The term authority refers to the rights inherent in a managerial position to give orders and expect the orders to be followed. Authority was a major concept for the classical management writers; they (1)_____ it as the glue that held an organization together. It was to be delegated (2)_____ to subordinate managers, (3)_____ them certain rights while providing certain specified limits (4)_____ which to operate. Each management position has certain rights that the position holder (5)_____ just bemuse they hold that position. Authority (6)_____ to one"s position within an organization and ignores the personal (7)_____ of the individual manager. It has nothing directly (8)_____ the individual (9)_____ flows from the position that the individual holds. When a person (10)_____ a position of authority, he or she no longer has any authority. The authority remains with the position and (11)_____ new holder. When managers delegate authority, commensurate responsibility must be given (12)_____. That is, when one is given the "right" to do something, one also (13)_____ a corresponding "obligation" to (14)_____. Allocating authority (15)_____ responsibility can create (16)_____ for a person, and no one should be (17)_____ responsible for something (18)_____ which he or she has no authority. Classical writers recognized the (19)_____ of equating authority and responsibility. In (20)_____,they stated that only authority could be delegated. They supported this contention by noting that the delegate was held responsible for the actions of the people to whom work had been delegated.

Ah, blissful sleep, when we leave our daily toils behind and slip into mindless repose. Or do we? (46) Two reports in Science, one involving rats and the other humans, suggest that during sleep our brains remain quite busy, furiously consolidating important memories that have accumulated during the day. In the rat experiments, Matthew A. Wilson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Bruce L. McNaughton of the University of Arizona inserted electrodes into the hippocampus, a region of the brain thought to be involved in spatial memory. As the rats learned to navigate a maze, their neurons fired in certain patterns corresponding to specific parts of the maze. (47) For several nights after the rats" maze exercises, their hippocampal neurons displayed similar firing patterns; the rats were apparently playing back their memories of running the maze. The major difference was that the firing was more rapid, as if the memories were being run fast-forward. (48) The firing occurred during slow-wave sleep, a phase of deep (but not dreamless) sleep marked by low-frequency pulses of electrical activity in certain regions of the brain. The studies of humans were undertaken at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. A team led by Avi Karni and Dov Sagi trained volunteers to recognize rapidly the orientation of symbols hidden in images flashed at the periphery of their vision. The workers had previously noted improvements in performance over a 10-hour period following a training session. To determine whether sleep played a role in this phenomenon, Karni and Sagi disrupted the sleep of volunteers after they had had their training session. Interfering with the subjects" slow-wave sleep had no significant effect. (49) But an equivalent disruption of REM sleepy which is marked by rapid eye movements (hence its name) and vivid dreaming, kept the subjects from improving overnight. "These results indicate that a process of human memory consolidation, active during sleep, is strongly dependent on REM sleep," the group states. The experiments lend support to a theory advanced by Jonathan "practice sessions" in which animals hone survival skills. Why did Karni and Sagi detect memory consolidation during REM sleep and Wilson and McNaughton only during slow-wave sleep? (50) The answer seems to be that each group studied a different type of memory, one involving a highly repetitious task and the other the recollection of a place. Of course, hucksters have long asserted that people can learn new languages and other skills by listening to tapes while asleep. Wilson says he has been inundated with queries from people wanting to know if these claims are true. He responds that his research applies only to memories originally laid down during waking hours.

