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单选题Questions 11 to 18 are based on the conversation you have just heard.

单选题Directions: There are 2 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked [A], [B], [C] and [D]. You should decide on the best choice and mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre. Shoppers on Black Friday, the traditional start of the holiday shopping season in America, are very aggressive. Some even start queuing outside stores before dawn to be the first to lay their hands on heavily discounted goods. Despite the frenzy (疯狂) at many stores, however, the recession appears to have accelerated the pace at which shoppers are abandoning bricks and mortar (实体店) in favour of online retailers—e-tailers. So this year Black Friday also marks the start of many conventional retailers' attempts to regain the initiative. E-commerce holds particular appeal in straitened times as it enables people to compare prices across retailers quickly and easily. Buyers can sometimes avoid local sales taxes online, and shipping is often free. No wonder, then, that online shopping continues to grow even as the offtine sort shrinks. The shift in spending to the internet is good news for companies like P&G that lack retail outlets of their own. But it is a big concern for brick-and-mortar retailers, whose prices are often higher than those of e-tailers, since they must bear the extra expense of running stores. Happily, however, conventional retailers are in a better position to fight back than last year, when overstocking forced them to resort to destructive discounting. The most obvious response to the growth of e-tailing is for conventional retailers to redouble their own efforts online. The online arms of big retailers are performing well, on the whole. Retailers are also trying to make shopping seem fun and exciting to act against the economic gloom. One common tactic is to set up "pop-up" stores, which appear for a short time before vanishing again, to foster a sense of novelty (新奇) and urgency. Shoppers are increasingly looking for an "experience" when they go to stores, says Jack Anderson of Hornall Anderson, a branding and marketing firm, and are no longer interested in purely "transaction-based bricks and mortar stores". Apple, which encourages customers to try out its devices in its stores, is considered a pioneer of this strategy, and has attracted many imitators. Stores are also trying to lure customers by offering services that are not available online. Best Buy, a consumer-electronics retailer, has started selling music lessons along with its musical instruments. The idea is to bring people back to its shops regularly, increasing the likelihood that they will develop the habit of shopping there.

单选题Questions 30 to 32 are based on the passage you have just heard.

单选题[A] gesture [C] way[B] expression [D] extent

单选题Directions: In this section, you will hear 3 short passages. At the end of each passage, you will hear some questions. Both the passage and the questions will be spoken only once. After you hear a question, you must choose the best answer from the four choices marked A) , B), C) and D). Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre. Passage One Questions 26 to 29 are based on the passage you have just heard.

单选题The discussion of the regional bank serves which of the following functions within the passage as a whole?

单选题 All day long, you are affected by large forces. Genes influence your intelligence and willingness to take risks. Social dynamics unconsciously shape your choices, Instantaneous (瞬间的) perceptions set off neutral reactions in your head without you even being aware of them. Over the past few years, scientists have made a series of exciting discoveries about how these deep patterns influence daily life. Nobody has done more to bring these discoveries to public attention than Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell's new book Outliers seems at first glance to be a description of exceptionally talented individuals. But in fact, it's another book about deep patterns. Exceptionally successful people are not lone pioneers who created their own success, he argues. They are the lucky beneficiaries of social arrangements. Gladwell's noncontroversial claim is that some people have more opportunities than others. Bill Gates was lucky to go to a great private school with its own computer at the dawn of the information revolution. Gladwell's book is being received by reviewers as a call to action for the Obama Age. It could lead policy makers to finally reject policies built on the assumption that people are coldly rational profit-maximising individuals. It could cause them to focus more on policies that foster relationships, social bonds and cultures of achievement. Yet, I can't help but feel that Gladwell and others who share his emphasis are preoccupied with the coolness of the discoveries. They've lost sight of the point at which the influence of social forces ends and the influence of the self-initiating individual begins. Most successful people begin with two beliefs: the future can be better than the present, and I have the power to make it so. They were often showered by good fortunes, but relied at crucial moments upon achievements of individual will. These people also have an extraordinary ability to consciously focus their attention. Control of attention is the ultimate individual power. People who can do that are not prisoners of the stimuli around them. They can choose from the patterns in the world and lengthen their time horizons. Gladwell's social determinism overlooks the importance of individual character and individual creativity. And it doesn't fully explain the genuine greatness of humanity's talents. As the classical philosophers understood, examples of individual greatness inspire achievement more reliably than any other form of education.

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单选题 Questions 23 to 25 are based on the conversation you have just heard.

单选题Learning to use a computer is getting easier all the time because _____.