea of leaving the solid land (1)_____ most of us were born and brought (2)_____ and going out on to the ever-moving waters must rouse (3)_____ some feelings of strangeness. We may remember stories of terrible storms, with waves (4)_____ mountains, and of people from ships which have sunk (5)_____ weeks in small boats hundreds of miles from land. But we have also (6)_____ joy of traveling on calm seas under blue (7)_____ and of the (8)_____ excitement of coming to a new beautiful land which we have seen only in pictures before. (9)_____ ships are not, of course, made chiefly for pleasure: their biggest use is in carrying goods from country to country. (10)_____ ships can carry more goods than (11)_____ means of transport, and can (12)_____ so more cheaply. If ships (13)_____ the British government would not be able to feed (14)_____ people. 　Ships have also made (15)_____ to discover more and more distant parts of our world. (16)_____ is known to all, Columbus used a ship to discover America about 450"years ago. And (17)_____ ships are used for exploring the Antarctic. (18)_____ would, in fact, not be (19)_____ to say that ships have for thousands of years (20)_____ one of the most important parts in shaping society.

Though unemployed longer when seeking work, older women job hunt harder, hold a job longer with less absenteeism, perform as well or better, are more reliable, and are more willing to learn than men or younger women.

Writeanessayof160—200wordsbasedonthefollowingcartoon.Inyouressay,youshould1)describethecartoonbriefly,2)explainitsintendedmeaning,andthen3)supportyourviewwithanexample/examplesYoushouldwriteneatly.

BPart ADirections: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D./B