Is language, like food, a basic human need without which a child at a critical period of life can be starved and damaged? Judging from the drastic experiment of Frederick II in the thirteenth century, it may be. Hoping to discover what language a child would speak if he heard no mother tongue, he told the nurses to keep silent. All the infants died before the first year. But clearly there was more than lack of language here. What was missing was good mothering. Without good mothering, in the first year of life especially, the capacity to survive is seriously affected. Today no such severe lack exists as that ordered by Frederick. Nevertheless, some children are still backward in speaking. Most often the reason for this is that the mother is insensitive to the signals of the infant, whose brain is programmed to learn language rapidly. If these sensitive periods are neglected, the ideal time for acquiring skills passes and they might never be learned so easily again. A bird learns to sing and to fly rapidly at right time, but the process is slow and hard once the critical stage has passed. Experts suggest that speech stages are reached in a fixed sequence and at a constant age, but there are cases where speech has started late in a child who eventually turns out to be of high IQ. At twelve weeks a baby smiles and utters vowel—like sounds: at twelve months he can speak simple words and understand simple commands: at eighteen months he has a vocabulary of three to fifty words. At three he knows about 1, 000 words which he can put into sentences, and at four his language differs from that of his parents in style rather than grammar. Recent evidence suggests that an infant is born with the capacity to speak. What is special about man' s brain, compared with that of the monkey, is the complex system which enables a child to connect the sight and feel of, say, a teddybear with the sound pattern "teddybear". And even more incredible is the young brain' s ability to pick out an order in language from the mixture of sound around him, to analyze, to combine and recombine the parts of a language in new ways. But speech has to be induced, and this depends on interaction between the mother and the child, where the mother recognizes the signals in the child's babbling, grasping and smiling, and responds to them. Insensitivity of the mother to these signals dulls the interaction because the child gets discouraged and sends out only the obvious signals. Sensitivity to the child's non-verbal signals is essential to the growth and development of language.
中华民族是龙的传人，事实上，龙这种动物是不存在的，它只是人们臆想出来的一种动物象征，结合了许多其他不同动物的特征，包括：老虎、狮子、蛇、马、牛和鱼等。龙，这种具有神性的动物，时常与云彩、雷电和降雨联系在一起。龙在中国传统文化中被尊为风神和雨神，它可以在陆地上行走，在海里遨游，在天空飞翔。中国人认为龙不仅是一种福神，还是权力、尊严、运气、力量和成功的化身。
汉语水平考试(the HSK)于1992年正式成为我国国家级考试。它是为测试母语为非汉语者的汉语水平(proficiency)而设立的考试。它重点考查考生(examinee)在日常生活、学习和工作中运用汉语进行交流的能力。考试每年定期在国内和国外举行。目前，HSK共有50个国内考点和66个国外考点。这些考点通常设置在一些高等院校内。到目前为止，已有来自120多个国家的36万人次参加了HSK考试。
BSection C/B
如今每逢圣诞节来临，中国的城市到处都是圣诞的迹象。圣诞节越来越受到人们，尤其是年轻人的欢迎。其他的西方节日，如
感恩节
(Thanksgiving Day)也日益流行。一些学者担心年轻人过分崇尚西方节日，而对中国传统节日的热情逐渐降温。其实对于许多中国人来说，西方节日只是一些能让他们和朋友一起放松、聚会的日子。他们觉得没有必要去抵制西方节日。
BPart III Reading Comprehension/B
{{B}}Part Ⅳ Translation{{/B}}
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Forthispart,youareallowed30minutestowriteashortessay.Youshouldstartyouressaywithabriefdescriptionofthepictureandthenexpressyourviewsonwhethertraditionalclassroomeducationwillbereplacedbyonlineeducation.Youshouldwriteatleast120wordsbutnomorethan180words.
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许多刚毕业的大学生找不到工作，在校学生则担心他们的未来。多个调查显示，三分之二的中国毕业生想在政府或者国有企业工作，而不是为中国令人瞩目的经济增长提供动力的民营企业。政府和国有企业被认为能免受经济萧条的影响。如今几乎没有大学生愿意放弃政府的铁饭碗而下海、加入初创企业或自己创业。
烤鸭是北京的地方风味，已有1600多年的历史。
For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a composition on the topic Why do People Like to Buy Lotteries? You should write at least 120 words but no more than 180 words, and base your composition on the outline given in Chinese below:1．目前社会上有许多人喜欢购买彩票。2．分析产生这种现象的原因。3．提出你的建议。
杭州市拥有世界上最大的公用自行车系统(bike sharing system)。目前杭州市共有2700个公用自行车租赁站点，共计66500辆车。计划至2020年，公共自行车的数量将增至175000辆。租用自行车需要智能卡(smart card)，可在任意站点租车、在任意站点还车。租车骑行1小时内免费，1小时以上则按每小时1元收费。公用自行车系统对缓解杭州市的交通拥堵(congestion)起到了很大的作用。
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Although many of us may feel air-conditioners bring relief from hot, humid or polluted outside air, they pose many potential health hazards. Much research has looked at how the movement of air inside a closed environment—such as an office building—can spread disease or expose people in the building to harmful chemicals. One of the more widely publicized dangers is that of Legionnaire's disease, which was first recognized in the 1970s. This was found to have affected people in buildings with air-conditioning systems in which warm air pumped out of the system's cooling towers was somehow sucked back into the air intake (通风口), in most cases due to poor design. The warm air, filled with bacteria, was combined with cooled, conditioned air and was then circulated around various parts of the building. Studies showed that even people outside such buildings were at risk if they walked past air exhaust pipes. Large air-conditioning systems add water to the air they circulate by means of humidifiers (湿度调节器 ). In older systems, the water used for this process is kept in special reservoirs, the bottoms of which provide breeding grounds for bacteria which can find their way into the ventilation (通风) system. The risk to human health from this situation has been highlighted by the fact that the immune systems (免疫系统) of approximately half of workers in air-conditioned office buildings have developed the ability to fight off the organisms found at the bottom of system reservoirs. But chemicals called "biocides" are added to reservoirs to make them germ-free, and they are dangerous in their own right in sufficient quantities, as they often contain compounds strongly linked to cancers. Finally, it should be pointed out that the artificial climatic environment created by air-conditioners can also affect us. In a natural environment, whether indoor or outdoor, there are small variations in temperature and humidity. Indeed, the human body has long been accustomed to these normal changes. In an air-conditioned living or work environment, however, body temperatures remain well under 37℃, our normal temperature. This leads to a weakened immune system and thus greater exposure to diseases such as colds and flu.
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{{B}}Part II Listening Comprehension{{/B}}