BSection II Reading Comprehension/B

You want to invite a friend to a party. Write an invitation letter to a friend: 1) saying where the party will be held, 2) giving the reason(s) for the party, and 3) stating what will be arranged. 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 your address. (10 points)

For more than 40 years, a controlling insight in my educational philosophy has been the recognition that no one has ever been—no one can be—educated in school or college. (46) That would be the case if our schools and colleges were at their very best, which they certainly are not, and even if the students were among the best and the brightest as well as conscientious in the application of their powers. The reason is simply that youth itself—immaturity—is an unconquerable obstacle to becoming educated. Schooling is for the young. Education comes later, usually much later. (47) The very best thing for our schools to do is to prepare the young for continued learning in later life by giving them the skills of learning and the love of it. Our schools and colleges are not doing that now, but that is what they should be doing. (48) To speak of an educated young person or of a wise young person, rich in the understanding of basic ideas and issues, is as much a contradiction in terms as to speak of a round square. The young can be prepared for education in the years to come, but only mature men and women can become educated, beginning the process of their 40s and 50s and reaching some amount of genuine insight, sound judgment and practical wisdom after they have turned 60. This is what no high school or college graduates know or can understand. As a matter of fact, most of their teachers do not seem to know it. (49) In their obsession with covering ground and in the way in which they test or examine their students, they certainly do not act as if they understood that they were only preparing their students for education in later life rather than trying to complete it within the realms of their institutions. There is, of course, some truth in the ancient insight that awareness of ignorance is the beginning of wisdom. But, remember, it is just the beginning. From there on one has to do something about it. (50) And to do it intelligently one must know something of its causes and cures—why adults need education and what, if anything, they can do about it.

Shopping habits in the United States have changed greatly in the last quarter of the twentieth century. (1)_____ in the 1990s most American towns and cities had a Main Street. Main Street was always in the heart of a town. This street was. (2)_____ on both sides with many. (3)_____ businesses, Here shoppers walked into stores to look at all sorts of merchandise: clothing, furniture, hardware, and groceries (4)_____ some shops offer (5)_____. These shops included drag-stores, shoe-repair stores and barber or hairdressing shops. (6)_____ in the 1950s, a change began to (7)_____ Too many automobiles had crowded into Main Street (8)_____ too few parking places were (9)_____ shoppers. Because the streets were crowded, merchants began to look with inter6st at the open spaces (10)_____ the city limits. Open space is what their car-driving customers needed. And open space is what they got. (11)_____ the first shopping center was built. Shopping center (12)_____ malls, started as a collection of small new stores. (13)_____ congested city centers. (14)_____ by hundreds of free parking spaces customers were drawn away from (15)_____ areas to outlying malls. And the growing (16)_____ of shopping centers led (17)_____ to the building of bigger and better stocked stores (18)_____ the late 1970s, many shopping malls had almost developed into small cities themselves. In addition to providing the (19)_____ of one-stop shopping, malls were transformed into landscaped parks (20)_____ benches, fountains, and outdoor entertainment.

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

You have trouble with reading and are in need of some advice from Professor Wang. Write a letter to him to 1) give him your personal information, 2) state your problems, and 3) ask for the time and place of a possible interview with him. You should write about 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.

