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大学英语考试
大学英语考试
全国英语等级考试(PETS)
英语证书考试
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全国职称英语等级考试
青少年及成人英语考试
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大学英语六级CET6
大学英语三级A
大学英语三级B
大学英语四级CET4
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全国大学生英语竞赛(NECCS)
硕士研究生英语学位考试
How the CIA Works [A]Despite plenty of Hollywood films about the CIA and its spies, many people still don't know what the agency actually does. The CIA stands for the Central Intelligence Agency. Its primary stated mission is to collect, evaluate and spread foreign intelligence to assist the president and senior United States government policymakers in making decisions about national security. The CIA may also engage in covert(秘密的)action at the president's request. It doesn't make policy. It isn't allowed to spy on the domestic activities of Americans or to participate in assassinations, either— though it has been accused of doing both. [B]The CIA reports both to the executive and legislative branches. During the CIA's history, the amount of oversight has ebbed and flowed. On the executive side, the CIA must answer to three groups—the National Security Council, the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and the Intelligence Oversight Board. CIA History [C]The United States has always engaged in foreign intelligence activities. Covert action aided the patriots in winning the Revolutionary War. But the first formal, organized agencies didn't exist until the 1880s, when the Office of Naval Intelligence and the Army's Military Intelligence Division were created. Around World War I, the Bureau of Investigation(the forerunner of the FBI)took over intelligence-gathering duties. The intelligence structure continued through several repetitions. For example, the Office of Strategic Services, known as the OSS, was established in 1942 and abolished in 1945. [D]After World War II, U.S. leaders struggled with how to improve national intelligence. The Pearl Harbor bombing, which brought the United States into World War II, was considered a major intelligence failure. [E]In 1947, President Harry Truman signed the National Security Act, which created the CIA. The act also created a director of central intelligence, who had three different roles: the president's principal adviser on security issues, the head of the entire U.S. intelligence community and the head of the CIA, one of the agencies within that intelligence community. This structure was revised in 2004, with the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, which created the position of director of national intelligence to oversee the intelligence community. Now, the director of the CIA reports to the director of national intelligence. [F]Two years later, Congress passed the Central Intelligence Agency Act, which allows the agency to keep its budget and staffing secret. For many years, the agency's primary mission was to protect the United States against communism and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. These days, the agency has an even more complex job—to protect the United States from terrorist threats from all over the globe. CIA Structure [G]The CIA is broken down into four different teams, each with its own responsibilities. National Clandestine Service is where the so-called "spies" work. NCS employees go undercover abroad to collect foreign intelligence. They recruit agents to collect what is called "human intelligence." What kinds of people work for the NCS? NCS employees are generally well-educated, know other languages, like to work with people from all over the world and can adapt to any situation, including dangerous ones. Most people, including their friends and family members, will never know exactly what NCS employees do. Later we'll take a look at how the spies stay undercover and check out some of their cool gadgets. [H]The people on Directorate of Science and Technology team collect overt, or open source, intelligence. Overt intelligence consists of information that appears on TV, on the radio, in magazines or in newspapers. They also use electronic and satellite photography. This team usually recruits people who enjoy science and engineering. [I]All of the information gathered by the first two teams is turned over to the Directorate of Intelligence. Members of this team interpret the information and write reports about it. A DI employee must have excellent writing and analytical skills, be comfortable presenting information in front of groups and be able to handle deadline pressure. [J]Directorate of Support team provides support for the rest of the organization and handles things like hiring and training. "The Directorate of Support attracts the person who may be a specialist in a field such as an artist or a finance officer, or a generalist with many different talents," according to the CIA Web site. Spy Stuff [K]About a third of the agency's estimated 20, 000 employees are undercover or have been at some point in their CIA careers, according to a Los Angeles Times story, which explored just how they keep those covers. [L]Most of the agency's overseas officers are under official cover, meaning they pose as employees of another government agency, such