阅读理解The United States has historically had higher rates of marriage than those of other industrialized countries. The current annual marriage rate in the United States --- about 9 new marriages for every 1,000 people -- is (47) higher than it is in other industrialized countries. However, marriage is no longer as (48) as it was several decades ago. The proportion of American adults who are married (49) from 72 percent in 1970 to 60 percent in 2002. This does not mean that large numbers of people will (50) unmarried throughout their lives. Throughout the 20th century, about 90 percent of Americans married at some period in their lives. Experts (51) that about the same proportion of today''s young adults will eventually marry. The timing of marriage has (52) consistently over the past century. In 1995 the average age of women in the United States at the time of their first marriage was 25 . The average age of men was about 27. Men and women in the United States marry for the first time at an average of five years later than people did in the 1950s. Besides, young adults of the 1950s married younger than did any (53) generation in U.S. history. Today''s later age of marriage is in line with the age of marriage between 1890 and 1940. Moreover, a (54) proportion of the population was married (95 percent)during the 1950s than at any time before and after. Experts do not (55) on why the "marriage rush" of the late 1940s and 1950s occurred, but most social scientists believe it represented a response to the return of peaceful life and (56) after 15 years of severe economic depression and war. WORD BANK [A] declined [F] scarcely [K] widespread [B] prosperity [G] focus [L] previous [C] varied [H] substantially [M] number [D] remain [I] predict [N] agree [E] continued [J] larger [O] lower

阅读理解Language learning begins with listening. Individual children vary greatly in the amount of listening they do before they start speaking, and late starters are often long listeners. Most children will "obey" spoken instructions some time before they can speak, though the word "obey" is hardly accurate as a description of the eager and delighted cooperation usually shown by the child. Before they can speak, many children will also ask questions by gestures and by making questioning noises. Any attempt to trace the development from the noises babies make to their first spoken words leads to considerable difficulties. It is agreed that they enjoy making noises, and that during the first few months one or two noises sort themselves out as particularly indicative(标示的)of delight, distress, sociability, and so on. But since these cannot be said to show the baby''s intention to communicate, they can hardly be regarded as early forms of language. It is agreed, too, that from about three months they play with sounds for enjoyment, and that by six months they are able to add new sounds to their store. This self-imitation (自我模仿) leads on to deliberate imitation of sounds made or words spoken to them by other people. The problem then arisen so to the point at which one can say that these imitations can be considered as speech. It is a problem we need not get our teeth into. The meaning of a word depends on what a particular person means by it in a particular situation; and it is clear that what a child means by a word will change as he gains more experience of the world. Thus the use, at say seven months, of "mama" as a greeting for his mother cannot be dismissed as a meaningless sound simply Because he also uses it at other times for his father, his dog, or anything else he likes. Playful(顽皮的) and apparently meaningless imitation of what other people say continues after the child has begun to speak for himself. I doubt, however, whether anything is gained when parents cash in on this ability in an attempt to teach new sounds.

阅读理解The author suggests at the end of the passage that couples should______.

