BPart ADirections: Write a composition/letter of no less than 100 words on the following information./B

BPart CDirections: Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese./B

Studythefollowingpicturecarefullyandwriteanessayinnolessthan160—200words.Youressaymustbewrittenclearlyandyouressayshouldmeettherequirementsbelow:1)Firstdescribethepicture,interpretitsmeaningand2)Giveyourcomments.

The Japanese government wants women like Taeko Mizuguchi to get married and start doing something about the nation"s plunging birthrate. But she"s not interested. At least, not if her prospective husband is Japanese. A growing number of Japanese women are giving up on their male counterparts, and taking a gamble that looking abroad for love will bring them the qualities in a partner that seem rare at home. "They treat you like equals, and they don"t hesitate to express mutual feelings of respect—I think Western men are more adept at such things than Japanese men," says the 36-year-old Ms. Mizuguchi, who works at a top trading firm. "They don"t act like women are maids—I think they view women as individuals." Underscoring that Japanese women are losing hope with the local boys, dating agencies to help snag a Western husband have sprung up in Tokyo, some with branches in the US and Europe. Such companies rigorously vet their clients, screening for education, family background, occupation, and life goals. The kind of women who sign up for such services include doctors, lawyers, and other professionals—women who have delayed marriage to concentrate on careers and who aren"t keen to give up hard won gains to become a housewife, as many Japanese men expect. A generation of women who are now entering their 30s don"t want to give up single life unless prospective partners are willing to break from traditional gender roles. Government polls conducted to find out why women have put off marriage until well after 25 years of age—known as a woman"s "best before date"—show that economic independence is key to the change. As most Japanese women have their own income, marriage is no longer a financial necessity and women want to find companionship in a husband. Having ruled out an old-fashioned Japanese husband, many women here think the solution is a Western man. Indeed, some seem so enthralled with the idea that they are willing to spend thousands of dollars to inspect the wares personally. To be fair, not all the blame for female angst here can be laid on Japanese men The government has been slow to enforce equal opportunity laws, and both pay and the glass ceiling in most Japanese corporations remain low for women. Recession has hampered longer maternity leave and other family friendly policies. As Japan"s fertility rate drops to new lows, the government is anxiously drawing up plans to make it easier for young couples to raise children, through such measures as the provision of cheap public homing.

TheShortBoardWriteanessayof160-200wordsbasedonthedrawing.Inyouressay,youshould1)describethedrawingbriefly,2)explainitsintendedmeaning,and3)giveyourcomments.

Title: SMOKINGWord limit: 160—200 wordsTime limit: 40 minutes You are required to develop your essay according to the given topic sentence of each paragraph.Outline: 1. The harm caused by smoking. 2. How is the body affected? 3. It is important to sustain our efforts to ban smoking.

The methods of testing a person' s knowledge and ability remain as primitive as ever they were. After all these years, educationists have still failed to device anything more efficient and reliable than examinations. For all the pious claim that examinations test what you know, it is common knowledge that they more often do the exact opposite. They may be a good means of testing memory, or the skill of working rapidly under extreme pressure, but they can tell you nothing about a person' s true ability and aptitude. As anxiety-makers, examinations are second to none . That is because so much depends on them. They are markers of success or of failure in our society. Your whole future may be decided in one fateful day. No one can give of his best when he is in mortal terror, or after a sleepless night, yet this is precisely what the examination system expects him to do. The moment a child begins school, he enters a world of vicious competition where success and failure are clearly defined and measured. A good education should, among other things, train you to think for yourself. The examination system does anything but that. What has to be learnt is rigidly laid down by a syllabus, so the student is encouraged to memorize. They lower the standards of teaching, for they deprive the teacher of all freedoms. Teachers themselves are often judged by examination results and instead of teaching their subjects. The most successful candidates are not always the best educated; they are the best trained in the technique of working under duress. The results on which so much depends are often nothing more than a subjective assessment by some anonymous examiner. Examiners are only human. Yet they have to mark stacks of hastily scrawled scripts in a limited amount of time. They work under the same sort of pressure as the candidates. And their word carries weight. After a judge' s decision you have the right of appeal, but not after an examiner's. There must surely be many simpler and more effective ways of assessing a person ' s true abilities. Is it cynical to suggest that examinations are merely a profitable business for the institutions that run them? This is what it boils down to in the last analysis. The best comment on the system is this illiterate message recently scrawled on a wall: I were a teenage drop-out and now I am a teenage millionaire.