The term "remote sensing" refers to the techniques of measurement and interpretation of phenomena from a distance. Prior to the mid-1960"s the interpretation of film image was the primary means for remote sensing of the Earth"s geologic features. With the development of the opt mechanical scanner, scientists began to construct digital multi-spectral images using data beyond the sensitivity range of visible light photography. (46) These lineages are constructed by mechanically aligning pictorial representations of such phenomena as the reflection of light waves outside the visible spectrum, the refraction of radio waves, and the daily changes in temperature in areas on the Earth"s surface. Digital multi-spectral imaging has now be dome, the basic tool in geologic remote sensing from satellites. (47) The advantage of digital over photographic imaging is evident: the resulting numerical data are precisely known and digital data are not subject to the vagaries of difficult-to-control chemical processing. With digital processing, it is possible to combine a large number of spectral images. The acquisition of the first multi-spectral digital data sent from the multi-spectral scanner (MSS) aboard the satellite Land sat in 1972 consequently attracted the attention of the entire geologic community. Land sat MSS data are now being applied to a variety of geologic problems that are difficult to solve by-conventional methods alone. These include specific problems in mineral and energy resource exploration and the charting of glaciers and shallow seas. A more fundamental application of remote sensing is to augment conventional methods for geologic mapping of large are as. Regional maps present compositional, structural, and chronological information for reconstructing geologic evolution. (48) Such reconstructions have important practical applications because the conditions under which rock units and other structural features are formed influence the currency of ore and petroleum deposits and affect the thickness and integrity of the geologic media in which the deposits are found. Geologic maps incorporate a large, varied body of specific field and laboratory measurements, but the maps must be interpretative because field measurements are always limited by rock exposure, accessibility and labor resources. (49) With remote-sensing techniques it is possible to obtain much geologic information more efficiently than it can be obtained on the ground. These techniques also facilitate overall interpretation. Since detailed geologic mapping is generally conducted in small areas, the continuity of regional features that have intermittent and variable expressions is often not recognized, but in the comprehensive views of Land sat images these continuities are apparent. However some critical information cannot be obtained through remote sensing, and several characteristics of the Land 3at MSS impose limitations on the acquisition of diagnostic data. (50) Some of these limitations can be overcome by designing satellite systems specifically for geologic purposes; but to be most effective, remote-sensing data must still be combined with data from field surveys and laboratory tests, the techniques of the earlier twentieth century.

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

Here you are. Every morning, you reluctantly return to the same 6x6 cube. You grab a coffee, surf a news site, and chitchat with a peer. Then it"s onto that attack of calls and e-mails coming your way. But the workload doesn"t bother you. Staying busy saves you from something worse. And that something worse happens each month when the promotion announcements come out. You read what your peers have accomplished, here and elsewhere. Reflecting on what you did during that same time, you realize how far you"ve fallen behind. Sometimes you whisper, "That should"ve been me." Years ago, you marched into this cube dreaming of being a big shot. You didn"t plan to stay here long; it was a place to learn the ropes and build your reputation. Early on, the higher-ups raved about your natural talent and upside. But those qualities only take you so far. Now, you hold a ceremonial "Senior" title. Your place is secure and you make a decent living. Still, you feel trapped and restless. You follow the same tired routines. And you wonder if you"ve settled, if this is all there is and all you"ll ever be. You once lived like you had all the time in the world. Then you lost track of it as years passed. Now, you feel its weight and passing more intimately, knowing how much you"ve wasted. We want to believe our careers will unfold logically. We see ourselves as special, possessing a manifest destiny to someday create, change, and lead. So we put our lives on hold and sacrifice for the greater good at work, certain our efforts will eventually be rewarded. We imagine climbing the proverbial ladder, not wandering through a maze. So what happened? You"d like to believe it was one moment—a major oversight or missed opportunity— that led you here. Deep inside, you know the truth. You wrote lists and plans, knowing you"d never put them into motion. You waited for something to happen to you... and got left behind. Despite the grueling hours, you went through the motions, subconsciously knowing your path was welcome scenery and exercise. But led nowhere. In our personal narratives, we naturally make ourselves the heroes. We seek out villains and scapegoats to justify why our lives haven"t panned out Unfortunately, the truth is far less melodramatic. It is usually a series of evasions, bad habits, fears, compromises, and mentalities that have led us to this point. Sure, you can spend time reflecting on the past, questioning your path, and figuring out what"s missing. But are you really being honest with yourself?

BSection III Writing/B

Health implies more than physical fitness. It also implies mental and emotional well-being. An angry, frustrated, emotionally【C1】______person in good physical condition is not【C2】______healthy. Mental health, therefore, has much to do【C3】______how a person copes with the world as she / he exists. Many of the factors that【C4】______ physical health also affect mental and emotional well-being. Having a good self-image means that people have positive【C5】______pictures and good, positive feelings about themselves, about what they are capable【C6】______, and about the roles they play. People with good self-images like themselves, and they are【C7】______like others. Having a good self-image is based【C8】______a realistic 【C9】______of one" s own worth and value and capabilities. Stress is an unavoidable, necessary, and potentially healthful【C10】______of our society. People of all ages 【C11】______stress. Children begin to【C12】______stress during prenatal development and during childbirth. Examples of stress inducing【C13】______in the life of a young person are death of a pet, pressure to【C14】______academically, the divorce of parents, or joining a new youth group. The different ways in which individuals 【C15】______to stress may bring healthful or unhealthy results. One person experiencing a great deal of stress may function exceptionally well【C16】______another may be unable to function at all. If stressful situations are continually encountered, the individual"s physical, social, and mental health are eventually affected. Satisfying social relations are vital to【C17】______mental and emotional health. It is believed that in order to 【C18】______, develop, and maintain effective and fulfilling social relationships people must【C19】______the ability to know and trust each other, understand each other, influence, and help each other. They must also be capable of【C20】______conflicts in a constructive way.