阅读理解Wind Energy Wind energy development has been thriving both in the United States and around the world. This reflects not only the declining cost of the resource and the improved performance of wind power plants, but also a growing awareness among utilities and other potential customers that this renewable energy technology offers many benefits for the economy and the environment. -Wind energy can help create new business and jobs, keep energy dollars circulating in local economies and reduce reliance on imported energy. -Wind energy can help protect utilities and ratepayers from risks associated with changing fuel prices, new environmental regulations, uncertain load growth and other unpredictable costs. -Wind energy can reduce a utility''s pollutant emissions, helping power companies meet environmental regulations and satisfy their customers'' desire for clean power sources. In the past, these benefits were not enough to outweigh the significant costs and technological uncertainties associated with wind energy; now that the technology has proven reliable and competitive, however, they are beginning to carry more weight. The greatest challenge for the future is to ensure that the benefits of wind energy continue to receive attention as the utility industry moves toward increased competition in the generation and marketing of power. How does wind energy contribute to the economy? Electricity is an essential ingredient of our modern way of life: it runs our computers, appliances, factories and businesses. Without low-cost power, our standard of living would suffer. But electricity generation is also a major source of pollution and toxic wastes. Wind energy offers a way to meet the needs of both the economy and the environment by providing a source of clean, competitively priced power. Wind energy helps our economy in important ways. For communities and states in which wind power facilities are located, wind power plants create jobs, generate income and support economic development. Several studies have established that wind energy produces more Jobs per dollar invested or per kilowatt-hour generated than most conventional resource. A New York study, for example, found that producing 10 million kilowatt-hours of electricity from wind energy generates 27 percent more jobs in the state than producing the same amount of energy from an advanced coal plant and 66 percent more jobs than from a natural gas combined-cycle power plant. One reason is that much of the expense for fossil-fuel plants is incurred from buying fuel, which supports fewer jobs than other industry sectors, especially when the fuel is imported from other states or countries. Wind power plants also pay substantial property taxes and land rents. A typical rent payment is a small percentage of a plant''s revenues, implying that a wind plant located in an agricultural area can boost cropland rents and prices by as much as 50 percent to 100 percent. For the most part, farming operations can continue unaffected. States and communities with the foresight to invest in wind energy can reap another benefit by fostering a home-grown wind industry that can export power to other regions. The market for wind power worldwide is growing rapidly. New companies that capture this market will develop in areas where substantial wind development already is occurring. Until the late 1980s, this was mainly California; recently, however, the United States has ceded (转让) its early lead in wind development to European competitors. Prudent investments in the domestic wind market can help reverse this trend. What are the advantages of wind power plants? Most consumers like to avoid risk: The chance that something they need, no matter how inexpensive today, will become much more costly tomorrow. Fixed-rate mortgages owe much of their popularity to this characteristic. While other loan packages may be less expensive in the short-term, many homeowners like the comfort of knowing that their monthly mortgage bill will never increase. Like a fixed rate mortgage, investing in wind energy offers an effective strategy for managing risk, a way of buying an insurance policy against the ups and downs of the power market. It is especially effective against three kinds of risk: environmental regulation, fuel price volatility and load-growth uncertainty. The typical wind power plant takes less than a year to build, once the site is selected and licenses and permits approved. By contrast, conventional large power plants may take three to four years to build with the result that if loads do not increase as expected, a utility may be left with a substantial excess cost. Another advantage of wind power plants is that they can be built in phases timed according to need. Finally, interest costs are lower during the construction of wind projects. Does wind energy produce pollution? Opinion polls rank wind as one of the most popular energy resources, far ahead of fossil fuels and nuclear power. The reason is simple: it produces no pollution or hazardous wastes. This is a very real benefit, for pollution can have a serious effect on our health, the economy and our sense of well being. Air pollutants such as carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, particulates and volatile organic compounds have been shown to reduce lifespans and increase the incidence of debilitating illnesses, especially among the elderly and those with respiratory impairments. Some pollutants, such as sulfur dioxide and ozone, damage wildlife and plants and even reduce crop yields. Finally, greenhouse gases (which are emitted primarily by fossil-fuel combustion) are implicated in global warming, which may cause major changes in climate during the next several decades. Wind power''s popularity with the public can be a competitive advantage for power companies that invest in this technology. Municipal utilities, large industrial consumers, and perhaps even residential consumers in some locations soon may be able to express a preference for clean power by their choice of electricity supplier. Utility-sponsored market surveys show that a significant number of consumers are willing to spend more on their monthly utility bills to purchase power from renewable sources. Companies that want to attract and keep such customers should give careful attention to wind power. Whether utilities continue to be tightly regulated or the industry moves into a more competitive phase, the significant benefits of wind energy should play an increasingly important role in deciding what kinds of new power plants will be built. In the traditional regulated utility setting, regulators could simply require utilities to consider benefits such as lower pollution, reduced risks and job creation in their resource planning. As competition in the power industry increases, new mechanisms must come into play. On the one hand, the wind industry must aggressively market the benefits of wind power to potential customers. At the same time, state policymakers must take steps to ensure that the move to competition does not jeopardize (使冒危险) the public interest. So long as regulations and the market value environmental protection, long-term price stability, economic development and other benefits, wind power will receive the attention it deserves.