Imagine that you are in hospital, waiting to have an operation. It is time to go to the theatre; the anesthetist approaches you and speaks. But instead of the reassuring words" I"m just going to give you something to send you off to sleep", you hear: "Let me take you on a trip towards death". Terrifying? Maybe, but that is what having a general anesthetic is all about. "If you give a small amount of an anesthetic drug, it won"t have any effect. If you give more, it will put the patient off to sleep, but if you give more still it can kill the patient". In a modern hospital, before you are given an anesthetic, an anesthetist asks you a number of questions to decide which drugs to use. Most importantly, they check the state of your heart and lungs and ask if you have asthma, angina or have ever had a heart attack. They want to know about any drugs you are taking, so that they do not give you an anesthetic that reacts badly with them, and they will also find out if you have any allergies. As well as putting you to sleep, the anesthetist is also responsible for controlling your pain. Then how can the anesthetist tell that they have put their patients far enough under? Mostly by experience. There is no such thing as an awareness monitor, though all the patient"s body functions, such as heart rate, gases going in and out and oxygen levels in the blood, are monitored. If the anesthetic is not deep enough and the patient becomes "light", the monitors should tell the anesthetist that something is wrong long before the patient becomes aware. This is why the anesthetist watches the patient carefully throughout the operation. At the end of your operation, the anesthetic is mined off. It might seem surprising that the anesthetist is often the unsung hero of the operating theater. Many people, including some nursing staff, do not realize that the anesthetist first has to qualify as a doctor. They then take three further examinations to qualify as anesthetists because of the number of things they have to take into account when carrying out their work They do not simply need to know about the drugs they use; they must also know about all the other drugs on the market so that they can avoid dangerous interactions. They have to keep abreast of any new surgical technique, to make sure they give an appropriate anesthetic for any operation. The "journey towards death" has come a long way. But one fascinating fact remains: whether it is ether or a complex cocktail being used to "put someone to sleep": no one yet knows exactly how anesthetics work.

You are writing to launch a strong complaint about the impolite treatment that your guests, your colleague and you received when you met in a restaurant on the eve of the New Year last Friday evening. Your letter should include: 1) detailed description of your experience, 2) and your strong resentment. Write your letter in no less than 100 words and write it neatly. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter, use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address.

The case for college has been accepted without question for more than a generation. All high school graduates ought to go, says conventional wisdom and statistical evidence, because college will help them earn more money, become "better" people, and learn to be more responsible citizens than those who don"t go. But college has never been able to work its magic for everyone. And now that close to half our high school graduates are attending, those who don"t fit the pattern are becoming more numerous, and more obvious. College graduates are selling shoes and driving taxis; college students interfere with each other"s experiments and write false letters of recommendation in the intense competition for admission to graduate school. Others find no stimulation in their studies, and drop out—often encouraged by college administrators. Some observers say the fault is with the young people themselves—they are spoiled and they are expecting too much. But that"s a c6ndemnation of the students as a whole, and doesn"t explain all campus unhappiness. Others blame the state of the world, and they are partly right. We"ve been, told that young people have to go to college because our economy can"t absorb an army of untrained eighteen-year-olds either. Some adventuresome educators and campus watchers have openly begun to suggest that college may not be the best, the proper, the only place for every young person after the completion of high school. We may have been looking at all those surveys and statistics upside down, it seems, and through the rosy glow of our own remembered college experiences. Perhaps college doesn"t make people intelligent, ambitious, happy, liberal, or quick to learn things—maybe it"s just the other way around", and intelligent, ambitious, happy, liberal, quick-learning people are merely the ones who have been attracted to college in the first place. And perhaps all those successful college graduates would have been successful whether they had gone to college or not. This is heresy to those of us who have been brought up to believe that if a little schooling is good, more has to be much better. But contrary evidence is beginning to mount up.

Write a letter to the Office of Property Management of your community, to give your advice on how to improve community security. Write your letter with no less than 100 words on ANSWER SHEET 2. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address.

