单选题 Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay entitled Flea Markets on Campus. You should write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words following the outline given below. 1．近年来，大学校园跳蚤市场兴起 2．有人支持跳蚤市场，有人反对 3．你的观点

单选题 Questions10-12 are based on the passage you have just heard.

单选题 Is It Worth Eating an Organic Diet? Organic or Inorganic A. Sales of organic food have been rising steadily over the past decade, reaching almost $30 billion in 2011, or 4.2% of all U.S. food and beverage sales, according to the Organic Trade Association. Many of the consumers who purchase these products say paying more for organic produce, milk and meat is a trade-off they are willing to make in order to avoid exposure to chemical pesticides and fertilizers and milk from cows given bovine growth hormone (牛生长激素). Some experts say common sense should tell us that food grown without the help of synthetic chemicals is probably safer and healthier to consume than food containing those substances, even in trace amounts. They believe Americans should try to substitute organic products for conventional ones whenever possible. B. However, other families, especially those whose food budgets may be more limited wonder if organic food is really worth its hefty price tag. Other experts point out that there isn't enough scientific evidence to say for sure that eating organic food leads to better health. As such, they say the most important dietary advice they can give Americans is to eat more fresh fruit and vegetables and less processed food. C. Alex Leo, associate professor of environmental exposure biology at the Harvard School of Public Health, argues for eating more organic food. Janet H. Silverstein, a professor of endocrinology (内分泌学) at the University of Florida and a co-author of an American Association of Pediatrics (儿科学) study on the health benefits of an organic diet, takes the skeptic's view. So far, researchers haven't been able to provide them with a definitive answer. Short Exposure to Pesticide D. Is there definitive scientific proof that an organic diet is healthier? 'Not yet,' said Leo. Robust scientific studies comparing food grown organically and food grown conventionally don't exist, thanks to a lack of funding for this kind of research. 'The lack of definitive evidence combined with the higher price of organic food has given skeptics a golden opportunity to argue that organic isn't worth the cost and effort,' he added. E. While studies in recent years have delivered a decidedly mixed message about the healthfulness of organic food, those on both sides of the debate generally agree that organic produce typically contains fewer pesticides than conventional produce, and that people may be able to reduce or eliminate agricultural chemicals from their bodies by adopting an organic diet. This was illustrated in a study published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives in 2006. That study, which was led by Leo, showed that within five days of substituting mostly organic produce for conventional produce in children's diets, pesticides disappeared from the children's urine(尿液). Protective Effect F. Many say the pesticides found in our food are nothing to fear because the levels fall well below federal safety guidelines and thus aren't dangerous. Similarly, they say the bovine growth hormone used to increase cows' milk yield is perfectly safe. But federal guidelines don't take into account what effect repeated exposure to low levels of chemicals might have on humans over time. And many pesticides were eventually banned or restricted by the federal government after years of use when they were discovered to be harmful to the environment or human health. G. Pesticides, in particular, are made to kill organisms, and the President's Cancer Panel in 2010 made clear that it sees them as a threat, advising Americans to 'reduce their cancer risks by choosing, to the extent possible, food grown without pesticides or chemical fertilizers.' H. Recent field studies showed that organic produce, such as strawberries, leafy vegetables and wheat, not only tastes better but contains much higher levels of phenolic acids(酚酸) than conventional produce. Phenolic acids can prevent cellular damage, and offer some protection against oxidative stress (氧化应激), inflammation and cancer. The Price Debate I. Yes, organic food typically costs more and can be harder to find than traditional food, but one could argue that the price of conventional food is artificially low because of all the subsidies that organic farmers don't get and that the government could do more to help organic farmers lower their costs. Nevertheless, when bought in-season, organic produce is often comparable in price to conventional produce. J. A good strategy for consumers on limited budgets is to buy the organic versions of foods on the Environmental Working Group's 'Dirty Dozen' list, as they typically contain the most pesticides. Or, consumers could focus on buying the organic versions of the foods they eat most. Knowing that we could reduce our exposure to pesticides and increase our exposure to antioxidants (抗氧化剂) by eating organic food, it makes great common sense to consume more of it. K. Organic food is more expensive than conventional offerings, which could make it cost-prohibitive for families on limited food budgets. Given the lack of data showing that organic food leads to better health, it would be counterproductive to encourage people to adopt an organic diet if they end up buying less produce as a result. If families can afford to buy organic and still put a good amount of healthy food on the table, then the decision about whether to spend the extra money on organic produce, milk and meat should be based on a solid understanding of what we do and don't know about the benefits. Pesticides and Safety L. It is difficult to compare the nutritional value of organic versus conventional food because the soil, climate, timing of harvest, and storage conditions all affect the composition of produce. Still, published studies have found no significant differences in nutritional quality between organic and nonorganic produce or milk. Similarly, there is no evidence that giving bovine growth hormone (BGH) to cows changes the composition of milk or affects human health. BGH is inactive in humans and degrades in the acidic environment of the stomach. As for pesticide exposure, the U.S. in 1996 established maximum permissible levels for pesticide residues in food to ensure food safety. Many studies have shown that pesticides levels in conventional produce fall well below those guidelines. M. While it's true that organic fruits and vegetables in general contain fewer traces of these chemicals, we can't draw conclusions about what that means for health as there haven't been any long-term studies comparing the relationship between exposure to pesticides from organic versus nonorganic foods and adverse health outcomes. It may seem like 'common sense' to reduce exposure to these chemicals, but there are currently no good evidence-based studies to answer the question. N. While awaiting definitive studies, families on limited budgets who are concerned about pesticide exposure can refer to the Environmental Working Group's list of the 'Dirty Dozen,' those foods with the highest pesticide residues, and the 'Clean 15', the foods with the lowest pesticide concentrations. A good strategy would be to focus on buying organic versions of the foods on the 'Dirty Dozen' listing. Don't Trust Labels O. We would like to think that organic food is grown locally, put in a wheelbarrow and brought directly to our homes. However, much of it comes from countries where regulations might not be as tightly enforced as in the U.S., and labeling of the foods might be misleading. P. And just because food is labeled organic doesn't mean it is completely free of pesticides. Contamination can occur from soil and ground water containing previously used chemicals, or during transport, processing and storage. Organochlorine insecticides(有机氯杀虫剂) were recently found in organically grown root crops and tomatoes even though these pesticides haven't been used for 20 years.