阅读理解Passage One The latest in cat research reveals that the lovely animal seems to have a basic grasp on both the laws of physics and the ins and outs of cause and effect

阅读理解Speech--the act of uttering sounds to convey meaning -- is a kind of human action. Like any other constantly (47) action, speaking has to be learned, but once it is learned, it becomes a generally (48) and apparently automatic process~ As far as we can determine, human beings do not need to be forced to (49) ; most babies seem to possess a sort of instinctive drive to produce speechlike noises. How to speak and what to say are another matter altogether. These actions are (50) from the particular society into which the baby is born; so that like all conduct that is learned from a society --from the people around us speech is a patterned activity. The meandering babble and chatter of a young child are eventually channeled by imitation into a few orderly grooves that represent the pattern accepted as meaningful by the people around him. (51) ,a child'' s indiscriminate practice of putting things into his mouth becomes limited to (52) food into his mouth in certain way. The (53) that a child can make are more varied and numerous than the sounds that any particular language (54) . However, a child born into a society with a pattern of (55) is encouraged to make a small selection of sounds and to make these few sounds over until it is natural fur him to make these sounds and (56) . WORD BANK A) restored I) poetry. B) putting J) unconscious C) language K) learned D) repeated L) Whereas E) others M) speak F) Similarly N) sequence G) sounds O) reflected H) utilizes

阅读理解Have you ever used email to apologize to a colleague? Delivered a 【C1】______ to a subordinate（下属）with a voice-mail message? Flown by plane across the country just to deliver important news in person? The various communication options at our fingertips to lay can be good for 【C2】______ and productivityand at the same time very troublesome

阅读理解What is characteristic of work in the 21st century?

阅读理解How one judges this book somewhat depends on what you want it to provide. Greenblatt, the author, gives us a beautifully wrought window into the world of Shakespeare. Will in the World is part history, part social commentary, and a good part close literary analysis. It begins with a theme that Greenblatt returns to again and again — the "ordinariness" of Shakespeare''s genius, his interest in the common workings of everyday men and women. Greenblatt follows Shakespeare from his start as a young boy learning Latin at a grammar school, tries to explain the "lost years" before Will made it to London, and spends the last half of the book detailing Shakespeare''s progress to famous playwright. Yet Greenblatt argues that the poet''s sympathetic, instinctive feeling for all human emotions helped to universalize his work, even when he was deeply involved in London dealings. As a history the book is scattered. Some parts are explored in a great amount of detail. Others, such as the characters in Shakespeare''s company or the relationships between Will and his family, are less so. Perhaps Greenblatt felt these had been analyzed extensively in other works. As literary criticism, the book often uses me evidence of the plays and poetry to search into possible links between historical events and Shakespeare''s personal or political positions. The book''s strength lies in the immediacy and the "warts and all" (全面而真实的) perspective that Greenblatt brings to his portrayal of the playwright. He shows us a Renaissance (文艺复兴) world full of people much like ourselves: petty, inspired, greedy, and complicated. I felt it began to labor a little in the second half, where some passages seemed heavy in adjectives and literary flights of fancy, and the ending rushed. Some sections even reminded me of classroom lectures reorganized.

阅读理解The reason people exist at all is because of two important things, memory and language, which have been vital in the evolution (进化) of humanity. As an example, our ancestors needed language to explain how to light a fire to keep their caves warm, and a memory to remember how to do it So we have a memory because if we didn''t we would never have evolved far enough for you to ask this question in the first place! So, how does it work? Well the processes involved in human memory are very complex. People sometimes compare the human brain to a computer, and memory to floppy discs, but this is a bit misleading. Despite big advances in recent years memory is still a bit of mystery, and there are disagreements among the experts about exactly what is going on. Memory is seen as a function of the brain and is defined as the ability to store and retrieve information. But there is no particular bit of the brain which is thought to be where data is stored. Many people think that there are different types of memory, after all there are lots of different types of input, so we can see, hear, smell, taste and touch. And we tend not to remember things as single, simple bits, but in a more complex way. So you may remember the first time you had, say, a very hot chili con carne(红辣椒), but not just that simple fact, you''d find you''d remember it as part of a more complex set of things. So you''d probably remember that the first time you had chili was at a friend''s birthday party, when you wore green jeans. So memory is very complex, and it doesn''t seem to belong in any one part of the brain. But you couldn''t possibly store all this complex information in your brain. Instead it seems like your brain takes lots of information into your short term memory, but then picks the most important information out of that to go into long term memory. Nobody is quite sure how long term memory works. Because we can remember so much information, some scientists think that it must be stored in very small things. Some think that memories are stored by changing the ways brain cells link together, but it is difficult to study this in the laboratory.