as the state department. A much smaller number are under nonofficial cover or NOC(pronounced "knock"). This means they usually pose as employees of real international corporations, employees of fake companies or as students. Valerie Plame worked as a NOC, posing as the employee of a shell company in Boston called Brewster-Jennings. NOC is more dangerous than having an official cover, because if NOCs are caught by a foreign intelligence service, they have no diplomatic immunity to protect them from prosecution in that country. [M]In a newspaper interview, an anonymous source said that he posed as a mid-level executive at multinational corporations while collecting intelligence overseas for more than a decade. He worked several years as a business consultant before joining the agency, giving him a great resume for the NOC program. Senior executives at his covert employer's were aware of his real job, but his coworkers day-to-day were not. He carried out the normal duties that someone in his cover job would do, once even working on a $2 million deal. However, he also often spent three or four nights a week holding secret meetings. [N]There is plenty of lore(传说)about the cloak-and-dagger lives that spies lead. Some of it is just that-lore. On the other hand, spies through the years really have used a variety of gadgets and technology to do their jobs. Some are now treasured up at the CIA Museum. Highlights of the museum include:(1)The dead drop spike, a concealment device that has been used since the late 1960s to hide money, maps, documents, microfilm and other items. The spike is waterproof and can be shoved into the ground or placed in a shallow stream to be retrieved later.(2)The Mark IV microdot camera was used to pass documents between agents in East and West Berlin during the 1950s and '60s. Agents took photographs that were the size of a pinhead and glued them to typed letters. The agent who received the letter could then view the image under a microscope.(3)The silver dollar hollow container is still being used today. It looks like a silver dollar and can be used to hide messages or film. [O]Though the agency has had its share of failures and scandals, the government still depends heavily on the CIA to provide intelligence and assist with maintaining national security.
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{{B}}Part IV Reading Comprehension (Reading in Depth) (25 minutes){{/B}}
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Everyone remembers the whitewashing scene in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. But how many recall the scene that precedes it? Having escaped from Aunt Polly, Tom is teaching himself to whistle when he spies a "newcomer" in his village—a newcomer with "a citified air". They quarrel and wrestle in the dirt. Tom wins the battle but returns home late and is thus commanded to whitewash the famous fence. After this incident, the reader's sympathies are meant to lie with Tom. But imagine how a boy like Tom Sawyer would be regarded today. As far as I can tell, that fight is not just "inappropriate behavior", to use current educational terminology(术语), but is also one of the many symptoms of "oppositional defiant disorder"(ODD), a condition that Tom manifests throughout the book. And Tom is not merely ODD: He clearly has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder(ADHD)as well, judging by his inability to concentrate in school. In fact, Tom manifests many disturbing behaviors. He blames his half-brother for his poor decisions, demonstrating an inability to take responsibility for his actions. He provokes his peers, often using aggression. He deliberately ignores rules and demonstrates defiance toward adults. He is frequently dishonest, at one point even pretending to be dead. Worst of all, he skips school—behavior that might, in time, lead him to be diagnosed with conduct disorder. I am not being entirely sarcastic here: I have reread "Tom Sawyer" several times in recent years, precisely because Twain draws such fascinating portraits of children whose behavior is familiar, even if we now describe it differently. As a mother of boys, I find this weirdly reassuring: Although ADHD and ODD are often dismissed as recently "invented" disorders, they describe personality types and traits that have always existed. A certain kind of boy has always had trouble paying attention in school. But if the behavior or actions of the children and the parents are familiar, the society surrounding them is not. Tom Sawyer turns out fine in the end. In 19th-century Missouri, there were still many opportunities for impulsive kids who were bored and fidgety(坐立不安的)in school: The very qualities that made him so tiresome—curiosity, hyperactivity, recklessness—are precisely the ones that get him the girl, win him the treasure and make him a hero. Nothing like that is available to children who don't fit in today. Instead of striking out into the wilderness, they get sent to psychologists and prescribed medication—if they are lucky enough to have parents who can afford that sort of thing. Every effort will be made to help them pay attention, listen to the teacher, stop picking fights in the playground. Nowadays, there aren't any other options.