Some of the concerns surrounding Turkey"s application to join the European Union, to be (1)_____ on by the EU"s Council of Ministers on December 17th, are economic—in particular, the country"s relative poverty. Its GDP per head is less than a third of the average for the 15 pre-2004 members of the EU. (2)_____ it is not far off that of Latvia—one of the ten new members which (3)_____ on May 1st 2004, and it is much the same as (4)_____ of two countries, Bulgaria and Romania, which this week concluded (5)_____ talks with the EU that could make them full members on January 1st 2007. (6)_____, the country"s recent economic progress has been, according to Donald Johnston, the secretary-general of the OECD, stunning. GDP in the second quarter of the year was 13.4% higher than a year earlier, a (7)_____ of growth that no EU country comes close to (8)_____. Turkey"s (9)_____ rate has just fallen into single figures for the first time since 1972, and this week the country (10)_____ agreement with the IMF on a new three-year, $10 billion economic program that will help Turkey (11)_____ inflation toward European levels, and enhance the economy"s resilience. Resilience has not historically been the country"s economic strong point. (12)_____, throughout the 1990s growth oscillated like an electrocardiogram (13)_____ a violent heart attack. This (14)_____ has been one of the main reasons why the country has failed dismally to attract much-needed foreign direct investment. Its stock of such investment is lower now than it was in the 1980s, and annual (15)_____ have scarcely ever reached $1 billion. One deterrent to foreign investors is due to (16)_____ on January 1st 2005. On that day, Turkey will take away the right of virtually every one of its citizens to call themselves a millionaire. Six zeros will be removed from the face value of the lira(里拉，货币单位); one unit of the local (17)_____ will henceforth be worth what 1 million are now—i.e., about 0.53 (0.53欧元). Goods will have to be (18)_____ in both the new and old lira for the whole of the year, (19)_____ foreign bankers and (20)_____ can begin to look forward to a time in Turkey when they will no longer have to juggle mentally with indeterminate strings of zeros.

Write a letter to recommend your student, David Smith, who is hunting for a job and interested in the Sales Manager position. You should include the details you think necessary. 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)

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

Bankruptcy rates in the U.S. have been growing for more than two decades despite generally rising levels of personal income. The most prominent explanation puts the blame directly on credit cards, which became vastly more popular in the past 30 years. University of Pennsylvania law professor David A. Skeel notes that a 1978 Supreme Court decision allowed credit-card companies to charge the interest rate allowed in their state of incorporation. As a result, many incorporated in the high-rate states of Delaware and South Dakota. Being able to charge high rates throughout the country, they could afford to issue cards to those with limited ability to repay. Many high-risk cardholders, overburdened with debt, filed for bankruptcy. Skeel also notes that the impersonality of credit-card borrowing may have helped weaken the moral imperative to repay debts: in the 1960s a prospective borrower met face-to-face with a bank lending officer, but today the borrower gets credit by responding to a junk-mail offer. Other developments also fueled the rise in bankruptcy, including medical bills. A Harvard University study found that about a quarter of filers cited illness or injury as the specific reason for their troubles. Loss of jobs probably also drove some credit-card holders into bankruptcy. Other possible contributors include the growth of the gambling industry in recent years and the Supreme Court's 1977 decision to allow lawyers to advertise directly to the general public. Changes in bankruptcy law apparently have had little effect on filings. The Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1978 was designed to make it easier for consumers to pay off debts and start anew. As under previous acts, penniless debtors could file for complete discharge of debts under Chapter 7, and debtors with substantial assets could arrange for partial repayment under Chapter 13. Most filers opted for the more generous provisions of Chapter 7. During the six years following implementation of the act, filings rose substantially. The act was amended in 1984 to curb opportunistic petitions. However, filings went in the opposite direction than expected. Evidently, easy credit and other debt-creating forces have been more powerful. The latest legal effort is the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005, which went into effect in October. The new act lays down far more strict standards for debtors, including a test to qualify for Chapter 7 relief. Despite the new restrictions, bankruptcy experts tend to be skeptical or noncommittal about the effectiveness in reducing filings.