单选题 A Nation That's Losing Its Toolbox A. The scene inside the Home Depot on Weyman Avenue here would give the old-time American craftsman pause. In Aisle 34 is precut plastic flooring, the glue already in place. In Aisle 26 are prefabricated windows. Stacked near the checkout counters, and as colorful as a Fisher-Price toy, is a not-so-serious-looking power tool: a battery-operated saw-and-drill combination. And if you don't want to do it yourself, head to Aisle 23 or Aisle 35, where a help desk will arrange for an installer. B. It's all very handy stuff, I guess, a convenient way to be a do-it-yourselfer without being all that good with tools. But at a time when the American factory seems to be a shrinking presence, and when good manufacturing jobs have vanished, perhaps never to return, there is something deeply troubling about this dilution of American craftsmanship. C. This isn't a lament (伤感)—or not merely a lament—for bygone times. It's a social and cultural issue, as well as an economic one. The Home Depot approach to craftsmanship—simplify it, dumb it down, hire a contractor—is one signal that mastering tools and working with one's hands is receding in America as a hobby, as a valued skill, as a cultural influence that shaped thinking and behavior in vast sections of the country. D. That should be a matter of concern in a presidential election year. Yet neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney promotes himself as tool-savvy (使用工具很在行的) presidential timber, in the mold of a Jimmy Carter, a skilled carpenter and cabinet maker. E. The Obama administration does worry publicly about manufacturing, a first cousin of craftsmanship. When the Ford Motor Company, for example, recently announced that it was bringing some production home, the White House cheered. 'When you see things like Ford moving new production from Mexico to Detroit, instead of the other way around, you know things are changing,' says Gene Sperling, director of the National Economic Council. F. Ask the administration or the Republicans or most academics why America needs more manufacturing, and they respond that manufacturing gives birth to innovation, brings down the trade deficit strengthens the dollar, generates jobs, arms the military and brings about a recovery from recession. But rarely, if ever, do they publicly take the argument a step further, asserting that, a growing manufacturing sector encourages craftsmanship and that craftsmanship is, if not a birthright, then a vital ingredient of the American self-image as a can-do, inventive, we-can-make-anything people. G. Traditional vocational training in public high schools is gradually declining, stranding thousands of young people who seek training for a craft without going to college. Colleges, for their part, have since 1985 graduated fewer chemical, mechanical, industrial and metallurgical (冶金的) engineers, partly in response to the reduced role of manufacturing, a big employer of them. H. The decline started in the 1950s, when manufacturing generated a sturdy 28% of the national income, or gross domestic product, and employed one-third of the workforce. Today, factory, output generates just 12% of G.D.P. and employs barely 9% of the nation's workers. Mass layoffs and plant closings have drawn plenty of headlines and public debate over the years, and they still occasionally do. But the damage to skill and craftsmanship—what's needed to build a complex airliner or a tractor, or for a worker to move up from assembler to machinist to supervisor—went largely unnoticed. I. 'In an earlier generation, we lost our connection to the land, and now we are losing our connection to the machinery we depend on,' says Michael Hout, a sociologist at the University of California, Berkeley. 'People who work with their hands,' he went on, 'are doing things today that we call service jobs, in restaurants and laundries, or in medical technology and the like.' J. That's one explanation for the decline in traditional craftsmanship. Lack of interest is another. The big money is in fields like finance. Starting in the 1980s, skill in finance grew in importance, and, as depicted in the news media and the movies, became a more appealing source of income. K. By last year, Wall Street traders, bankers and those who deal in real estate generated 21% of the national income, double their share in the 1950s. And Warren Buffett, the good-natured financier, became a homespun folk hero, without the tools and overalls (工作服). 'Young people grow up without developing the skills to fix things around the house,' says Richard Curtin, director of the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers. 'They know about computers, of course, but they don't know how to build them.' L. Manufacturing's shrinking presence undoubtedly helps explain the decline in craftsmanship, if only because many of the nation's assembly line workers were skilled in craft work, if not on the job then in their spare time. In a late 1990s study of blue-collar employees at a General Motors plant (now closed) in Linden, N.J., the sociologist Ruth Milkman of City University of New York found that many line workers, in their off-hours, did home renovation and other skilled work. 'I have often thought,' Ms. Milkman says, 'that these extracurricular jobs were an effort on the part of the workers to regain their dignity after suffering the degradation of repetitive assembly line work in the factory.' M. Craft work has higher status in nations like Germany, which invests in apprenticeship (学徒) programs for high school students. 'Corporations in Germany realized that there was an interest to be served economically and patriotically in building up a skilled labor force at home; we never had that ethos (风气),' says Richard Sennett, a New York University sociologist who has written about the connection of craft and culture. N. The damage to American craftsmanship seems to parallel the steep slide in manufacturing employment. Though the decline started in the 1970s, it became much steeper beginning in 2000. Since then, some 5.3 million jobs, or one-third of the workforce in manufacturing, have been lost. A stated goal of the Obama administration is to restore a big chunk of this employment, along with the multitude of skills that many of the jobs required. O. As for craftsmanship itself, the issue is how to preserve it as a valued skill in the general population. Ms. Milkman, the sociologist, argues that American craftsmanship isn't disappearing as quickly as some would argue—that it has instead shifted to immigrants. 'Pride in craft, it is alive in the immigrant world,' she says. P. Sol Axelrod, 37, the manager of the Home Depot here, fittingly learned to fix his own car as a teenager, even changing the brakes. Now he finds immigrant craftsmen gathered in abundance outside his store in the early morning, waiting for it to open so they can buy supplies for the day's work as contractors. Skilled day laborers, also mostly immigrants, wait quietly in hopes of being hired by the contractors. Q. Mr. Axelrod 'also says the recession and persistently high unemployment have forced many people to try to save money by doing more themselves, and Home Depot in response offers classes in fixing water taps and other simple repairs. The teachers are store employees, many of them older and semi-retired from a skilled trade, or laid off. R. 'Our customers may not be building cabinets or outdoor decks; we try to do that for them,' Mr. Axelrod says, 'but some are trying to build up skill so they can do more for themselves in these hard times.'

