You have learned that your former English teacher at middle school is ill these days. Write a letter to her. Your letter should include the following items: 1) express your concern; 2) ask after her health; 3) give your best wishes. You should write about 100 words. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Chen Yang" instead. You do not need to write the address.

In America alone, tipping is now a $16 billion-a-year industry. A recent poll showed that 40% of Americans【C1】______the practice. Tips should not exist So【C2】______do they? The conventional wisdom is that tips both【C3】______the efforts of good service and reduce uncomfortable feelings of inequality.【C4】______according to new research from Cornell University, tipping【C5】______serves any useful functions. The paper analyses data from 2,547 groups dining at 20 different restaurants. The【C6】______between larger tips and better service was very【C7】______: only a tiny part of the【C8】______in the size of the tip had anything to do with the quality of service. Customers who rated a meal as "excellent" still tipped【C9】______between 8% and 37% of the meal price. Tipping is better explained by culture than by economics. In America, the custom【C10】______institutionalized: it is regarded as part of the【C11】______cost of a service. In a New York restaurant, failing to tip at least 15% could well mean【C12】______from the waiter. Hairdressers can expect to get 15-20%, the man who【C13】______your groceries $2. In Europe, tipping is less common; in many restaurants, discretionary tipping is being【C14】______by a standard service charge. In many Asian countries, tipping has never really【C15】______at all. How to【C16】______for these national differences? According to Michael Lynn, the Cornell paper"s co-author, countries in which people are more extrovert, sociable or neurotic tend to tip more. Tipping relieves【C17】______about being served by strangers. And, says Mr. Lynn, "in America, where people are【C18】______and expressive, tipping is about social approval. If you tip badly people think less of you." Icelanders,【C19】______, do not usually tip— a measure of their【C20】______, no doubt.

2008 Olympic Games is to be held in Beijing. Now the Beijing Olympic Games Committee is now recruiting volunteers to serve the games in many aspects such as interpreters, security assistants, medical assistants, and backup teams. You are expected to write a letter of self-recommendation to the committee to apply for the suitable vacancy of volunteers. Write your letter in no less than 100 words and write it neatly. Do not show in the letter any specific information of your college or university; Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter; use" Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address.

A major reason most experts today support concepts such as a youth services bureau is that traditional correctional practices fail to rehabilitate many delinquent youth. It has been estimated that as many as 70 percent of all youth who have been institutionalized are involved in new offenses following their release. Contemporary correctional institutions are usually isolated—geographically and socially—from the communities in which most of their inmates live. In addition, rehabilitative programs in the typical training school and reformatory focus on the individual delinquent rather than the environmental conditions which foster delinquency. Finally, many institutions do not play an advocacy role on behalf of those committed to their care. They fail to do anything constructive about the hack-home conditions-family, school, work—faced by the youthful inmates. As a result, too often institutionalization serves as a barrier to the successful return of former inmates to their communities. Perhaps the most serious consequence of sending youth to large, centralized institutions, however, is that too frequently they serve as a training ground for criminal careers. The classic example of the adult offender who leaves prison more knowledgeable in the ways of crime than when he entered is no less true of the juvenile committed to a correctional facility. The failures of traditional correctional institutions, then, point to the need for the development of a full range of strategies and treatment techniques as alternatives to incarceration. Most experts today favor the use of small, decentralized correctional programs located in, or close to, communities where the young offender lives. Half-way houses, ail-day probation programs, vocational training and job placement services, remedial education activities, and street working programs are among the community-based alternatives available for working with delinquent and potentially delinquent youth. Over and above all the human factors cited, the case for community-based programs is further strengthened when cost is considered. The most recent" figures show that more $258 million is being spent annually on public institutions for delinquent youth. The average annual operating expenditure for each incarcerated youth is estimated at a little over five thousand dollars, significantly more than the cost of sending a boy or girl to the best private college for the same period of time. The continuing increase in juvenile delinquency rates only serves to heighten the drastic under-financing, the lack of adequately trained staff, and the severe shortage of manpower that characterize virtually every juvenile correction system.