Sarah Zander and Ashley Jacobsen are like many teenage girls. Sarah likes soccer. Ashley was captain of her school's team of cheerleaders this year. They are also earning good money as nursing assistants at a retirement home. Sarah plans to become a registered nurse. Ashley may become a pharmacologist. Their futures look sunny. Yet both are products of what is arguably America's most sneered-at high-school programme; vocational training. 【C1】______. Last month the National Governors Association proposed standards to make students "college and career ready". But a few states, districts and think-tanks favour a radical notion. In America's quest to raise wages and compete internationally, CTE may be not a hindrance but a help. America has a unique disdain for vocational education. It has supported such training since 1917; money now comes from the Perkins Act, which is re-authorised every six years. However, many Americans hate the idea of schoolchildren setting out on career paths—such predetermination, they think, threatens the ethos of opportunity. As wages have risen for those with college degrees, scepticism of CTE has grown too.【C2】______ . But the fact remains that not every student will graduate from university. This may make politicians uncomfortable, but it is not catastrophic. The Council of Economic Advisers projects faster-growing demand for those with a two-year technical-college degree, or specific training, than for those with a full university degree. 【C3】______. CTE students may go on to university, to training or directly into work.The Perkins Act nudges such efforts forward, but the big shove comes from beyond Washington. Wisconsin's governor, Jim Doyle, has expanded his state's youth apprentice programme, which provides high-school students such as Sarah and Ashley with jobs. Academic courses are complemented by those at technical colleges. The most successful model, however, may be "career academies". Started in Philadelphia in 1969, mimicked in California in the 1980s and supported elsewhere by Sandy Weil's National Academy Foundation, these small schools combine academic and technical curriculums and give students work experience. When properly implemented, career academies can produce striking results.【C4】______. The challenge is to scale up such programmes.【C5】______. California has pursued similar reforms; CTE's main champion is Arnold Schwarzenegger.[A] Within a high school in Chicago, Kevin Rutter runs a small finance academy, teaching students about markets, accounting and personal finance, welcoming executives and helping students find internships. Chicago's schools system this year said it would revamp its CTE system to mimic academies such as Mr Rutter's, merging academic work with training for growth industries.[B] Vocational education has been so disparaged that its few advocates have resorted to giving it a new name: "career and technical education"(CTE). Academic courses that prepare students for getting into universities, by contrast, are seen as the key to higher wages and global prowess.[C] However, the governors' new standards still emphasize academic skills. The education secretary's plan to re-authorise No Child Left Behind barely mentions CTE. Advocates hope this will change.[D] A growing chorus of state and local leaders argues that CTE can help. Rather than pit training against university preparation, they are trying to integrate the two. [E] The non-partisan MDRC found that college attainment did not rise relative to a control group, but career academies did boost students' earnings by 11%. Among boys, earnings were 17% higher. Young men were more likely to be married. [F] Vocational training is experiencing a renaissance in America. Enrollment in technical education soared by 57 percent—from 9.6 million students in 1999 to 15.1 million in 2004. There's every indication that interest is continuing to rise, as families struggle ever harder to afford the traditional college education and as demand grows for skilled US workers. [G] By 2005 only one-fifth of high-school students specialised in an industry, compared with one-third in 1982. The share of 17-year-olds aspiring to four-year college, meanwhile, reached 69% in 2003, double the level of 1981.

A Letter of Giving Advice 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. Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address.

Google already has a window into our souls through our Internet searches and it now has insight into our ailing bodies too. The Internet giant is using its vast database of individual search terms to【C1】______the emergence of flu up to two weeks【C2】______government epidemiologists. Google Flu Trends uses the【C3】______of people to seek online help for their health problems. By tracking【C4】______for terms such as "cough", "fever" and "aches and pains", it claims to be able to【C5】______estimate where flu is【C6】______. Google tested the idea in nine regions of the US and found it could accurately predict flu【C7】______between 7 and 14 days earlier than the federal centres for disease control and prevention. Google hopes the idea could also be used to help【C8】______other diseases. Flu Trends is limited【C9】______the US. Jeremy Ginsberg and Matt Mohebb. Two software engineers【C10】______in the project, said that【C11】______in Google search queries can be very 【C12】______. In a blog post on the project they wrote: "It turns【C13】______that traditional flu surveillance systems take 1 to 2 weeks to collect and【C14】______surveillance data but Google search queries can be【C15】______counted very quickly. By making our estimates【C16】______each day, Flu Trends may provide an early-warning system for outbreaks of influenza." They explained that【C17】______information health would be kept【C18】______. "Flu Trends can never be used to identify individual users【C19】______we rely on anonymised, aggregated counts of how of ten certain search queries【C20】______each week."