单选题 家庭是社会的基本单位，它的结构随着社会的发展而变化。在中国几千年的封建社会里，自给自足的(self-sufficient)经济占主导地位。家庭不仅是日常生活的基本单位，也是生产的基本单位。那时，理想的、令人羡慕的家庭是五世同堂，家里的大事由男人做主。近百年来，中国发生了巨大变化，中国社会经过漫长的封建时期进入了社会主义社会。这具有历史意义的变化使中国家庭的结构也改变了。人口众多的大家庭开始分成较小的家庭和直系家庭，总的趋势是出现了越来越多的核心家庭。

单选题 Less News, Much Better A. In the past few decades, the fortunate among us have recognized the hazards of living with an overabundance of food (obesity, diabetes) and have started to change our diets. But most of us do not yet understand that news is to the mind what sugar is to the body. News is easy to digest. The media feeds us small bites of trivial matter, tidbits that don't really concern our lives and don't require thinking. That's why we experience almost no saturation. Unlike reading books and long magazine articles (which require thinking), we can swallow limitless quantities of news flashes, which are bright-colored candies for the mind. Today, we have reached the same point in relation to information that we faced 20 years ago in regard to food. We are beginning to recognize how toxic news can be. B. News misleads. Take the following event (borrowed from Nassim Taleb). A car drives over a bridge, and the bridge collapses. What does the news media focus on? The car? The person in the car? Where did he come from? Where did he plan to go? How he experienced the crash (if he survived). But that is all irrelevant. What's relevant? The structural stability of the bridge? That's the underlying risk that has been lurking, and could lurk in other bridges. C. But the car is flashy, it's dramatic, it's a person (non-abstract), and it's news that's cheap to produce. News leads us to walk around with the completely wrong risk map in our heads. So terrorism is over-rated. Chronic stress is under-rated. The collapse of Lehman Brothers is overrated. Fiscal irresponsibility is under-rated. Astronauts are over-rated. Nurses are under-rated. D. We are not rational enough to be exposed to the press. Watching an airplane crash on television is going to change your attitude toward that risk, regardless of its real probability. If you think you can compensate with the strength of your own inner contemplation, you are wrong. Bankers and economists—who have powerful incentives to compensate for news-borne hazards—have shown that they cannot. The only solution: cut yourself off from news consumption entirely. E. News is irrelevant. Out of the approximately 10,000 news stories you have read in the last 12 months, name one that—because you consumed it—allowed you to make a better decision about a serious matter affecting your life, your career or your business. F. The point is: the consumption of news is irrelevant to you. But people find it very difficult to recognize what's relevant. It's much easier to recognize what's new. The relevant versus the new is the fundamental battle of the current age. Media organizations want you to believe that news offers you some sort of a competitive advantage. Many fall for that. We get anxious when we're cut off from the flow of news. In reality, news consumption is a competitive disadvantage. The less news you consume, the bigger the advantage you have. G. News has no explanatory power. News items are bubbles popping on the surface of a deeper world. Will accumulating facts help you understand the world? Sadly, no. The relationship is inverted. The important stories are non-stories: slow, powerful movements that develop below journalists' radar but have a transforming effect. The more 'news factoids' you digest, the less of the big picture you will understand. If more information leads to higher economic success, we'd expect journalists to be at the top of the pyramid. That's not the case. H. News is toxic to your body. It constantly triggers the limbic system. Panicky stories spur the release of cascades of glucocorticoid (cortisol). This deregulates your immune system and inhibits the release of growth hormones. In other words, your body finds itself in a state of chronic stress. High glucocorticoid levels cause impaired digestion, lack of growth (cell, hair, and bone), nervousness and susceptibility to infections. The other potential side-effects include