Soft-drink sales have been declining for nine straight years. This is much more than a trend—it' s a fundamental shift in consumer tastes that【C1】______a major problem for soda makers, no matter how【C2】______their product combination might be. The latest numbers are astonishing, but not surprising. Sales of soda fell 3 %【C3】______volume in 2013 , to the lowest levels since 1995 , 【C4】______to a report from Beverage Digest issued on Monday. That would be a big【C5】______no matter what, and it' s more than double 2012 ' s decline. People are moving away from soda at a(n)【C6】______rate. At this point, companies like Coca-Cola and Pepsico must be【C7】______not on what they' re doing to save their flagship brands, but on how well they're【C8】______those brands' decline. Of course that' s not easy for companies that are named for those very brands, so they're still crazily trying to【C9】______how to at least stop the losses, even as they wisely continue to invest in【C10】______like energy drinks, sports drinks, and flavored water. Pepsico took measures such as trying a new bottle design and signing with Beyoncd, 【C11】_______sales have continued to decrease. And the hoped-for savior of the business—diet drinks with【C12】______sweeteners—are no help. Up until a few years ago, sales of diet sodas were falling at about the same rate as the sugar-filled ones. Now they're actually falling faster【C13】______consumers continue to hear about health【C14】______. Just yesterday, a study was released indicating that consumption of diet soda can【C15】______the risk of cardiovascular disease in older women. But health concerns are not the only problem. If they were, it would seem【C16】______that energy drinks, sports beverages, coffee-based beverages, and flavored waters would be taking up the slack. But they are. That' s a further【C17】______that what' s doing soda in is the increase of【C18】______in the beverage aisle, especially those【C19】______at young people, a growing number of whom think of Coke, Dr. Pepper, Sprite, and Pepsi—Beyond notwithstanding—【C20】______the stuff their grandparents drank in the old days.

Studythefollowingcartooncarefullyandwriteanarticleon"remedial"classesinschools.Inyourarticle,youshouldcoverthefollowingpoints:1)describethepicture,interpretitsmeaning,and2)giveyourcomments.Youshouldwrite160～200wordsneatly.

Write a letter to inquire whether you may book rooms at a hotel during holiday. Some necessary details must be included. Write your letter neatly with no less than 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.

"I"m a total geek all around," says Angela Byron, a 27-year-old computer programmer who has just graduated from Nova Scotia Community College. And yet, like many other students, she "never had the confidence" to approach any of the various open-source software communities on the internet-distributed teams of volunteers who collaborate to build software that is then made freely available. But thanks to Google, the world"s most popular search engine and one of the biggest proponents of open-source software, Ms. Byron spent the summer contributing code to Drupal, an open-source project that automates the management of websites. "It"s awesome," she says. Ms. Byron is one of 419 students (out of 8,744 who applied) who were accepted for Google"s "summer of code". While it sounds like a hyper-nerdy summer camp, the students neither went to Google"s campus in Mountain View, California, nor to wherever their mentors at the 41 participating open-source projects happened to be located. Instead, Google acted as a matchmaker and sponsor. Each of the participating open-source projects received $500 for every student it took on; and each student received $4,500 ($500 right away, and $4,000 on completion of their work). Oh, and a T-shirt. All of this is the idea of Chris DiBona, Google"s open-source boss, who was brainstorming with Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google"s founders, last year. They realised that a lot of programming talent goes to waste every summer because students take summer jobs flipping burgers to make money, and let their coding skills degrade. "We want to make it better for students in the summer," says Mr. DiBona, adding that it also helps the open-source community and thus, indirectly, Google, which uses lots of open-source software behind the scenes. Plus, says Mr. DiBona, "it does become an opportunity for recruiting. " Elliot Cohen, a student at Berkeley, spent his summer writing a "Bayesian network toolbox" for Python, an open-source programming language. "I"m a pretty big fan of Google," he says. He has an interview scheduled with Microsoft, but "Google is the only big company that I would work at," he says. And if that doesn"t work out, he now knows people in the open-source community, "and it"s a lot less intimidating. "