【F1】 It is no longer just dirty blue-collar jobs in manufacturing; that are being sucked offshore but also white-collar service jobs, which used to be considered safe from foreign competition. Telecoms charges have tumbled, allowing workers in far-flung locations to be connected cheaply to customers in the developed world. This has made it possible to offshore services that were once non-tradable. Morgan Stanley's Mr. Roach has been drawing attention to the fact that the "global labor arbitrage" is moving rapidly to the better kinds of jobs.【F2】 It is no longer just basic data processing and call centers that are being outsourced to low-wage countries, but also software programming, medical diagnostics, engineering design, law, accounting, finance and business consulting. These can now be delivered electronically from anywhere in the world, exposing skilled white-collar workers to greater competition. The standard retort to such arguments is that outsourcing abroad is too small to matter much. So far fewer than 1 million American service-sector jobs have been lost to off-shoring. Forrester Research forecasts that by 2015 a total of 3.4 million jobs in services will have moved abroad, but that is tiny compared with the 30 million jobs destroyed and created in America every year.【F3】 The trouble is that such studies allow only for the sorts of jobs that are already being off-shored, when in reality the proportion of jobs that can be moved will rise as IT advances and education improves in emerging economies. Mr. Blinder says: "education offers no protection.【F4】 Highly skilled accountants, radiologists or computer programmers now have to compete with electronically delivered competition from abroad, whereas humble taxi drivers, janitors and crane operators remain safe from off-shoring. This may help to explain why the real median wage of American graduates hat fallen by 6% since 2000, a bigger decline than in average wages." In the 1980s and early 1990s, the pay gap between low-paid, low-skilled workers and high-paid, high-skilled workers widened significantly. But since then, according to a study by David Autor, Lawrence Katz and Melissa Kearney, in America, Britain and Germany workers at the bottom as well as at the top have done better than those in the middle-income group. Office cleaning cannot be done by workers in India. It is the easily standardized skilled jobs in the middle, such as accounting, that are now being squeezed hardest.【F5】 A study confirms that workers in tradable services that are exposed to foreign competition tend to be more skilled than workers in non-tradable services and tradable manufacturing industries.

"The ancient Hawaiians are astronomers", wrote Queen Liliuokalani, Hawaii's last reigning monarch, in 1897. Star watchers were among the most esteemed members of Hawaiian society. Sadly, all is not well with astronomy in Hawaii today. Protesters have erupted of over construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope(TMT), a giant observatory that promises to revolutionize humanity's view of cosmos. At issue is the TMT's planned location on Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano worshiped by some Hawaiians as the piko, that connects the Hawaiian Islands to the heavens. But Mauna Kea is also home to some of the world's most powerful telescopes. Rested in the Pacific Ocean, Mauna Kea's peak rises above the bulk of our planet's dense atmosphere, where conditions allow telescopes to obtain images of unsurpassed clarity. Oppositions to telescopes on Mauna Kea is nothing new. A small but vocal group of Hawaiians and environmentalists have long viewed their presence as disrespect for sacred land and a painful reminder of oc cupation of what was once a sovereign nation. Some blame for the current controversy belongs to astronomers. In their eagerness to build bigger telescopes, they forgot that science is not the only way of understanding the world. They did not always prioritize the protection of Mauna Kea' s fragile ecosystems or its holiness to the islands' inhabitants. Hawaiian culture is not a relic of the past; it is a living culture undergoing a renaissance today. Yet science has a cultural history, too, with roots going back to the dawn of civilization. The same curiosity to find what lies beyond the horizon that first brought early Polynesians to Hawaii's shores inspires astronomers today to explore the heavens. Calls to disassemble all telescopes on Mauna Kea or to ban future development there ignore the reality that astronomy and Hawaiin culture both seek to answer big questions about who we are, where we come from and where we are going. Perhaps that is why we explore the starry skies, as if answering a primal calling to know ourselves and our true ancestral homes. The astronomy community is making compromises to change its use of Mauna Kea. The TMT site was chosen to minimize the telescope's visibility around the island and to avoid archaeological and environmental impact. To limit the number of telescopes on Mauna Kea, old ones will be removed at the end of their lifetimes and their sites retuned to a natural state. There is no reason why everyone cannot be welcomed on Mauna Kea to embrace their cultural heritage and to study the stars.

