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For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay commenting on the saying "Happiness lies in contentment. " You can cite examples to illustrate their relationship. You should write at least 120 words but no more than 180 words.

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Topic Should Setting off Fireworks Be Forbidden? For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay based on the picture below. You should start your essay with a brief account of the practice of setting off fireworks and then express your views on whether this practice should be forbidden or not. You should write at least 120 words but no more than 180 words.

For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay entitled Marks or Abilities by commenting on the saying, "Experience without learning is better than learning without experience. " You should write at least 120 words but no more than 180 words.

信用卡 (credit card)在1985年引入中国。此后，信用卡的发卡量以惊人的速度增长，到2011年达到了2．85亿张。信用卡给消费者带来诸多好处。用卡付账时，持卡人不需要携带大量现金，还会经常得到一些额外的奖励。而且，持卡人还可以从发卡机构获得一定数额的贷款。然而，信用卡也常常使持卡人过度消费，购买一些他们并不真正需要的商品。

中国经济发展的规模和速度令人瞩目。然而，中国仍面临着巨大的挑战。官方数据显示，中国今年的物价跟去年相比上涨了6．4％。除了物价上涨导致的问题，经济结构上的问题也有待解决。随着中国社会的发展和人们 生活方式 (lifestyle)的改变，转变经济模式的需求开始显现。这将要求去发展新兴产业，特别是服务业。现在中国领导人已开始着手解决这些问题了。

Forthispart,youareallowed30minutestowriteashortessay.Youshouldstartyouressaywithabriefaccountofhowoureducationsystemgenerallyjudgestudents,andthenexplainwhyacademicachievementisn'tanadequatewaytojudgeastudent.Youshouldwriteatleast120wordsbutnomorethan180words.

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Trawling (用拖网捕鱼) the seabed for fish is an environmental disaster; it wrecks ecosystems, destroys fish stocks and leaves behind a marine desert. Right? Environment campaigners say so. But there is growing evidence that the effect is sometimes very different, with trawling increasing fish stocks from the North Sea to the California coast. A new modeling study may for the first time have demonstrated why. Trawlers attach large nets to a metal beam dragged across the seabed to catch bottom-dwelling fish. Greenpeace compares it to "driving a huge bulldozer through a forest", leaving a flat, featureless desert on the seabed. Trawling clearly does remove fish, such as large crustaceans and shellfish, says Daniel van Denderen of the Wageningen Institute for Marine Resources and Ecosystem Studies in the Netherlands. But this is a lucky break for softer, smaller species lurking in the sandy seabed, such as worms. They survive and, with fewer rivals, flourish.And if, as is often the case, these smaller critters are the main food for fish, then the overall effect is to nurture more marine life. Imants Priede, director of Oceanlab at the University of Aberdeen, UK, says there is growing evidence that—while far from universal—the phenomenon is real. "On continental shelves such as the southern North Sea, where shifting sands and gravels are stirred up by strong tidal currents, even trawling more than once a year may be beneficial for some fish stocks," he says. In fact, studies going back 20 years have linked persistent trawling with increased fish stocks. The cause of this counter-intuitive finding has remained uncertain. Some have suggested that trawling stirs up the seabed, throwing potential food into the water column—rather like ploughing a field. Others think that discards from fish nets add to the food available on the sea floor. But van Denderen is the first to show how trawling can stimulate fisheries simply by drifting from ecosystems. "The findings are very important," says Priede.

BPart III Reading Comprehension/B

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随着电子商务的兴起和网购的流行， 快递业 (express delivery industry)应运而生。快递公司提供上门收件服务，收件后就会以尽可能快的速度送到顾客手上。然而，对快递延误的投诉却持续不断。为了提高投递服务质量， 国家标准化管理委员会 (the National Standardization Management Committee)实施了一套新标准。该标准规定，城际之间投递包裹的时间不得超过72小时，否则将被认定为延误，顾客即有权索赔。

近年来，随着中国政治及经济实力的不断提升，学中文的外国人越来越多。

每年随着中国高校开学日期临近，家长们就开始忙着为孩子购置各种物品。笔记本电脑、手机和银行卡是许多大学新生新学期的“ 三件套 ”(three-piece suit)。一些学生还准备了相机、游戏机和其他 时尚产品 (trendyproduct)。相关学者称这些学生花钱太大手大脚。也有一些家长表示，他们会满足孩子的基本需求，但是如果孩子想花更多钱或生活得更好，则需要他们自己去挣钱实现。

The inner voice of people who appear unconscious can now be heard. For the first time, researchers have struck up a conversation with a man diagnosed as being in a vegetative (植物的) state. All they had to do was monitor how his brain responded to specific questions. "They can now have some involvement in their destiny," says Adrian Owen of the University of Cambridge, who led the team doing the work. In an earlier experiment, Owen's team asked a woman previously diagnosed as being in a vegetative state to picture herself carrying out one of two different activities. The resulting brain activity suggested she understood the commands and was therefore conscious. Now Owen's team has taken the idea a step further. A man also diagnosed with VS was able to answer yes and no to specific questions by imagining himself engaging in the same activities. The results suggest that it is possible to give a degree of choice to some people who have no other way of communicating with the outside world. "We are not just showing they are conscious, we are giving them a voice and a way to communicate," says neurologist (神经病学家) Steven Laureys of the University of Liege in Belgium, Owen's partner. Doctors traditionally base these diagnoses on how someone behaves: for example, whether they can glance in different directions in response to questions. The new results show that you don't need behavioural indications to identify awareness and even a degree of cognitive proficiency. All you need to do is tap into brain activity directly. The work "changes everything", says Nicholas Schiff, a neurologist at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, who is carrying out similar work on patients with consciousness disorders. "Knowing that someone could persist in a state like this and not show evidence of the fact that they can answer yes/no questions should be extremely disturbing to our practice." One of the most difficult questions you might want to ask someone is whether they want to carry on living. But as Owen and Laureys point out, the scientific, legal and ethical challenges for doctors asking such questions are formidable.