[A]Studythefollowinggraphscarefullyandwriteanessayinatleast150words.[B]YouressaymustbewrittenneatlyonANSWERSHEET2.(15points)[C]Youressayshouldcoverthesethreepoints:1.effectofthecountry"sgrowinghumanpopulationonitswildlife2.possiblereason(s)fortheeffect3.yoursuggestionforwildlifeprotection

In his book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell argues that "social epidemics" are driven in large part by the actions of a tiny minority of special individuals, often called influentials, who are unusually informed, persuasive, or well-connected. The idea is intuitively compelling, but it doesn't explain how ideas actually spread. The supposed importance of influentials derives from a plausible-sounding but largely untested theory called the "two-step flow of communication": Information flows from the media to the influentials and from them to everyone else. Marketers have embraced the two-step flow because it suggests that if they can just find and influence the influentials, those selected people will do most of the work for them. The theory also seems to explain the sudden and unexpected popularity of certain looks, brands, or neighborhoods. In many such cases, a cursory search for causes finds that some small group of people was wearing, promoting, or developing whatever it is before anyone else paid attention. Anecdotal evidence of this kind fits nicely with the idea that only certain special people can drive trends. In their recent work, however, some researchers have come up with the finding that influentials have far less impact on social epidemics than is generally supposed. In fact, they don't seem to be required of all. The researchers' argument stems from a simple observation about social influence: With the exception of a few celebrities like Oprah Winfrey—whose outsize presence is primarily a function of media, not interpersonal, influence—even the most influential members of a population simply don't interact with that many others. Yet it is precisely these noncelebrity influentials who, according to the two-step-flow theory, are supposed to drive social epidemics, by influencing their friends and colleagues directly. For a social epidemic to occur, however, each person so affected must then influence his or her own acquaintances, who must in turn influence theirs, and so on; and just how many others pay attention to each of these people has little to do with the initial influential. If people in the network just two degrees removed from the initial influential prove resistant, for example the cascade of change won't propagate very far or affect many people. Building on the basic truth about interpersonal influence, the researchers studied the dynamics of social influence by conducting thousands of computer simulations of populations, manipulating a number of variables relating to people' s ability to influence others and their tendency to be influenced. They found that the principal requirement for what is called "global cascades"—the widespread propagation of influence through networks—is the presence not of a few influentials but, rather, of a critical mass of easily influenced people.

"I"m a total geek all around," says Angela B. Yron, a 27-year-old computer prlogrammer who has just graduated from Nova Scotia Community College. And yet, like many other students, she "never had the confidence" to approach any of the various open-source software communities on the internet—distributed teams of volunteers who collaborate to build software that is then made freely available. But thanks to Google, the world"s most popular search engine and one of the biggest proponents of open-source software, Ms Byron spent the summer contributing code to Drupal, an open-source project that automates the management of websites. "It"s awesome," she says. Ms Byron is one of 419 students (out of 8,744 who applied) who were accepted for Google"s "summer of code". While it sounds like a hyper-nerdy summer camp, the students neither went to Google"s campus in Mountain View, California, nor to wherever their mentors at the 41 participating open-source projects happened to be located. Instead, Google acted as a matchmaker and sponsor. Each of the participating open-source projects received $500 for every student it took on; and each student received $4,500 ($500 right away, and $4,000 on completion of their work). Oh, and a T-shirt. All of this is the idea of Chris DiBona, Google"s open-source boss, who was brainstorming with Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google"s founders, last year. They realised that a lot of programming talent goes to waste every summer because students take summer jobs flipping burgers to make money, and let their coding skills degrade. "We want to make it better for students in the summer," says Mr. DiBona, adding that it also helps the open source community and thus, indirectly, Google, which uses lots of open source software behind the scenes. Plus, says Mr. DiBona, "it does become an opportunity for recruiting." Elliot Cohen, a student at Berkeley, spent his summer writing a "Bayesian network toolbox" for Python, an open-source programming language. "I"m a pretty big fan of Google," he says. He has an interview scheduled with Microsoft, but "Google is the only big company that I would work at," he says. And if that doesn"t work out, he now knows people in the open-source community, "and it"s a lot less intimidating."