Writeanessayof160-200wordsbasedonthefollowingdrawing.Inyouressay,youshould1)describethedrawingbriefly,2)explainitsintendedmeaning,andthen3)giveyourcomments.YoushouldwriteneatlyontheANSWERSHEET.(20points)

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

The news from America"s housing market is getting no better. As sales declines and defaults and foreclosures climb, pessimists fear that over a million Americans could be driven out of their homes as adjustable-rate mortgages are reset. What should policymakers do? Congress is eager to do more: hence the calls to expand the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the giant government-sponsored enterprises (GSES) that tower over America"s mortgage market. Fannie"s and Freddie"s political allies want two things. The first is the raising of the $417,000 limit on the size of loans that the pair may handle. The second demand is the lifting of caps on the amount of mortgages they may buy and hold for themselves. Fannie and Freddie could then ride to the rescue of struggling borrowers, injecting liquidity into parts of the market that have seized up. Their arguments are winning support, and opposition from the Bush administration and the GSES" regulator is softening. Unfortunately, the ideas are likely to do more for Fannie and Freddie than for the mortgage market. Start with the $417,000 limit. Lifting this could help if Fannie and Freddie scoured the upper bracket for borrowers who were struggling but viable. But their history suggests that they would cherry-pick those who could get refinanced elsewhere. And the huge-mortgage market may be correcting itself anyway: spreads over GSE-backed loans, though still unusually high, are falling. It is also riskier. When they hold a mortgage, they take on not only credit risk but also interest-rate and prepayment risk. The loans they guarantee, in contrast, carry only credit risk. So as well as being just as effective, the guarantee business is also safer—and thus better for the taxpayer who unwittingly stands behind the GSES. Moreover, even if they grow no more, the mortgage giants pose a clear systemic threat. Their portfolios of retained mortgages and mortgage-backed securities add up to no less than $1.4 trillion. It is bad enough that this is concentrated in two institutions. No matter how much risk they take or how they manage it, they can borrow at rock-bottom interest rates. If they got into trouble, banks as well as taxpayers would be on the hook. Banks may hold as much GSE debt as they want. Many have amounts that exceed their regulatory capital. The giants were set up decades ago to help banks pool concentrated regional mortgage risk and to make housing more affordable. But as the market has grown deeper and more sophisticated, history has left them behind—hence their desire to get into any bit of the business that will turn a profit. The eventual aim should be to turn them into normal private-sector companies, by stripping them of the charters that give rise to the implicit government guarantees, and break them into smaller pieces.

If you were to examine the birth certificates of every soccer player in 2006 's World Cup tournament, you would most likely find a noteworthy quirk: elite soccer players are more likely to have been born in the earlier months of the year than in the later months. If you then examined the European national youth teams that feed the World Cup and professional ranks, you would find this strange phenomenon to be even more pronounced. What might account for this strange phenomenon? Here are a few guesses: a)certain astrological signs confer superior soccer skills; b)winter-born babies tend to have higher oxygen capacity, which increases soccer stamina; c)soccer-mad parents are more likely to conceive children in springtime, at the annual peak of soccer mania ; d)none of the above. Anders Ericsson, a 58-year-old psychology professor at Florida State University, says he believes strongly in"none of the above." Ericsson grew up in Sweden, and studied nuclear engineering until he realized he would have more opportunity to conduct his own research if he switched to psychology. His first experiment, nearly 30 years ago, involved memory: training a person to hear and then repeat a random series of numbers. "With the first subject, after about 20 hours of training, his digit span had risen from 7 to 20," Ericsson recalls. "He kept improving, and after about 200 hours of training he had risen to over 80 numbers." This success, coupled with later research showing that memory itself is not genetically determined, led Ericsson to conclude that the act of memorizing is more of a cognitive exercise than an intuitive one. In other words, whatever inborn differences two people may exhibit in their abilities to memorize, those differences are swamped by how well each person "encodes" the information. And the best way to learn how to encode information meaningfully, Ericsson determined, was a process known as deliberate practice. Deliberate practice entails more than simply repeating a task. Rather, it involves setting specific goals, obtaining immediate feedback and concentrating as much on technique as on outcome. Ericsson and his colleagues have thus taken to studying expert performers in a wide range of pursuits, including soccer. They gather all the data they can, not just performance statistics and biographical details but also the results of their own laboratory experiments with high achievers. Their work makes a rather startling assertion: the trait we commonly call talent is highly overrated. Or, put another way, expert performers—whether in memory or surgery, ballet or computer programming—are nearly always made, not born.