BSection C/B

It Isn' t Easy Being Green Green stories of hotelsA)Over the summer, I stayed at four hotels in the United States. They were all owned by different companies, but they had one thing in common: A little card on the bathroom counter telling me that the establishment was very concerned about the environment, and appealing to me to do my part to help them save the earth by hanging up my wet towels and using them again the next day. Two of the hotels also placed a card next to the bed informing me that housekeeping would not change the sheets unless I left the card on the pillow.B)It is true that keeping all those towels clean requires an enormous amount of electricity and water and soap, and that cutting down on the number of loads of laundry would be more eco-friendly than my insisting on a new towel each day. But am I a heartless cynic for doubting that a collective environmental anxiety has seized the hotel industry?C)Here is an alternative explanation: All that water, soap, and electricity costs a lot of money and eats into the hotel's profits. A little card on the counter telling customers that they won't get new towels because the hotel doesn't want to pay for laundry wouldn't go over very well. But by couching it as a green campaign, the hotels actually get credit for providing less service to their customers, while pocketing the difference.D)Industry groups that advise hotels on becoming more environmentally friendly tend to stress the money they'll save just as much as the benefits to the planet. "Why should hotels be green?" asks the Green Hotels Association's Web site. "Haven't you heard? Being green goes directly to your bottom line." The site explains that by getting guests to recycle towels and sheets, hotels can save 5 percent on utility bills. "Some days, housekeeping workers, who usually clean 15 rooms a day, don't change a single bed," said one satisfied hotel owner, who estimates that "70 percent of people staying more than one night participate in the program." Another member reports that far fewer guests ask for new towels.E)So let's review: We give up a nice luxury to save the hotel money: the hotel congratulates itself on being green for peer pressuring us into giving up the luxury under the excuse of environmental consciousness: the hotel keeps the money. Nice work. After all, even if profit is the motive, the net result is a reduction in the hotel' s "carbon footprint". But here' s what gets me: the hotels I stayed in this summer didn't seem all that interested in being green when it came to other things. The lobby of the big resort was air conditioned to meet locker temperatures. All day long, that frosty air rushed out the vast double doors, which were left open in the July heat. The resort also had a fleet of big, gas guzzling(耗油的)vans idling at the curb to transport guests around the grounds. Green stories of companiesF)Hotels are not the only offenders in this kind of green fakery. Some companies have embraced conservation for real. They build headquarters with solar panels and rainwater collection systems: they think of the environmental impact of every aspect of their businesses and actually change the way they do things to reduce waste. But this is labor intensive, often expensive, and takes commitment. Faced with that, many corporations take a different approach: They don't do much of anything to change the way they do business, but make a big show of their contribution to Mother Earth.G)It's usually easy to spot these companies: They make their customers do the work, and then take the credit. In the name of saving the planet, my cable TV operator keeps asking for permission to stop sending paper statements in the mail each month. Instead, firms are supposed to check my statement online. The real reason, of course, is that doing so would save them paper, printing and postage. This is a perfectly reasonable reason for them to want me to switch. But when they pretend that it' s all about the environment, it just makes me hate my cable company even more than I already do.Green stories of ad campaignsH)Sometimes a good ad campaign does a better job of enhancing a company's green reputation than going through the expense and difficulty of adopting actual environmentally sound practices. Billboards in Washington appeal to me to join the cause. "I will unplug stuff more," reads one. Another says, "I will at least consider buying a hybrid(合成物)." These ads are the work of Chevron, the giant oil company, whose "Will You Join Us?" ads try to convince people that saving the planet is at the top of their fist. You might think that if Chevron was really worried about problems like global warming, they would spend some of those dollars lobbying Congress to adopt stricter gas mileage(英里数)requirements for automobiles. They do not do this. Instead, firms are apparently supposed to praise them as environmental heroes because they tell me to unplug my toaster and think about getting a Toyota Prius.I)Yet, ad campaigns like these work. Chevron lands at No. 371 out of 500 companies on Newsweek' s green ranks. But it claims the No. 62 spot when it comes to green reputation thanks in part to those pretty, polished ads. Green marketing has also helped Wal-Mart appear kinder and gentler in recent years. To be fair, the retailing giant has done more than redesign its logo. The company, which ranks 59th on Newsweek' s list, has embraced a series of in-house green initiatives and is demanding its suppliers do the same. The result: Wal-Mart scores first place in our reputation survey.J)Given the power of positive marketing, it's easy to see why those little towel cards are so popular enough so that there are now a lot of companies that market them to hotels, along with all manner of products intended to make customers feel good about themselves while helping the hotels feel good about their bank balances. I suppose it is time that I step up and do my part. On behalf of the planet I will dutifully sleep on day-old sheets. But please, for the love of all that is good and right, keep the towels coming.

武则天，中国历史上唯一的一位女皇帝，于 唐朝 (the Tang Dynasty)690年称帝。虽然她很残暴，但是她对国家的统治还是比较成功的。她任人唯贤，完全不考虑其家庭地位。通过奖励积极发展农业的官员，惩罚对农民课征重税的官员，武则天极大地促进了农业的发展。中国的 佛教 (Buddhism)在她统治期间也发展到了顶峰。宋庆龄评价她为“ 封建时代 (feudal period)杰出的女政治家”。