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BPart Ⅳ Translation/B
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酒和饮酒文化在中国的历史中占据着重要地位。从宋代开始, 白酒 (white liquor)成为中国人饮用的主要酒类。中国白酒制作工艺复杂,原料丰富多样,是世界著名的六大 蒸馏酒 (distilled liquor)之一。中国有很多优秀的白酒品牌,受到不同人群的喜爱。在当代社会,饮酒文化得到了前所未有的丰富和发展。不同地区和场合的饮酒习俗和礼仪已成为中国人日常生活中重要的部分。在几千年的文明史中,酒几乎渗透到社会生活中的各个领域,如文学创作、饮食保健等。
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Aristotle defined a friend as "a single soul dwelling in two bodies". How many friends we have, and how easily we make, maintain and lose them, has a significant impact on our emotional well-being. It's no surprise, 【C1】______, that friends can improve just about every aspect of our life. Friends can protect us from the【C2】______of bereavement (丧失亲人) or divorce. They don't even have to be great friends-some of the positive effect is【C3】______down to the company: have a pint with a mate and you're by definition not socially【C4】______. "There are friends you're just more【C5】______with. Others may be more interesting, but they may be more offended. Really good friends don't take offence. Friendships can end because they stop being equal. You may take different【C6】______, have different experiences, which make it harder to maintain a friendship." says educational psychologist Karen Majors. We first recognise the importance of friends in childhood. While some of us may retain a few childhood friends, the biggest opportunity for friendship comes in higher education. A study of long-term friendships found that friendships formed during college years stayed close 20 years later, if they scored highly in closeness as well as【C7】______to begin with. "At college you can 【C8】______close friendships because you're in such close【C9】______for sustained periods," says Glenn Sparks, Purdue's professor of communication. "These relationships are rare and hard to【C10】______; they're very unusual outside family relationships.A) proximity I) compromisingB) rather J) comfortableC) routes K) replicateD) then L) simplyE) cultivate M) isolatedF) aftershocks N) communicationG) preferable O) possibility H) connected
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Business has slowed, layoffs mount, but executive pay continues to roar—at least so far. Business Week's annual survey finds that chief executive officers(CEOs)at 365 of the largest US companies got compensation last year averaging $3.1 million—up 1.3 percent from 1994. Why are the top bosses getting an estimated 485 times the pay of a typical factory worker? That is up from 475 times in 1999 and a mere 42 times in 1980. One reason may be what experts call the "Lake Wobegon effect". Corporate boards tend to reckon that "all CEOs are above average"—a play on Garrison Keillor's famous line in his public radio show, A Prairie Home Companion, that all the town's children are "above average". Consultants provide boards with surveys of corporate CEO compensation. Since directors are reluctant to regard their CEOs as below average, the compensation committees of boards tend to set pay at an above-average level. The result: Pay levels get ratcheted up. Defenders of lavish CEO pay argue there is such a strong demand for experienced CEOs that the free market forces their pay up. They further maintain most boards structure pay packages to reflect an executive's performance. They get paid more if their companies and their stock do well. So companies with high-paid GEOs generate great wealth for their shareholders. But the supposed cream-of-the-crop executives did surprisingly poorly for their shareholders in 1999, says Scott Klinger, author of this report by a Boston-based Organization United for a Fair Economy. If an investor had put $10,000 apiece at the end of 1999 into the stock of those companies with the 10 highest-paid CEOs, by year-end 2000 the investment would have shrunk to $8,132. If $10,000 had been put into the Standard Poor's 500 stocks, it would have been worth $9,090. To Mr. Klinger, these findings suggest that the theory that one person, the CEO, is responsible for creating most of a corporation's value is dead wrong. "It takes many employees to make a corporation profitable." With profits down, corporate boards may make more effort to tame executive compensation. And executives are making greater efforts to avoid pay cut. Since CEOs, seeing their options "under water" or worthless because of falling stock prices, are seeking more pay in cash or in restricted stock.