Nothing can be done without money.

The social sciences are flourishing. As of 2005, there were almost half a million professional social scientists from all fields in the world, working both inside and outside academia. According to the World Social Science Report 2010, the number of social-science students worldwide has swollen by about 11% every year since 2000. Yet this enormous resource is not contributing enough to today" s global challenges including climate change, security, sustainable development and health.【C1】______.Humanity has the necessary agro-technological tools to eradicate hunger, from genetically engineered crops to artificial fertilizers. Here, too, the problems are social: the organization and distribution of food, wealth and prosperity. 【C2】______. This is a shame—the community should be grasping the opportunity to raise its influence in the real world. To paraphrase the great social scientist Joseph Schumpeter: there is no radical innovation without creative destruction. Today, the social sciences are largely focused on disciplinary problems and internal scholarly debates, rather than on topics with external impact. Analyses reveal that the number of papers including the keywords "environmental change" or "climate change" have increased rapidly since 2004.【C3】______. When social scientists do tackle practical issues, their scope is often local: Belgium is interested mainly in the effects of poverty on Belgium, for example. And whether the community"s work contributes much to an overall accumulation of knowledge is doubtful. The problem is not necessarily the amount of available funding.【C4】______.This is an adequate amount so long as it is aimed in the right direction. Social scientists who complain about a lack of funding should not expect more in today"s economic climate. The trick is to direct these funds better. The European Union Framework funding programs have long had a category specifically targeted at social scientists. This year, it was proposed that the system be changed: Horizon 2020, a new program to be enacted in 2014, would not have such a category. This has resulted in protests from social scientists. But the intention is not to neglect social science; rather, the complete opposite.【C5】______.That should create more collaborative endeavors and help to develop projects aimed directly at solving global problems. [A]It could be that we are evolving two communities of social scientists: one that is discipline-oriented and publishing in highly specialized journals, and one that is problem-oriented and publishing elsewhere, such as policy briefs. [B]However, the numbers are still small: in 2010, about 1, 600 of the 100, 000 social-sciences papers published globally included one of these keywords. [C]The idea is to force social scientists to integrate their work with other categories, including health and demographic change, food security, marine research and the bio-economy, clear, efficient energy; and inclusive, innovative and secure societies. [D]The solution is to change the mindset of the academic community, and what it considers to be its main goal. Global challenges and social innovation ought to receive much more attention from scientists, especially the young ones. [E]These issues all have root causes in human behavior: all require behavioral change and social innovations, as well as technological development Stemming climate change, for example, is as much about changing consumption patterns and promoting tax acceptance as it is about developing clean energy. [F]Despite these factors, many social scientists seem reluctant to tackle such problems. And in Europe, some are up in arms over a proposal to drop a specific funding category for social-science research and to integrate it within cross-cutting topics of sustainable development. [G]During the late 1990s, national spending on social sciences and the humanities as a percentage of all research and development funds—including government, higher education, non-profit and corporate— varied from around 4% to 25%; in most European nations, it is about 15%.

You are a graduate student majoring in Business English. You are interested in the position of a translator in a multinational corporation. Write a letter to the HR manager to 1) state the reason of writing this letter, 2) introduce yourself briefly, 3) express your gratitude. You should write about 100 words on ANSWER SHEET 2. Do not sign your name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address.