阅读理解Endangered Peoples A) Today, it is not distance, but culture that separates the peoples of the world

阅读理解Protect Your Privacy When Job-hunting Online Identity theft and identity fraud are terms used to refer to all types of crime in which someone wrongfully obtains and uses another person''s personal data in some way that involves fraud or deception, typically for economic gain. The numbers associated with identity theft are beginning to add up fast these days. A recent General Accounting Office report estimates that as many as 750,000 Americans are victims of identity theft every year. And that number may be low, as many people choose not to report the crime even if they know they have been victimized. Identity theft is "an absolute epidemic," states Robert Ellis Smith, a respected author and advocate of privacy. "It''s certainly picked up in the last four or five years. It''s worldwide. It affects everybody, and there''s very little you can do to prevent it and, worst of all, you can''t detect it until it''s probably too late." Unlike your fingerprints, which are unique to you and cannot be given to someone else for their use, your personal data, especially your social security number, your bank account or credit card number, your telephone calling card number, and other valuable identifying data, can be used, if they fall into the wrong hands, to personally profit at your expense. In the United States and Canada, for example, many people have reported that unauthorized persons have taken funds out of their bank or financial accounts, or, in the worst cases, taken over their identities altogether, running up vast debts and committing crimes while using the victims'' names. In many cases, a victim''s losses may include not only out-of-pocket financial losses, but substantial additional financial costs associated with trying to restore his reputation in the community and correcting erroneous information for which the criminal is responsible. According to the FBI, identity theft is the number one fraud committed on the Internet. So how do job seekers protect themselves while continuing to circulate their resumes online? The key to a successful online job search is learning to manage the risks. Here are some tips for staying safe while conducting a job search on the Internet. 1. Check for a privacy policy. If you are considering posting your resume online, make sure the job search site you are considering has a privacy policy, like CareerBuilder.com. The policy should spell out how your information will be used, stored and whether or not it will be shared. You may want to think twice about posting your resume on a site that automatically shares your information with others. You could be opening yourself up to unwanted calls from solicitors(推销员). When reviewing the site''s privacy policy, you''ll be able to delete your resume just as easily as you posted it. You won''t necessarily want your resume to remain out there on the Internet once you land a job. Remember, the longer your resume remains posted on a job board, the more exposure, both positive and not-so-positive, it will receive. 2. Take advantage of site features. Lawful job search sites offer levels of privacy protection. Before posting your resume, carefully consider your job search objectives and the level of risk you are willing to assume. CareerBuilder.com, for example, offers three levels of privacy from which job seekers can choose. The first is standard posting. This option gives job seekers who post their resumes the most visibility to the broadest employer audience possible. The second is anonymous (匿名的) posting. This allows job seekers the same visibility as those in the standard posting category without any of their contact information being displayed. Job seekers who wish to remain anonymous but want to share some other information may choose which pieces of contact information to display. The third is private posting. This option allows a job seeker to post a resume without having it searched by employers. Private posting allows job seekers to quickly and easily apply for jobs that appear on CareerBuilder.com without retyping their information. 3. Safeguard your identity. Career experts say that one of the ways job seekers can stay safe while using the Internet to search out jobs is to conceal their identities. Replace your name on your resume with a generic（泛指的) identifier, such as "Intranet Developer Candidate," or "Experienced Marketing Representative." You should also consider eliminating the name and location of your current employer. Depending on your title, it may not be all that difficult to determine who you are once the name of your company is provided. Use a general description of the company such as "Major auto manufacturer," or "International packaged goods supplier." If your job title is unique, consider using the generic equivalent instead of the exact title assigned by your employer. 4. Establish an email address for your search. Another way to protect your privacy while seeking employment online is to open up an email account specifically for your online job search. This will safeguard your existing email box in the event someone you don''t know gets hold of your email address and shares it with others. Using an email address specifically for your job search also eliminates the possibility that you will receive unwelcome emails in your primary mailbox. When naming your new email address, be sure that it doesn''t contain references to your name or other information that will give away your identity. The best solution is an email address that is relevant to the job you are seeking such as salesmgr2004@provider.com. 5. Protect your references. If your resume contains a section with the names and contact information of your references, take it out. There''s no sense in safeguarding your information while sharing private contact information of your references. 6. Keep confidential(机密的) information confidential. Do not, under any circumstances, share your social security, driver''s license, and bank account numbers or other personal information, such as race or eye color. Honest employers do not need this information with an initial application. Don''t provide this even if they say they need it in order to conduct a background check. This is one of the oldest tricks in the book—don''t fall for it.