fear, aggression, tunnel-vision and desensitisation. I. News increases cognitive errors. News feeds the mother of all cognitive errors: confirmation bias. In the words of Warren Buffett: 'What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact.' News exacerbates this flaw. We become prone to overconfidence, take stupid risks and misjudge opportunities. J. News inhibits thinking. Thinking requires concentration. Concentration requires uninterrupted time. News pieces are specifically engineered to interrupt you. They are like viruses that steal attention for their own purposes. News makes us shallow thinkers. But it's worse than that. News severely affects memory. K. There are two types of memory. Long-range memory's capacity is nearly infinite, but working memory is limited to a certain amount of slippery data. The path from short-term to long-term memory is a choke-point in the brain, but anything you want to understand must pass through it. If this passageway is disrupted, nothing gets through. Because news disrupts concentration, it weakens comprehension. L. News works like a drug. As stories develop, we want to know how they continue. With hundreds of arbitrary storylines in our heads, this craving is increasingly compelling and hard to ignore. Scientists used to think that the dense connections formed among the 100 billion neurons inside our skulls were largely fixed by the time we reached adulthood. Today we know that this is not the case. Nerve cells routinely break old connections and form new ones. M. The more news we consume, the more we exercise the neural circuits devoted to skimming and multitasking while ignoring those used for reading deeply and thinking with profound focus. Most news consumers—even if they used to be avid book readers—have lost the ability to absorb lengthy articles or books. After four, five pages they get tired, their concentration vanishes, they become restless. It's not because they got older or their schedules became more onerous. It's because the physical structure of their brains has changed. N. News wastes time. If you read the newspaper for 15 minutes each morning, then check the news for 15 minutes during lunch and 15 minutes before you go to bed, then add five minutes here and there when you're at work, then count distraction and refocusing time, you will lose at least half a day every week. Information is no longer a scarce commodity. But attention is. You are not that irresponsible with your money, reputation or health. Why give away your mind? O. News makes us passive. News stories are overwhelmingly about things you cannot influence. The daily repetition of news about things we can't act upon makes us passive. It grinds us down until we adopt a worldview that is pessimistic, desensitized, sarcastic and fatalistic. The scientific term is 'learned helplessness'. It's a bit of a stretch, but I would not be surprised if news consumption, at least partially contributes to the widespread disease of depression. P. News kills creativity. Finally, things we already know limit our creativity. This is one reason that mathematicians, novelists, composers and entrepreneurs often produce their most creative works at a young age. Their brains enjoy a wide, uninhabited space that emboldens them to come up with and pursue novel ideas. I don't know a single truly creative mind who is a news junkie—not a writer, not a composer, mathematician, physician, scientist, musician, designer, architect or painter. On the other hand, I know a bunch of viciously uncreative minds who consume news like drugs. If you want to come up with old solutions, read news. If you are looking for new solutions, don't. Q. Society needs journalism—but in a different way. Investigative journalism is always relevant. We need reporting that polices our institutions and uncovers truth. But important findings don't have to arrive in the form of news. Long journal articles and in-depth books are good, too. I have now gone without news for four years, so I can see, feel and report the effects of this freedom first-hand: less disruption, less anxiety, deeper thinking, more time, and more insights. It's not easy, but it's worth it.