How to Reduce Damage Caused by Natural Disasters? A. Title: How to Reduce Damage Caused by Natural Disasters? 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: "Human beings are often faced with natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, and tsunamis which cause serious losses." OUTLINE: 1. The natural disasters human beings are often faced with 2. Concrete measures to reduce the damage caused by these disasters 3. Making a conclusion

We all believe in something or someone. We must believe, just as we must eat, sleep, and reproduce. (46) Mankind has an insatiable need for and an irresistible attraction to a vast array of beliefs about gods and demons, magic and miracles, truth and falsehood, love and hate, same and different. Implausible, even irrational ideas, have been cherished for centuries. Saints and other martyrs suffered indescribable pain and agony, even death, for their beliefs. Scientists have been put to death for their belief that the earth is round, or that there is an invisible force called gravity, or that the earth is not the center of the universe with the sun revolving around it, or that the blood circulates throughout the body, or that Man evolved from lower forms of life. (47) Religious leaders have attracted millions of people with their version of how life began and how we must behave; if people do not believe in medicine and science religion, education, government and the social contract, chaos results "and no society can tolerate that which is why all societies impose order on their members. We must believe or face unbearable ambiguity and anxiety. Is the most effective belief system one that is composed of absolutes—unyielding, unvarying and eternal? (48) The answer is yes, because when we eliminate doubt from a situation we feel secure, restored to balance but if the belief system is science and is based on objective information without absolutes and requires a questioning attitude, it unnerves people. Any system that offers definitive answers to complex human questions and problems: this is right, this is wrong, this is true, this is false—one question, one answer only, is very appealing. (49) All beliefs require confirmation from an authoritative source whether that be a priest, a rabbi, a family member, a special friend, an expert—one who commands obedience and respect. Perhaps all belief is composed of the same elements in approximately the same proportions for even science requires a suspension of some disbelief, some uncertainty, however miniscule. Black Holes and the Big Bang are metaphoric truths derived from the physics we know now. But you have to believe, to have faith in the methods of science to gather information, to analyse and interpret it objectively in order to accept its conclusions. No one witnessed the Big Bang, or a Black Hole. These were inferred from careful study and analysis by many researchers. (50) Fear of the unknown certainly lends credence to any charismatic figure who makes great promises of a better life now and after death, which has worked throughout the ages and still does.

The recent announcement that general practitioners (GPs) may send patients with depression away with the suggestion that they【C1】______a "mood-enhancing" book will have entranced some【C2】______left others bristling. When we set up our bibliotherapy service through The School of life in 2008, our【C3】______was obvious: to show people that books, and【C4】______novels, not only have the【C5】______to lift spirits, but to【C6】______fundamental psychological shifts, healing and enriching the heart, the intellect and the soul in extraordinary ways. But you could【C7】______that someone with depression would【C8】______to make then-way to the library, 【C9】______put a spring in their stride, simply by the offer of some mood enhancing reads. One of the things we have found as biblio -therapists is that clients with depression【C10】______a therapeutic book require a very【C11】______prescription. Some may want a book that offers some escape—【C12】______case the odd English humour of Dodie Smith"s I Capture the Castle may【C13】______. But others may【C14】______with impatience to anything【C15】______seems too unlike real life. The majority of our clients do not come to us for【C16】______reasons; most come because they love reading, and in this day of publishing overload they want to be sure they use their reading time well. There are few greater pleasures in life than discovering a novel that【C17】______back a world you recognise—and yet takes you into a deeper experience of that world And research has shown that reading can be highly effective in【C18】______stress. We find Henry James a【C19】______way to order your mind when everything becomes too much—the literary【C20】______ of Beethoven or Bach.