阅读理解I hear many parents complaining that their teenage children are rebelling. I wish it were so. At your age you ought to be growing away from your parents. You should be learning to stand on your own two feet. But take a good look at the present rebellion. It seems that teenagers are all taking the same way of showing that they disagree with their parents. Instead of striking out boldly on their own, most of them are clutching at (attempting to seize) one another''s hands for reassurance. They claim they want to dress as they please. But they all wear the same clothes. They set off in new directions in music. But somehow they all end up crowded round listening to the same record. Their reason for thinking or acting in thus-and-such a way is that the crowd is doing it. They have come out of their cocoon (蚕茧) --into a larger cocoon. It has become harder and harder for a teenager to stand up against the popularity wave and to go his or her own way. Industry has firmly carved out a teenage market. These days every teenager can learn from the advertisements what a teenager should have and be. And many of today''s parents have come to award high marks for the popularity of their children. All this adds up to a great barrier for the teenager who wants to find his or her own path. But the barrier is worth climbing over. The path is worth following. You may want to collect rocks when everyone else is collecting records. You may have some thoughts that you don''t care to share at once with your classmates. Well, go to it. Find yourself. Be yourself. Popularity will come--with the people who respect you for who you are. That''s the only kind of popularity that really accounts.

阅读理解What is the author"s main purpose in writing the passage?

阅读理解We all know there exists great void（空白）in the public educational system when it comes to1to STEM（Science,Technology,Engineering Mathematics）,One educator named Dori Roberts decided to do something to change this system

阅读理解Friedrich Dobl, a Yugoslav working in Germany, was fed up with traffic jams. At long weekends and holiday times when he wanted to (47)______ quickly, he always found himself behind hundreds of other cars moving (48)______ along the notorious foreign workers route through Germany and Austria. How easy it all was for police and emergency services. A siren, a flashing light? And like magic everyone was (49)______ of the way. Going home from work one night he passed a garage. And there in front of him was the answer to his problem. An old ambulance was (50)______. The red cross had been removed, but not the flashing light, and the (51)______. He tried the light. It flashed magnificently. He tried the siren. That too sounded impressive. He bought the (52)______ and opened up for himself a dream world of motoring. It began early in the morning, all his luggage in the back of the ambulance and motorway in Germany looking reasonably clear. Soon, as always, a lone line of traffic (53)______ ahead. He switched on the flashing light and set off the siren. Cars swiftly slowed and (54)______ the last lane. Other cars stopped and drivers waved him ahead to an open road all his own. In record time he crossed the border into Austria. The big bluff was working. Police even waved him through the confusion caused by an accident. But then the Yugoslav made his big (55)______. Until then he had only stopped for petrol. Now he was driving past a real accident, lights flashing, too late to realize that it was not another traffic jam as he (56)______. They stopped him, and after hearing the story of his ride across two countries fined him 12.5 pounds. WORD BANK A) assumed B) out C) going home D) get home E) opened up F) slowly G) appeared H) ahead I) siren J) mistake K) switched on L) for sale M) pulled off N) crossed O) ambulance

阅读理解Passage One Sign has become a scientific hot button

阅读理解We can see how the product life cycle works by looking at the introduction of instant coffee. When it was introduced, most people did not like it as well as "regular" coffee and it took several years to gain general acceptance (introduction stage). At one point, though, instant coffee grew rapidly in popularity and many brands were introduced (stage of rapid growth). After a while, people became attached to one brand and sales leveled off (stage of maturity). Sales went into a slight decline (衰退) when freeze-dried coffees were introduced (stage of decline). The importance of the product life cycle to marketers is this: Different stages in the product life cycle call for different strategies. The goal is to extend product life so that sales and profits do not decline. One strategy is called market modification. It means that marketing managers look for new users and market sections. Did you know, for example, that the backpacks that so many students carry today were originally designed for the military? Market modification also means searching for increased usage among present customers or going for a different market, such as senior citizens. A marketer may re-position the product to appeal to new market sections. Another product extension strategy is called product modification. It involves changing product quality, features, or style to attract new users or more usage from present users. American auto manufacturers are using quality improvement as one way to recapture world markets. Note, also, how auto manufacturers once changed styles dramatically from year to year to keep demand from falling.