单选题Everyday each of us can renew our efforts to lead a healthier lifestyle so that we can remain free from illness and pain. Every health expert will advise that as part of any healthy living plan regular exercise should play an important part. For a large 30 of people enrolling at the local gym is the answer which will also produce results. There is one negative point however—upper back pain. What is the cause of upper back pain? In most instances bad posture is the chief 31 . This is often because we spend long periods of time sitting or standing in the same position, generally this tends to be in our place of work. Sitting at desk top computers is one source of this problem! By 32 the same position the muscles in the upper back which connect the shoulders and help to keep our back straight become tense, stiff and painful. If you find yourself 33 upper back pain it is highly likely that you have strained a muscle, this condition can be extremely painful but are easily treated by your doctor following an accurate 34 using X-rays. Keeping fit through physical exercise should not be stopped because of upper back pain, indeed it is an excellent method to prevent this painful problem and can help in relieving 35 . The use of weights as part of a gym workout may not be 36 , however if under close supervision of a trained professional it is still possible. There are 37 other types of exercise which can be continued whilst suffering upper back pain such as jogging or walking either using a treadmill (踏车) at home or out on the streets. The whole aim is to prevent stiffening of the muscles. The best way to avoid upper back pain is to try to avoid sitting or standing in the same position for 38 periods, if it is possible try to have a stretch break every hour or so. This may not be possible therefore, you should try to find ways of jogging your memory throughout the day to keep your posture correct—put little notes round your computer screen! It will 39 come naturally and hopefully the problem will disappear. A. eliminate I. exactly B. suffering J. majority C. extended K. sophisticated D. eventually L. diagnosis E. advisable M. symptoms F. criminal N. maintaining G. abandoning O. virtually H. numerous

