单选题 Man still has a lot to learn about the most powerful and complex part of his body—the brain. In ancient times men did not think that the brain was the center of mental activity. Aristotle, the philosopher of ancient Greece, thought that the mind was based in the heart. It was not until the 18th century that man realized that the whole of the brain was involved in the workings of the mind. During the 19th century scientists found that when certain parts of the brain were damaged, men lost the ability to do certain things. And so, people thought that each part of the brain controlled a different activity. But modern research has found that this is not so. It is not easy to say exactly what each part of the brain does. In the past 50 years there has been a great increase in the amount of research being done on the brain. Chemists and biologists have found that the way the brain works is far more complicated than they had thought. In fact many people believe that we are only now really starting to learn the truth about how the human brain works. The more scientists find out, the more questions they are unable to answer. For instance, chemists have found that over 100,000 chemical reactions take place in the brain every second. Mathematicians who have tried to use computers to copy the way the brain works have found that even using the latest electronic equipment they would have to build a computer which weighed over 10,000 kilos. Some recent research also suggests that we remember everything that happens to us. We may not be able to recall this information, but it is all stored in our brains. Scientists hope that if we can discover how the brain works, the better use we will be able to put it to. For example, how do we learn language? Some children learn to speak, read and write when they are very young compared to average children. But scientists are not sure why this happens. They are trying to find out whether there is something about the way we teach language to children which in fact prevents children from learning sooner.

单选题 Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay on the importance of taking advantage of group brainstorming to solve problems. You should write at least 120 words but no more than 180 words.

单选题 A new partner pushes out two close friends on average, leaving lovers with a smaller inner circle of people they can turn to in times of crisis, a study found. The research, led by Robin Dunbar, head of the Institute of Cognitive (认知的) and Evolutionary Anthropology (人类学) at Oxford University, showed that men and women were equally likely to lose their closest friends when they started a new relationship. Previous research by Dunbar's group has shown that people typically have five very close relationships—that is, people whom they would turn to if they were in emotional or financial trouble. 'If you go into a romantic relationship, it costs you two friends. Those who have romantic relation- ships, instead of having the typical five 'core set' of relationships only have four. And of those, one is the new person who's come into their life,' said Dunbar. The study, submitted to the journal Personal Relationships, was designed to investigate how people trade off spending time with one person over another and suggests that links with fancily and closest friends suffer when people start a romantic relationship. Dunbar's team used an internet-based questionnaire to quiz 428 women and 112 men about their relationships. In total, 363 of the participants had romantic partners. The findings suggest that a new love interest has to compensate for the loss of two close friends. Speaking at the British Science Festival, Professor Dunbar said: 'This was a surprise for us. We hadn't expected it.' 'What I suspect is that your attention is so wholly focused on the romantic partner you don't get to see the other folks you had a lot to do with before, and so some of those relationships start to deteriorate (变糟).' The questionnaire allowed people to mention whether any of their closest friends were 'extra romantic partners'. In all, 32 of those quizzed mentioned having an extra love interest in their life, but these people did not lose four friends as might be expected. Instead, the extra person in their life bumped their original romantic partner out of their innermost circle of friends.

单选题 中国新颁布的老年人保护法(elderly protection law)规定，成年子女必须看望他们年迈的父母。年迈的父母如果感觉被子女忽视了，可以把他们已成年的孩子告上法庭。但是，法律没有说明子女必须看望父母的频率。法律中也没有说如何执行这项法律、忽略长辈如何惩罚。一位帮助起草老年人保护法草案的教授说，立法主要是为了提高人们对于老年人情感支持需要的意识。