In almost all cases, the soft parts of fossils are gone for ever but they were fitted around or within the hard parts. Many of them also were attached to the hard parts and usually such attachments are visible as depressed or elevated areas, ridges or grooves, smooth or rough patches on the hard parts. The muscles most important for the activities of the animal and most evident in the appearance of the living animal are those attached to the hard parts and possible to reconstruct from their attachments. Much can be learned about a vanished brain from the inside of the skull in which it was lodged. Restoration of the external appearance of an extinct animal has little or no scientific value. It does not even help in inferring what the activities of the living animal were, how fast it could run, what its food was, or such other conclusions as are important for the history of life. However, what most people want to know about extinct animals is what they looked like when they were alive. Scientists also would like to know. Things like fossil shells present no great problem as a rule, because the hard parts are external when the animal is alive and the outer appearance is actually preserved in the fossils. Animals in which the skeleton is internal present great problems of restoration, and honest restorers admit that they often have to use considerable guessing. The general shape and contours of the body are fixed by the skeleton and by muscles attached to the skeleton, but surface features, which may give the animal its really characteristic look, are seldom restorable with any real probability of accuracy. The present often helps to interpret the past. An extinct animal presumably looked more or less like its living relatives, if it has any. This, however, may be quite equivocal. For example, extinct members of the horse family are usually restored to look somewhat like the most familiar living horses — domestic horses and their closest wild relatives. It is, however, possible and even probable that many extinct horses were striped like zebras. If lions and tigers were extinct they would be restored to look exactly alike. No living elephants have much hair and mammoths, which are extinct elephants, would doubtless be restored as hairless if we did not happen to know that they had thick, woolly coats. We know this only because mammoths are so recently extinct that prehistoric men drew pictures of them and that the hide and hair have actually been found in a few specimens. For older extinct animals we have no such clues.

Chinese American

Whether we want it or not we are all greedy by nature. From the moment we are【C1】______and to the last day of our life we【C2】______have an unsatisfied hunger to【C3】______more than we have. Greed is a way for us to take care of our needs and to make sure that we have enough in life. If you do not【C4】______me then look at any child Children and especially babies do not have any social norms that they have to【C5】______. All of their desires are engraved in them from birth. No matter【C6】______it is a toy or extra 5 minutes of hugging with Mommy or Daddy, children do not want to【C7】______it with anybody. As parents we teach them that it is good to share and not to be【C8】______, however generosity does not come【C9】______. It is a fact that generous people are【C10】______in life, they feel that their life is more meaningful and they【C11】______it more We often【C12】______generosity with money and wealth; however this is just the【C13】______of the iceberg. Being generous does not only【C14】______leaving a big tip at a restaurant or buying the most expensive gifts for Christmas. Generosity is all about giving and you can give your time, attention, love, help, and a smile【C15】______you can give money and【C16】______. Cultivating the spirit of generosity can be an eye-opening【C17】______for you because you will see in how many areas of your life you weren't generous enough.【C18】______you open your heart to the world around you and start giving more to it then you will【C19】______how much more you will receive【C20】______.

Family traditions are very visible signs of our love for each other. Traditions represent stability in an often very shaky world. Traditions are frequently the security blanket we need to get through tough situations. Those statements may sound like platitudes, or pie-in-the-sky ideals, but they are the truth in our family as we share and grow together. What do pinwheel steaks and ice cream cakes have in common? In our family, food is always a part of our traditional times together. The birthday person always gets to pick a favorite meal, and no one else will complain because that is the way it is. Sometimes it is comforting not to have to give a reason for everything a teenager questions! We celebrate birthdays with favorite foods be it a carrot cake or apple pie for dessert because that is just the way it is! Growing boys with a craving for meat usually order pinwheel steaks with mashed potatoes. Grandpa always wants an ice cream cake to celebrate while Grandma wants a strawberry rhubarb pie for dessert. Requests are honored without question or debate so that these times together are filled with love. When someone in the family is having a shaky time in school or at work, everyone gathers to sit around the fireplace and talk. A homemade chocolate milkshake and a bowl of buttered popcorn add the additional familiarity that can bring comfort to a troubled day and make the problem easier to solve. Sometimes just watching the flames flicker with family surrounding each other can calm a moment and bring solutions to issues. The tradition of gathering together is the beginning of the answer to the problem. Christmas Eve at our house is now filled with growing grandchildren and wonderful in-laws, but the traditions have only grown as new family members are added. For over forty years, Christmas Eve means going to church as a family. There is great comfort in the routine and in having this security blanket to cover us and draw us even closer together. Since we don"t have to worry about how we are going to celebrate, we can just relax and enjoy the evening. Traveling to new vacation spots and sampling different foods are also a part of the tradition our family enjoys. We love the comfortable long-standing traditions, but as new friends and family enter our circle of life, we delight in trying new adventures and ways of sharing. Some of these ideas we know will even become long-standing traditions. Because traditions are built with love over time, they will continue to bring happiness and make our family bonds even stronger.