单选题 What's the one word of advice a well-meaning professional would give to a recent college graduate? China? India? Brazil? How about trade? When the Commerce Department reported last week that the trade deficit in June approached $50 billion, it set off a new round of economic doomsaying. Imports, which soared to $200.3 billion in the month, are subtracted in the calculation of gross domestic product. The larger the trade deficit, the smaller the GDE Should such imbalances continue, pessimists say, they could contribute to slower growth. But there's another way of looking at the trade data. Over the past two years, the figures on imports and exports seem not to signal a double-dip recession—a renewed decline in the broad level of economic activity in the United States—but an economic expansion. The rising volume of trade—more goods and services shuttling in and out of the United States—is good news for many sectors. Companies engaged in shipping, trucking, rail freight, delivery, and logistics (物流) have all been reporting better than expected results. The rising numbers signify growing vitality in foreign markets—when we import more stuff, it puts more cash in the hands of people around the world, and US exports are rising because more foreigners have the ability to buy the things we produce and market. The rising tide of trade is also good news for people who work in trade-sensitive businesses, especially those that produce commodities for which global demand sets the price--agricultural goods, mining, metals, oil. And while exports always seem to lag, US companies are becoming more involved in the global economy with each passing month. General Motors sells as many cars in China as in America each month. While that may not do much for imports, it does help GM's balance sheet—and hence makes the jobs of US-based executives more stable. One great challenge for the US economy is slack domestic consumer demand. Americans are paying down debt, saving more, and spending more carefully. That's to be expected, given what we've been through. But there's a bigger challenge. Can US-based businesses, large and small, figure out how to get a piece of growing global demand? Unless you want to pick up and move to India, or Brazil, or China, the best way to do that is through trade. It may seem obvious, but it's no longer enough simply to do business with our friends and neighbors here at home. Companies and individuals who don't have a strategy to export more, or to get more involved in foreign markets, or to play a role in global trade, are shutting themselves out of the lion's share of economic opportunity in our world.