Writeanessayof160—200wordsbasedonthefollowingdrawing.Inyouressay,youshouldfirstdescribethedrawing,interpretitsmeaning,andstateyourownopiniononit.Youshouldwriteneatly.(20points)

Writeanessayof160-200wordsbasedonthefollowingdrawing.Inyouressay,youshould1)describethedrawingbriefly,2)explainitsintendedmeaning,and3)giveyourcomments.YoushouldwriteneatlyontheANSWERSHEET.(20points)

BSection II Reading Comprehension/B

When the first white men arrived in Samoa, they found blind men, who could see well enough to describe things in detail just by holding their hands over objects. In France, Jules Roman tested hundreds of blind people and found a few who could tell the difference between light and dark. He narrowed their photosensitivity(感光灵敏度) down to areas on the nose or in the finger tips. In 1960 a medical board examined a girl in Virginia and found that, even with thick bandages over her eyes, she was able to distinguish different colours and read short sections of large print. Rosa Kuleshova, a young woman in the Urals, can see with her fingers. She is not blind, but because she grew up in a family of blind people, she learned to read Braille to help them and then went on to teach herself to do other things with her hands. She was examined by the Soviet Academy of Science, and proved to be genuine, Shaefer made an intensive study with her and found that, securely blindfolded with only her arms stuck through a screen, she could tell the difference between three primary colours. To test the possibility that the cards reflected heat differently, he heated some and cooled others without affecting her response to them. He also found that she could read newsprint under glass, so texture was giving her no clues. She was able to identify the colour and shape of patches of light projected on to her palm or on to a screen. In rigidly controlled tests, with a blindfold and a screen and a piece of card around her neck so wide that she could not see round it, Rosa read the small print in a newspaper with her elbow. And, in the most convincing demonstration of all, she repeated these things with someone standing behind her pressing hard on her eyeballs. Nobody can cheat under this pressure.

Radiation occurs from three natural sources: radioactive material in the environment, such as in soil, rock, or building materials; cosmic rays; and substances in the human body, such as radioactive potassium in bone and radioactive carbon in tissues. These natural sources account for an exposure of about 100 millirems a year for the average American. The largest single source of man-made radiation in medical x-rays, yet most scientists agree that hazards from this source are not as great as those from weapons test fallout, since strontium-90 and carbon-14 become incorporated into the body, hence delivering radiation for an entire lifetime. (46) The issue is, however, by no means uncontroversial; indeed, the last two decades have witnessed intensified examination and dispute about the effects of low-level radiation. A survey conducted in Britain confirmed that an abnormally high percentage of patients suffering from arthritis of the spine who had been treated with x-rays contracted cancer. Another study revealed a high incidence of childhood cancer in cases where the mother had been given x-rays. (47) These studies have pointed to the need to re-examine the assumption that exposure to low linear energy transfer presented only a minor risk. Recently, examination of the death certificates of former employees of a West Coast plant which produces plutonium for nuclear weapons revealed markedly higher rates for cancers of the pancreas, lung, bone marrow and lymph systems than would have been expected in a normal population. (48) While the National Academy of Sciences committee attributes these differences to chemical or other environmental causes, rather than radiation, other scientists maintain that any radiation exposure, no matter how small, leads to an increase in cancer risk. (49) It is believed by some that a dose of one rem, if sustained over many generations, would lead to an increase of one percent in the number of 1,000 disorders per million births. In the meantime, regulatory efforts have been disorganized, fragmented, and inconsistent, characterized by internecine strife and bureaucratic delays. A Senate report concluded that coordination of regulation among involved departments and agencies was not possible because of jurisdictional disputes and confusion. (50) One Federal agency has been unsuccessful in its efforts to obtain sufficient funding and manpower for the enforcement of existing radiation laws, and the chairperson of a panel especially created to develop a coordinated Federal program has resigned.

Mary didn't come because she wanted to see me.

BPart BDirections: Write an essay of 160-200 words based on the following information./B

BPart B/B

Write a letter of about 100 words to the president of your university, suggesting how to improve students' physical condition. You should include the details you think necessary. You should write neatly 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)