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Cigarette smoking is a health hazard of sufficient importance in the United States. It was 50 years ago this month that America's Surgeon General sounded that warning, marking the beginning of the end of cigarette manufacturing—and of smoking itself—as a respectable activity. Some 20 million Americans have died from the habit since then. But advertising restrictions and smoking bans have had their effect: the proportion of American adults who smoke has dropped from 43% to 18%: smoking rates among teenagers are at a record low. In many other countries the trends are similar. The current Surgeon General, Boris Lushniak, marked the half-century with a report on January 17th, declaring smoking even deadlier than previously thought. He added diabetes, colorectal cancer and other ailments to the list of ills it causes, and promised end-game strategies to extinguish cigarettes altogether. New technologies such as e-cigarettes promise to deliver nicotine less riskily. E-cigarettes give users a hit of vapour infused with nicotine. In America, sales of the manufacturer, who is the fastest e-cigarettes-adopter, have jumped from nearly nothing five years ago to at least 1 billion in 2013. At first, it looked as if e-cigarettes might lure smokers from the big tobacco brands to startups such as NJOY. But tobacco companies have bigger war chests , more knowledge of smokers' habits and better ties to distributors than the newcomers. Some experts reckon Americans will puff more e-cigarettes than normal ones within a decade, but tobacco folk are skeptical. E-cigarettes account for just 1% of America's cigarette market. In Europe 7% of smokers had tried e-cigarettes by 2012 but only 1% kept them up. And no one knows what sort of restrictions regulators will eventually place on reduced risk products, including e-cigarettes. If these companies can manage the transition to less harmful smokes, and convince regulators to be sensible, the tobacco giants could keep up the sort of performance that has made their shares such a fine investment over the years. But some analysts are not so sure. Many tobacco firms are struggling to deliver the consistency of the earnings-per-share model we've seen in the past. If that persists, investors may fall out of love with the industry. A half-century after the Surgeon General' s alarm, they, and hopeless smokers, are its last remaining friends.
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BSection B/B
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北京胡同不但是北京普通老百姓的生活场所,它更是北京独特的文化名片,代表着北京的草根(grassroots)文化。
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BSection B/B
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{{B}}Part Ⅳ Translation{{/B}}
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Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay commenting on people's gradual acceptance of plastic surgery. You can give examples to illustrate your point. You should write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words.
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It is a common belief that sharp frosts color the autumn leaves. As a matter of fact, such frosts are far more likely to turn leaves black or dull brown than to give them the gorgeous tints we admire. The coloring of the leaves in the fall is a chemical process that is favored by gradual cooling rather than sudden cold. It is not entirely confined to the autumn. Bright red and yellow leaves are often found on the swamp maple and other trees, even in summer. Through the season of growth the leaves serve as food factories for the trees. In their tiny cells the carbon of the air is combined with materials brought up by the tree fluid from the roots to form the starch, sugar, and other substances by which the whole tree is fed. The food-making process is performed by sunshine with the aid of a substance called chlorophyll. Chlorophyll is a mixture of several pigments, or coloring matters. One of these is green, and gives the leaves their ordinary color. Another is yellow and is the same substance that, on account of its abundance in growing grass, makes butter particularly yellow in the spring. When the cool weather sets in and the growth of vegetation slows down, the trees need less food and gradually suspend work in the leaf factories. Both the food and the chlorophyll in the leaves are drawn into the body of the tree and stored up for use in the spring. This transfer involves many chemical changes. One of them is the breaking up of the chlorophyll into the substances of which it is composed. The green pigment passes out of the leaves before the yellow. Thus yellow becomes one of the prevailing hues of the autumn foliage. The reds, which also prevail in the autumn, do not come from the chlorophyll, but from pigments contained in the sap. Their appearance indicates an excess of sugar in the leaves, after the withdrawal of other materials. It is supposed, also, that the reddening of the leaves protects the food materials from the harmful effects of strong light during their passage into the tree. The same red coloring is seen in the buds of many plants in the spring, where it probably also serves a protective purpose.
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Forthispart,youareallowed30minutestowriteanessaybasedonthepicturebelow.Youshouldstartyouressaywithabriefdescriptionofthepictureandthengiveyourcomments.WriteyouressayonAnswerSheet1.Youshouldwriteatleast150wordsbutnomorethan200words
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汉字 (Chinese character)是世界上最古老的文字之一。它在古时由汉族人所创造,历史甚至可以追溯到五千年前。所以,汉字的起源也可以被认为是中国古文明的开端。汉字这个名字,得名于汉族和汉朝。汉字是迄今为止连续使用时间最长的书写系统,集发音、形象和词义三者于一体,这在世界文字中是独一无二的。汉字往往可以引起人们美妙而大胆的联想,给人以美感。汉字体现了中国历史和深远思想的精髓,是中国最宝贵的文化遗产。
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