单选题 If our solar system has a Hell, it's Venus. The air is choked with foul and corrosive sulfur, heaved from ancient volcanoes and feeding acid clouds above. Although the second planet is a step farther from the sun than Mercury, a runaway greenhouse effect makes it hotter indeed. It's the hottest of the nine plants, a toasty 900 degrees Fahrenheit of baking rocky flats from equator to poles. All this under a crushing atmospheric pressure 90 times that of where you're sitting now. From the earthly perspective, a dead end. It must be lifeless. 'Venus has nothing,' is the blunt word from planetologist Kevin Zahnle of NASA Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley. 'We've written it off.' Yet a small group of advanced life-forms on Earth begs to differ, and theorizes that bizarre microbial ecosystems might have once populated Veuns and, in fact, may be there still. Members of this loose band of researchers suggest that their colleagues have water too much on the brain, and are, in a sense, H2O chauvinists (盲目的爱国者). 'Astrobiologists are neglecting Venus due more to narrow thinking than actual knowledge of the environment, or environments, where life can thrive,' says Dirk Schulze-Makuch, a geobiologist at the University of Texas at El Paso who recently co-authored a Venus-boosting paper in Astrobiology with colleague Louis Irwin. The bias against life on Venus is partly rooted in our own biology. Human experience instructs that liquid water, preferably lot of it, is essential for life. In search for extraterrestrial life, we obsess over small rivers in Mars' surface apparently carved by ancient gushes of water, and delight in hints of permafrost (永久冻结带) just underneath its surface. (By comparison, Venus isn't even that interesting to look at: A boring cue ball (台球的白色母球) for backyard astronomers, its clouds reflects 75% of visible light.) Attention and then funding follow the water: Three more landers will depart for Mars this spring, and serious plans for sample-return missions hover in the midterm future. 'If you have limited resources, you base exploration on what you know,' says Arizona State University planetary geologist Ronal Greeley. It's like losing your keys on the way home at night: The first place you look is under the streetlights not because they're more likely to be there, but because if they are, you'll spot them. For astrobiologists, the streetlights are the spectral (光谱的) lines for water, and they've spotted that potential on Mars, Jupiter's moon Europa, even Neptune's moon Triton. Not on the baking rocky flats of Venus.

单选题 Nothing succeeds in business books like the study of success. The current business-book boom was launched in 1982 by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman with In Search of Excellence. The trend has continued with a succession of experts and would-be experts who promise to distil the essence of excellence into three(or five or seven)simple rules. The Three Rules is a self-conscious contribution to this type of writing; it even includes a bibliography of 'success studies'. Michael Raynor and Mumtaz Ahmed work for a consultancy, Deloitte, that is determined to turn itself into more of a thought-leader and less a corporate repairman. They employ all the tricks of the success books. They insist that their conclusions are 'measurable and actionable'—guides to behaviour rather than analysis for its own sake. Success authors usually serve up vivid stories about how exceptional businesspeople stamped their personalities on a company or rescued it from a life-threatening crisis. Messrs Raynor and Ahmed are happier chewing the numbers: they provide detailed appendices on 'calculating the elements of advantage' and 'detailed analysis'. The authors spent five years studying the behaviour of their 344 'exceptional companies', only to come up at first with nothing. Every hunch(直觉)led to a blind alley and every hypothesis to a dead end. It was only when they shifted their attention from how companies behave to how they think that they began to make sense of their voluminous material. Management is all about making difficult tradeoffs in conditions that are always uncertain and often fast-changing. But exceptional companies approach these tradeoffs with two simple rules in mind, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously. First: better before cheaper. Companies are more likely to succeed in the long run if they compete on quality or performance than on price. Second: revenue before cost. Companies have more to gain in the long run from driving up revenue than by driving down costs. Most success studies suffer from two faults. There is 'the halo(光环)effect', whereby good performance leads commentators to attribute all manner of virtues to anything and everything the company does. These virtues then suddenly become vices when the company fails. Messrs Raynor and Ahmed work hard to avoid these mistakes by studying large bodies of data over several decades. But they end up embracing a different error: stating the obvious. Most businesspeople will not be surprised to learn that it is better to find a profitable niche (隙缝市场) and focus on boosting your revenues than to compete on price and cut your way to success. The difficult question is how to find that profitable niche and protect it. There, The Three Rules is less useful.