单选题 Why Are Asian Americans Missing from Our Textbooks? A. I still remember my fourth-grade social studies project. Our class was studying the Gold Rush, something all California fourth-graders learned. I was excited because I had asked to research Chinese immigrants during that era. Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, I had always known that 'San Francisco' translated to 'Gold Mountain' in Chinese. The name had stuck ever since Chinese immigrants arrived on the shores of Northern California in the 1850s, eager to try their luck in the gold mines. Now I'd have the chance to learn about them. B. My excitement was short-lived. I remember heading to the library with my class and asking for help. I remember the librarian's hesitation. She finally led me past row after row of books, to a corner of the library where she pulled an oversized book off the shelf. She checked the index and turned over to a page about early Chinese immigrants in California. That was all there was in my entire school library in San Francisco, home of the nation's first Chinatown. That was it. C. I finally had the opportunity to learn about Asian Americans like myself, and how we became part of the fabric of the United States when I took an introductory class on Asian-American history in college. The class was a revelation. I realized how much had been missing in my textbooks as I grew up. My identity had been shaped by years of never reading, seeing, hearing, or learning about people who had a similar background as me. Why, I wondered, weren't the stories, histories, and contributions of Asian Americans taught in K-12 schools, especially in the elementary schools? Why are they still not taught? D. Our students—Asian, Latino, African American, Native American, and, yes, white—stand to gain from a multicultural curriculum. Students of color are more engaged and earn better grades when they see themselves in their studies. Research has also found that white students benefit by being challenged and exposed to new perspectives. E. For decades, activists have called for schools to offer anti-racism or multicultural curricula. Yet a traditional American K-12 curriculum continues to be taught from a Eurocentric point of view. Being multicultural often falls back on weaving children of color into photographs, or creating a few supporting characters that happen to be ethnic—an improvement, but superficial nonetheless. Elementary school classrooms celebrate cultural holidays—Lunar New Year! Red envelopes! Lion dancers!—but they're quick to gloss over (掩饰) the challenges and injustices that Asian Americans have faced. Most students don't, for example, learn about the laws that for years excluded Asians from immigrating to the U.S. They don't hear the narratives of how and why Southeast Asian refugees (难民) had to rebuild their lives here. F. Research into what students learn in school has found just how much is missing in their studies. In an analysis, Christine Sleeter, a professor in the College of Professional Studies at California State University, Monterey Bay, reviewed California's history and social studies framework, the curriculum determined by state educators that influences what is taught in K-12 classrooms. Of the nearly 100 Americans recommended to be studied, 77% were white, 18% African American, 4% Native American, and 1% Latino. None were Asian American. G. Worse, when Asian Americans do make an appearance in lesson books, it is often laced with problems. 'There hasn't been much progress,' says Nicholas Hartlep, an assistant professor at Metropolitan State University. His 2016 study of K-12 social studies textbooks and teacher manuals found that Asian Americans were poorly represented at best, and subjected to racist caricatures (拙劣的模仿) at worst. The wide diversity of Asian Americans was overlooked; there was very little mention of South Asians or Pacific Islanders, for example. And chances were, in the images, Asian Americans appeared in stereotypical (模式化的) roles, such as engineers. H. Teachers with a multicultural background or training could perhaps overcome such curriculum challenges, but they're few and far between. In California, 65% of K-12 teachers are white, compared with a student population that is 75% students of color. Nationwide, the gap is even greater. It isn't a requirement that teachers share the same racial or ethnic background as their students, but the imbalance poses challenges, from the potential for unconscious bias to a lack of knowledge or comfort in discussing race and culture. I. How race and ethnicity is taught is crucial, says Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales, an Asian-American studies professor at San Francisco State University. She added that it's not so much about the teacher's background, but about training. 'You can have a great curriculum but if you don't have teachers dedicated (专注于) to teaching it well,' she says, 'it won't work as well as you want it to.' J. Some teachers are finding ways to expose students to Asian-American issues—if not during school hours, then outside of them. This summer, Wilson Wong will lead a class of rising fifth-graders at a day camp dedicated to Chinese culture and the Chinese-American community in Oakland, California. His students, for instance, will learn about how Chinese immigrants built the railroads in California, and even have a chance to 'experience' it themselves: They will race each other to build a railroad model on the playground, with some students being forced to 'work' longer and faster and at cheaper wages. Wong, a middle school teacher during the school year, hopes he's exposing the students to how Chinese Americans contributed to the U.S., something that he didn't get as a student growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area. 'I planted the seeds early,' he says. 'That's what I'm hoping for.' K. And, despite setbacks, the tide may finally be turning. California legislators passed a bill last year that will bring ethnic studies to all its public high schools. Some school districts, including San Francisco and Los Angeles, already offer ethnic studies at its high schools. High schools in Portland, Chicago, and elsewhere have either implemented or will soon introduce ethnic studies classes. And, as more high schools begin teaching it, the door could crack open for middle schools, and, perhaps inevitably, elementary schools, to incorporate a truly more multicultural curriculum. Doing so will send an important message to the nation's youngest citizens: Whatever your race or ethnicity, you matter. Your history matters. Your story matters.