The topic of cloning has been a politically and ethically controversial one since its very beginning. While the moral and philosophical aspects of the issues are entirely up to the interpretation of the individual, the application of cloning technology can be studied objectively. Many in the scientific community advocate the use of cloning for the preservation and support of endangered species of animals, which aside from cloning, have no other practical hope for avoiding extinction. The goal of the use of cloning to avoid extinction is the reintroduction of new genes into the gene pool of species with few survivors, ensuring the maintenance and expansion of genetic diversity. Likely candidates for this technique are species known to have very few surviving members, such as the African Bongo Antelope, the Sumatran Tiger, and the Chinese Giant Panda. In the case of Giant Panda, some artificial techniques for creating offspring have already been performed, perhaps paving the way for cloning as the next step in the process. With the estimated population of only about 1, 000 Giant Pandas left in the world, the urgency of the situation has led to desperate measures. One panda was born through the technique of artificial insemination in the San Diego Zoo in the United States. "Hua Mei" was born in 1999 after her parents, Hsing-Hsing and Ling-Ling, had trouble conceiving naturally. The plan to increase the Giant Panda population through the use of cloning involves the use of a species related to the Giant Panda, the American Black Bear. Egg cells will be removed from female black bears and then fertilized with Panda cells such as those from Ling-Ling or Hsing-Hsing. The fertilized embryo will then re-implanted into the black bear, where it will grow and mature, until a new panda is delivered from the black bear host. Critics of cloning technology argue that the emphasis on cloning as a method by which to preserve species will draw funding away from other methods, such as habitat preservation and conservation. Proponents of cloning counter that many countries in which many endangered species exist are too poor to protect and maintain the species" habitats anyway, making cloning technology the only practical way to ensure that those species survive to future generations. The issue is still hotly debated, as both sides weigh the benefits that could be achieved against the risks and ethical concerns that constantly accompany any argument on the issue.

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) (41)______. In today"s prosperous societies the distinction has become blurred because so many wants have been turned into needs. A writer, for instance, can work with paper and pencils. These are legitimate needs for the task. But the work can be done more quickly and efficiently with a word processor. Thus a computer is soon viewed as a need rather than a want. (42)______. The two main categories are convenience goods and shopping goods. Two lesser types are specialty goods and unsought goods. It must be emphasized that all of these types are based on the way shoppers think about products, not on the nature of the products themselves. What is regarded as a convenience item in France (wine, for example) may be a specialty goods in the United States. People do not spend a great deal of time shopping for such convenience items as groceries, newspapers, toothpaste, razor blades, aspirin, and candy. The buying of convenience goods may be done routinely, as some families buy groceries once a week. Such regularly purchased items are called staples. Sometimes convenience products are bought on impulse: someone has a sudden desire for an ice cream sundae on a hot day. (43)______. Shopping goods are items for which customers search. They compare prices, quality, and styles, and may visit a number of stores before making a decision. (44)______. Shopping goods fall into two classes: those that are perceived as basically the same and those that are regarded as different. Items that are looked upon as basically the same include such things as home appliances, television sets, and automobiles. Having decided on the model desired, the customer is primarily interested in getting the item at the most favorable price. Items regarded as inherently different include clothing, furniture, and dishes. Quality, style, and fashion will either take precedence over price, or they will not matter at all. Specialty goods have characteristics that impel customers to make special efforts to find them. Price may be no consideration at all. Specialty goods can include almost any kind of product. Normally, specialty goods have a brand name or other distinguishing characteristics. Unsought goods are items a consumer does not necessarily want or need or may not even know about. Promotion or advertising brings such goods to the consumer"s attention. (45)______.A. In the field of marketing, consumer goods are classed according to the way in which they are purchased.B. Or they may be purchased as emergency items.C. What it really does is give unprecedented insight into the consumer mind. And it will actually result in higher product sales.D. The product could be something new on the market as the Sony Walkman once was or it may be a fairly standard service, such as life insurance, for which most people will usually not bother shopping.E. Buying an automobile is often done this way.F. The traditional distinction between products that satisfy needs and those that satisfy wants is no longer adequate to describe classes of products.G. These proprietary annual surveys address shopping frequency, store preference, shopper profiles, purchase patterns and drivers of shopping behavior.