单选题 Questions6-9 are based on the conversation you have just heard.

单选题 Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay entitled The Importance of Communication by commenting on the remark 'An argument may be a shortcut between two hearts.' You should write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words.

单选题 Modern technology has put men on the moon and deciphered the human genome. But when it comes to brewing up flu to make vaccines, science still turns to the incredible edible egg. Ever since the 1940s, vaccine makers have grown large batches of virus inside chicken eggs. New cell-based technologies are in the pipeline, and may finally get the support they need now that the United States is faced with a critical shortage of flu vaccine. Although experts disagree on whether new ways of producing vaccine (疫苗) could have prevented a shortage like the one happening today, there is no doubt that the existing system has serious flaws. Each year, vaccine manufacturers place advance orders for millions of specially grown chicken eggs. Meanwhile, Public Health officials monitor circulating strains of flu, and each March they recommend three strains—two influenza A strains and one B strain—for manufacturers to include in vaccines. In the late spring and summer, automated machines inject virus into eggs and later suck out the influenza-rich goop. Virus from the eggs' innards gets killed and processed to remove egg proteins and other contaminants before being packaged into vials for fall shipment. Why has this egg method persisted for six decades? The main reason is that it's reliable. But even though the eggs are reliable, they have serious drawbacks. One is the long lead time needed to order the eggs. That means it's hard to make more vaccine in a hurry, in case of a shortage or unexpected outbreak. And eggs may simply be too cumbersome (大量的) to keep up with the hundreds of millions of doses required to handle the demand for flu vaccine. What's more, some flu strains don't grow well in eggs. Last year, scientists were unable to include the Fujian strain in the vaccine formulation. It was a relatively new strain, and manufacturers simply couldn't ind a quick way to adapt it so that it grew well in eggs. 'We knew the strain was out there,' recalls Theodore Eickhoff of the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, 'but public-health officials were left without a vaccine—and, consequently, a more severe flu season.' Worse, the viruses that pose the greatest threat might be hardest to grow in eggs. That's because global pandemics like the one that killed over 50 million people between 1918 and 1920 are thought to occur when a bird influenza changes in a way that lets it cross the species barrier and infect humans. Since humans haven't encountered the new virus before, they have little protective immunity. The deadly bird flu circulating in Asia in 1997 and 1998, for example, worried Public Health officials because it spread to some people who handled birds and killed them—although the bug never circulated among humans. But when scientists tried to make vaccine the old-fashioned way, the bird flu quickly killed the eggs. (选自Time)

单选题 Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay on the topic On Fabricating Academic Credentials. You should write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words following the outline given below. Write your essay on Answer Sheet 1. 1)现在学历造假现象非常猖獗； 2)分析这一现象的原因； 3)如何根除这一现象。

单选题 齐白石的艺术特色 齐白石是中国当代最伟大的艺术家之一。通过长期的实践，齐白石发展了一套具有个人特色的艺术形式。他的绘画作品涉猎广泛，他画的花、鸟、鱼、虾和虫受到广泛赞誉。为了提高画虾技巧，他曾经在家里养了一些虾，经常观察它们的动作，并且将自己为什么改变画虾的方法都写到日记中。齐白石的作品以笔墨雄浑滋润、色彩浓艳明快、造型简练生动、意境醇厚朴实著称。他将中国画的精神与时代精神统一得完美无瑕，使中国画得到了全世界的重视。

单选题 微信 微信(WeChat)作为时下最热门的社交信息平台，是一个为智能终端提供即时通讯服务的免费应用程序。微信支持单人、多人参与，人们通过手机网络发送语音、图片、视频和文字。截止到2015年第一季度，微信已经覆盖中国90%以上的智能手机，月活跃用户达到5.49亿，用户覆盖200多个国家、超过20种语言。此外，各品牌的微信公众账号总数已经超过800万个，微信支付用户则达到了4亿左右。