单选题 Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay according to the following situation. You should write at least 120 words but no more than 180 words. Suppose a mild earthquake takes place in your campus, what should you do to protect yourself from being hurt?

单选题 BRITISH universities can be depressing. The teachers moan about their pay and students worry they will end up frying burgers—or jobless. Perhaps they should try visiting McDonald's University in London's East Finchley. Students are often 'rough and ready', with poor qualifications and low self-esteem. But ambition-arousing pictures display the ladder of opportunity that leads from the grill (烤架) to the corner office (McDonald's chief executives have always started at the bottom). A map of the world shows the seven counterpart universities. Cabinets display trophies (奖杯) such as the Sunday Times award for being one of Britain's best 25 employers. McDonald's is one of Britain's biggest trainers. It gets about one million applicants a year, accepting only one in 15, and spends ￡40 million a year on training. The Finchley campus, opened by Margaret Thatcher in 1989, is one of the biggest training centers in Europe. It is part of a bigger system. An employees' web-portal, Our Lounge, provides training as well as details about that day's shifts, and allows employees to compete against each other in work-related video games. The focus is on practicalities. A retired policeman conducts a fast-paced class on conflict management. He shows a video of a woman driven angry by the fact that you cannot get chicken McNuggets at breakfast time. He asks the class if they have ever had a difficult customer, and every hand goes up. Students are then urged to share their advice. Self-esteem and self-management are included in the courses, too. A year-long apprenticeship program emphasizing English and maths leads to a nationally recognized qualification. McDonald's has paid for almost 100 people to get degrees from Manchester Metropolitan University. The company professes to be not confused by the fact that many graduates will end up working elsewhere. It needs to train people who might be managing a business with a ￡5m turnover (营业额) by their mid-20s. It also needs to satisfy the company's appetite for senior managers, one of whom will eventually control the entire global McDonald's empire.

单选题 A few years back, the decision to move the Barnes, a respected American art institution, from its current location in the suburban town of Merion, Pa., to a site in Philadelphia's museum district caused an argument—not only because it shamelessly went against the will of the founder, Albert C. Barnes, but also because it threatened to break a relationship among art, architecture and landscape critical to the Barnes's success as a museum. For any architect taking on the challenge of the new space, the confusion of moral and design questions might seem overwhelming (势不可挡的). What is an architect's responsibility to Barnes's vision of a marvelous but odd collection of early Modern artworks housed in a rambling (布局凌乱的) 1920s Beaux-Arts pile? Is it possible to reproduce its spirit in such a changed setting? Or does trying to copy the Barnes's unique atmosphere only doom (注定) you to failure? The answers of the New York architects taking the commission are not reassuring. The new Barnes will include many of the features that have become virtually mandatory (强制性的) in the museum world today—conservation and education departments, temporary exhibition space, bookstore, café— making it four times the size of the old Barnes. The architects have tried to compensate for this by laying out these spaces in an elaborate architectural procession that is clearly intended to copy the peacefulness, if not the fantastic charm, of the old museum. But the result is a complicated design. Almost every detail seems to ache from the strain of trying to preserve the spirit of the original building in a very different context. The failure to do so, despite such an earnest effort, is the strongest argument yet for why the Barnes should not be moved in the first place. The old Barnes is by no means an obvious model for a great museum. Inside the lighting is far from perfect, and the collection itself, mixing masterpieces by Cézanne, Picasso and Soutine with second-rate paintings by lesser-known artists, has a distinctly odd flavor. But these apparent flaws are also what have made the Barnes one of the country's most charming exhibition spaces. But today the new Barnes is after a different kind of audience. Although museum officials say the existing limits on crowd size will be kept, it is clearly meant to draw bigger numbers and more tourist dollars. For most visitors the relationship to the art will feel less immediate.

单选题 Questions2-5 are based on the conversation you have just heard.

单选题 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 Liège 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.