Your friend Mike is a college student, and he is wondering whether he should take a part-time job in a big IT company. Write a letter to him to offer your opinions and suggestions on the issue. You should write about 100 words. Do not sign your name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Hua" instead. You do not need to write the address.

The evolution in public policy concerning the manufacture, sale and possession of semiautomatic assault weapons like AK-47s, AR-15s and Uzis has been very disturbing. Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and I all supported a ban on these formidable firearms, and one was finally passed in 1994. When the 10-year ban was set to expire, many police organizations called on Congress and President George W. Bush to renew and strengthen it. But with a wink from the White House, the gun lobby prevailed and the ban expired. An overwhelming majority of Americans, including me and my hunting companions, believe in the right to own weapons, but surveys show that they also support modest restraints like background checks, mandatory registration and brief waiting periods before purchase. A majority of Americans also support banning assault weapons. Many of us who hunt arc dismayed by some of the more extreme policies of the National Rifle Association, the most prominent voice in opposition to a ban, and by the timidity of public officials who yield to the group"s unreasonable demands. Heavily influenced and supported by the firearms industry, N. R. A. leaders have misled many gullible people into believing that our weapons are going to be taken away from us, and that homeowners will be deprived of the right to protect ourselves and our families. The N. R. A. would be justified in its efforts if there was a real threat to our constitutional right to bear arms. But that is not the case. Instead, the N. R. A. is defending criminals" access to assault weapons and use of ammunition that can penetrate protective clothing worn by police officers on duty. In addition, while the N. R. A. seems to have reluctantly accepted current law restricting sales by licensed gun dealers to convicted felons, it claims that only "law-abiding people" obey such restrictions—and it opposes applying them to private gun dealers or those who sell all kinds of weapons from the back of a van or pickup truck at gun shows. What are the results of this profligate ownership and use of guns designed to kill people? In 2006, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported more than 30,000 people died from firearms, accounting for nearly 20 percent of all injury deaths. In 2005, every nine hours a child or teenager in the United States was killed in a firearm-related accident or suicide. The gun lobby and the firearms industry should reassess their policies concerning safety and accountability—at least on assault weapons—and ease their pressure on acquiescent politicians who fear N. R. A. disapproval at election time. We can"t let the N. R. A. "s political blackmail prevent the banning of assault weapons—designed only to kill police officers and the people they defend.

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

Optimism among the UK"s banks and building societies has soared over the past three months as firms grew profits and took on more staff despite falling business volumes, according to results from the latest CBI/PwC survey. The recruitment【C1】______is set to continue over the next quarter with an【C2】______"strong recovery" in volumes【C3】______falling costs will provide a further boost. CBI director of economics Stephen Gifford said: "With profitability growing, this is an【C4】______quarter for the financial services sector despite a fall in business volumes in banking." Firms are expecting positive【C5】______to carry into the next three months【C6】______a strong recovery in business volumes【C7】______will boost profits further. "Financial services companies are less【C8】______than they were about a【C9】______lack of demand but dealing with regulation is increasingly【C10】______plans for business expansion." Kevin Burrowes, PwC"s UK financial services leader, added: "We expect the full【C11】______of the UK"s economic recovery to be reflected in bank【C12】______in the coming months and their solid profitability is【C13】______by predicted cost reductions and increasing【C14】______on growth." Financial firms" improving fortunes are【C15】______across the wider business community, with accountants BDO"s business trends report showing【C16】______improving for an eighth【C17】______month in September to reach its highest【C18】______since the coalition Government was formed. There was a strong improvement in【C19】______expectations among services and manufacturing sectors, which【C20】______make up the overwhelming majority of Britain"s output.