Among certain parents, it is an article of faith not only that they should treat their sons and daughters alike, but also that they do. If Jack gets videos games, and joins the soccer team and the math club, so does Jane.【C1】______. In one, scientists dressed newborns in gender-neutral clothes and misled adults about their sex. The adults described the "boys"(actually girls)as angry or distressed more often than did adults who thought they were observing girls, and described the "girls"(actually boys)as happy and socially engaged more than adults who knew the babies were boys.【C2】______. In another study, mothers estimated how steep a slope their 11-month-olds could crawl down. Moms of boys got it right to within one degree; moms of girls underestimated what their daughters could do by nine degrees, even though there are no differences in the motor skills of infant boys and girls. 【C3】______. How we perceive children—sociable or remote, physically bold or quiet—shapes how we treat them and therefore what experiences we give them. Since life leaves footprints on the very structure and function of the brain, these various experiences produce sex differences in adult behavior and brains—the result not of innate and inborn nature but of nurture. Yet there are differences in adults" brains, and here Eliot is at her most original and persuasive: explaining how they arise from tiny sex differences in infancy. For instance, baby boys are more irritable than girls.【C4】______. By 4 months of age, boys and girls differ in how much eye contact they make, and differences in sociability, emotional expressivity, and verbal ability—all of which depend on interactions with parents—grow throughout childhood. 【C5】______. You often see the claim that toy preferences—trucks or dolls—appear so early, they must be innate. But as Eliot points out, 6 and 12-month-olds of both sexes prefer dolls to trucks, according to a host of studies. Children settle into sex-based play preferences only around age 1, which is when they grasp which sex they are, identify strongly with it, and conform to how they see other, usually older, boys or girls behaving. "Preschoolers are already aware of what"s acceptable to their peers and what"s not," writes Eliot. Those play preferences then snowball, producing brains with different talents. The belief in blue brains and pink brains has real-world consequences, which is why Eliot goes after them with such vigor(and rigor). It encourages parents to treat children in ways that make the claims come true, denying boys and girls their full potential. "Kids rise or fall according to what we believe about them," she notes. And the belief fuels the drive for single-sex schools, which is based in part on the false claim that boy brains and girl brains process sensory information and think differently. A. That makes parents likely to interact less with their "nonsocial" sons, which could cause the sexes" developmental pathways to diverge. B. Lise Eliot, a neuroscientist at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science, doesn"t think these parents are lying, exactly. But she would like to bring some studies to their attention. C. Those differences also arise from geider conformity. D. Dozens of such disguised-gender experiments have shown that adults perceive baby boys and girls differently, seeing identical behavior through a gender-tinted lens. E. For instance, the idea that the band of fibers connecting the right and left brain is larger in women, supposedly supporting their more "holistic" thinking, is based on a single 1982 study of only 14 brains. F. But that prejudice may cause parents to unconsciously limit their daughter"s physical activity. G. Eliot"s inescapable conclusion: there is "little solid evidence of sex differences in children"s brains."

Ours is a society that tries to keep the world sharply divided into masculine and feminine, not because that is the way the world is, but because that is the way we believe it should be. It takes unwavering belief and considerable effort to keep this division. It also leads us to make some fairly foolish judgments, particularly about language. Because we think that language also should be divided into masculine and. feminine we have become very skilled at ignoring anything that will not fit our preconceptions. We would rather change what we hear than change our ideas about the gender division of the world. We will call assertive girls unfeminine and supportive boys effeminate, and try to change them while still retaining our stereotypes of masculine and feminine talk. This is why some research on sex differences and language has been so interesting. It is an illustration of how wrong we can be. Of the many investigators who set out to find the stereotyped sex differences in language, few have had any positive results. It seems that our images of serious taciturn(沉默的) male speakers and gossipy garrulous(饶舌的)female speakers are just that images. Many myths associated with masculine and feminine talk have had to be discarded as more research has been undertaken. If females do use more trivial words than males, stop talking in mid-sentence, or talk about the same things over and over again, they do not do it when investigators are around. None of these characteristics of female speech have been found. And even when sex differences have been found, the question arises as to whether the differences is in the eye or ear of the beholder, rather than in the language. If males do not speak in high-pitched voices, it is not usually because they are unable to do so. The reason is more likely to be that there are penalties. Males with high-pitched voices are often the object of ridicule. But pitch is not an absolute, for what is considered the right pitch for males varies from country to country.

A Letter of Apology Write a letter of apology of about 100 words based on the following situation: You have just come back from New York and found a book in your luggage that you forgot to return to Mark, your landlord there. Write him a letter to make an apology and suggest a solution. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address.

You are about to write an application for you want to get a rise of your salary. Please express your reasons clearly. You should write about 100 words. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Wang Ling" instead.