The biggest danger facing the global airline industry is not the effects of terrorism, war, SARS and economic downturn. It is that these blows, which have helped ground three national flag carriers and force two American airlines into bankruptcy, will divert attention from the inherent weaknesses of aviation, which they have exacerbated. As in the crisis that attended the first Gulf War, many airlines hope that traffic will soon bounce back, and a few catastrophic years will be followed by fuller planes, happier passengers and a return to profitability. Yet the industry"s problems are deeper—and older—than the trauma of the past two years implies. As the centenary of the first powered flight approaches in December, the industry it launched is still remarkably primitive. The car industry, created not long after the Wright Brothers made history, is now a global industry dominated by a dozen firms, at least half of which make good profits. Yet commercial aviation consists of 267 international carriers and another 500-plus domestic ones. The world"s biggest carrier, American Airlines, has barely 7% of the global market, whereas the world"s biggest carmaker, General Motors, has (with its associated firms) about a quarter of the world"s automobile market. Aviation has been incompletely deregulated, and in only two markets: America and Europe. Everywhere else, governments dictate who flies under what rules. These aim to preserve state-owned national flag-carriers, run for prestige rather than profit. And numerous restrictions on foreign ownership impede cross-border airline mergers. In America, the big network carriers face barriers to exit, which have kept their route networks too large. Trade unions resisting job cuts and Congressmen opposing route closures in their territory conspire to block change. In Europe, liberalization is limited by bilateral deals that prevent, for instance, British Airways (BA) flying to America from Frankfurt or Paris, or Lufthansa offering transatlantic flights from London"s Heathrow. To use the car industry analogy, it is as if only Renaults were allowed to drive on French motorways. In airlines, the optimists are those who think that things are now so had that the industry has no option but to evolve. Frederick Reid, president of Delta Air Lines, said earlier this year that events since the September 11th attacks are the equivalent of a meteor strike, changing the climate, creating a sort of nuclear winter and leading to a "compressed evolutionary cycle". So how, looking on the bright side, might the industry look after five years of accelerated development?

The planet"s wild creatures face a new threat—from yuppies, empty nesters, singletons and one parent families. Biologists studying the pressure on the planet"s dwindling biodiversity today report on a new reason for alarm. Although the rate of growth in the human population is decreasing, the number of individual households is exploding. Even where populations have actually dwindled—in some regions of New Zealand, for instance—the number of individual households has increased, bemuse of divorce, career choice, smaller families and longer lifespans. Jianguo Liu of Michigan State University and colleagues from Stanford University in California report in Nature, in a paper published online in advance, that a greater number of individual households, each containing on average fewer people, meant more pressure on natural resources. Towns and cities began to sprawl as new homes were built. Each household needed fuel to heat and light it; each household required its own plumbing, cooking and refrigeration. "In larger households, the efficiency of resource consumption will be a lot higher, because more people share things", Dr. Liu said. He and his colleagues looked at the population patterns of life in 141 countries, including 76 "hotspot" regions unusually rich in a variety of endemic wildlife. These hot spots included Australia, New Zealand, the US, Brazil, China, India, Kenya, and Italy. They found that between 1985 and 2000 in the "hotspot" parts of the globe, the annual 3.1% growth rate in the number of households was far higher than the population growth rate of 1.8%. "Had the average household" size remained at the 1985 level", the scientists report, "there would have been 155m fewer households in hotspot countries in 2000. Paradoxically, smaller households do not mean smaller homes. In Indian River County, Florida, the average area of a one-storey, single family house increased 33% in the past three decades". Dr. Liu"s work grew from the alarming discovery that the giant pandas living in China"s Wolong reserve were more at risk now than they were when the reserve was first established. The local population had grown, but the total number of homes had increased more swiftly, to make greater inroads into the bamboo forests. Gretchen Daily of Stanford, one of the authors, said: "We all depend on open space and wild places, not just for peace of mind but for vital services such as crop pollination, water purification and climate stabilization. The alarming thing about this study is the finding that, if family groups continue to become smaller and smaller, we might continue losing biodiversity—even if we get the aggregate human population size stabilized".

BSection III Writing/B