阅读理解A long time ago, both thunder and lightning lived on the earth, among all the people. Thunder was an old mother sheep and Lightning was her son, a handsome ram, but neither animal was very popular. When anybody offended the ram, Lightning, he would fly into a furious rage and begin burning down huts and corn bins, and even knock down large trees. Sometimes he damaged crops on the farms with his fire and occasionally he killed people who got in his way. As soon as his mother, Thunder, knew he was behaving in this evil way, she would raise her voice and shout as loudly as she could, and that was very loud indeed. Naturally the neighbours were very upset, first at the damage caused by Lightning and then by the unbearable noise that always followed his outbursts. The villagers complained to the king on many occasions , until at last he sent the two of them to live at the very edge of the village, and said that they must not come and mix with people any more. However, this did no good, since Lightning could still see people as they walked about the village streets and so found it only too easy to continue picking quarrels with them. At last the king sent for them again. "I have given you many chances to live a better life," he said, "but I can see that it is useless. From now on, you must go right away from our village and live in the wild bush. We do not want to see your faces here again. Thunder and Lightning had to obey the king and left the village, angrily cursing its inhabitants. Alas, there was still plenty of trouble in store for the villagers, since Lightning was so angry at being banished that he now set fire to the whole bush, and during the dry seasons this was extremely unfortunate. The flames spread to the little farms which the people had planted, and sometimes to their houses as well, so that they were in despair again. They often heard the mother ram''s mighty voice calling her son to order, but it made very little difference to his evil actions. The king called all his councillors together and asked them to advise him, and at last they hit on a plan. One white-headed elder said: "Why don''t we banish Thunder and Lightning right away from the earth? Wherever they live there will be trouble, but if we sent them up into the sky we should be rid of them. So Thunder and Lightning were sent away into the sky, where the people hoped they would not be able to do any more damage. Things did not work out quite as well as they had hoped, however, for Lightning still loses his temper from time to time and cannot resist sending fire down to the earth when he is angry. Then you can hear his mother rebuking him in her loud rumbling voice. Occasionally even his mother cannot bear to stay with him and goes away for a little while. You will know when this happens, for Lightning still flashes his fire on the earth, but his mother is so far away that she does not see, and her voice is silent.

阅读理解Most episodes of absent-mindedness -- forgetting where you left something or wondering why you just entered a room -- are caused by a simple lack of attention, says Schacter. "You''re supposed to remember something, but you haven''t encoded it deeply." Encoding, Schacter explains, is a special way of paying attention to an event that has a major impact on recalling it later. Failure to encode properly can create annoying situations. If you put your mobile phone in a pocket, for example, and don''t pay attention to what you did because you''re involved in a conversation, you''ll probably forget that the phone is in the jacket now hanging in your wardrobe (衣柜). "Your memory itself isn''t failing you," says Schacter. "Rather, you didn''t give your memory system the information it needed." Lack of interest can also lead to absent-mindedness. "A man who can recite sports statistics from 30 years ago," says Zelinaki, "may not remember to drop a letter in the mailbox." Women have slightly better memories than men, possibly because they pay more attention to their environment, and memory relies on just that. Visual cues can help prevent absent-mindedness, says Schacter. "But be sure the cue is clear and available,'''' he cautions. If you want to remember to take a medication (药物) with lunch, put the pill bottle on the kitchen table -- don''t leave it in the medicine chest and write yourself a note that you keep in a pocket. Another common episode of absent-mindedness: walking into a room and wondering why you''re there. Most likely, you were thinking about something else. "Everyone does this from time to time," says Zelinski. The best thing to do is to return to where you were before entering the room, and you''ll likely remember.