For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay commenting on the remark "If you listen to your fears, you will die never knowing what a great person you might have been." You can cite examples to illustrate your point. You should write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words.

Tricks of the Trade[A] As children, we are taught that working hard will get us good grades. When it comes to your job, the same logic should apply: being successful is all about working hard and getting the work done. But what if instead of impressing your new employer with your education, training and skills on your CV, it was your firm handshake and smile that got you hired? Or have you ever considered that those junks on your desk left over are causing your colleagues to doubt your abilities? And did nobody tell you that your chances of getting a raise may rest on whether you ask for it face-to-face or via email?[B] If psychology research is anything to go by, the 9-to-5 is a minefield (危险地带), with a subconscious psychological disaster hiding around every comer.[C] We're not suggesting that these mental undercurrents govern your work life, but they certainly play a part Whether it's deciding who to trust, or successfully making a deal, the workplace decisions we think we make with skill and sense are, in part, affected by mind games we often aren't even aware of. [D] If that sounds depressing, look at it another way—use these psychological insights to your advantage and just imagine what they might do for you.1. Smarten up[E] Should your colleagues really care what you look like? Probably not—in an ideal world, we'd all be judged on our ability, not our personal appearance or vital statistics. Yet that's simply not how things work, says V. Bhaskar, a professor of economics at University College London. "Humans have a bias towards attractive people and lots of research has shown that this can translate into a huge advantage in the labour market," he says. In other words, good-looking people earn more than their less pretty colleagues. So it pays to look your best in the office.[F] One possible explanation for this is that attractive people are generally more healthy and so therefore more productive at work. Unfortunately, this seems unlikely, as Bhaskar showed in a recent study. He invited participants to take part in a game-show. Even when good-looking people performed worse on a task than their less attractive counterparts, Bhaskar found they were still preferentially selected to go through to the next round.[G] We don't realise we're doing it but it is human nature to discriminate according to looks, says Bhaskar, perhaps because the pressures of selecting a good mate have ended up as a false analogy (类比) in the work place. Once we become aware that we are prejudicing people in this way, perhaps we can make an effort to address that bias, he adds. But until then, you may as well make an effort to look good at work and use this subconscious preference to your advantage.[H] While you're giving yourself a makeover, you could also consider doing the same for your work space. Even if you hadn't noticed the coffee rings on your desk, chances are your colleagues have, and it could have a bigger influence on your relationships than you might think. Psychologists at the University of Plymouth found that cleanliness actually reduces the severity of moral judgements against the person whose hygiene (卫生) is in question. "Because of its potential to lead people to regard moral actions as pure and good," the psychologists conclude, "cleanliness might indeed feel as if it were next to godliness."[I] If you know you're a little untidy, and certainly won't be winning any beauty contests, don't worry, there are plenty of other ways to gain popularity with your co-workers. Try taking some advice from Madonna and "Express Yourself". During an experiment in which subjects were shown images of facial expressions, Barbara Wild and colleagues at the University of Tubingen, Germany, found that stronger facial expressions had a more powerful emotional response in the viewer, giving extra meaning to the saying "smile and the world smiles with you".2. Breeze the interview[J] The job market hasn't been this competitive for decades, so once you get an interview you'll want to make an immediate impression, and the first step is to get a grip. Anyone who has encountered a limp handshake will likely feel dislike at the thought, and now researchers at the University of Iowa have shown that a firm handshake, along with looking the interviewer in the eye, can boost your chances of getting hired. It's especially good news for the ladies, because the effect is stronger for women than men. A firm handshake subconsciously infers that the candidate is confident, and women capitalise on this to a greater extent simply because men are expected to have a stronger handshake in the first place.[K] For those still not convinced that first impressions matter, Janine Willis and Alexander Todorov at Princeton University found that we take one-tenth of a second to look at a face before making a snap decision about qualities such as trustworthiness, liability and competence. Even your facial features can make a difference—faces with upturned mouths and eyebrows that go up in the middle are judged by our brains to be more trustworthy. You can't change your face, of course, but these features are easy enough to imitate, and might give you the edge when you meet the interview panel.[L] If the thought that people are making judgements on your personality based on nothing more than a glimpse at your face is getting you hot under the collar, try not to let nerves get the better of you. In fact, you really should try to relax and smile. Because of a phenomenon called the "halo effect"— whereby one good character trait will influence what people will infer about other traits—simply being warm and friendly can make the interviewer think better of your other attributes. In an experiment run by Richard E. Nisbett and colleagues at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, two interviews were staged with the same interviewee and recorded on video. In one interview he was warm and friendly and in the other cold and distant. When people watched the film in which he was cold and distant, they rated his appearance, accent and mannerisms as irritating, whereas those who watched the warm and friendly video found those exact same attributes to be appealing.[M] So don't be tempted to be too serious; just coming across as warm and friendly will have the interviewer imagining all sorts of other good qualities that you may, or may not, possess. 3. Bust that stress[N] When work is getting too much, it's a common reaction to cut down on leisure activities to allow more time to get things done. Counter-intuitively, however, keeping up a range of enjoyable interests has been shown to reduce blood pressure, your body-mass index and even levels of the "stress hormone".[O] Where you take your break also makes a difference. Head to a park for maximum benefits, advises Ross Cameron from the University of Reading, UK, as a green environment has psychological benefits.[P] Most work activities, like reading at your desk, require what psychologists call "directed attention". These tasks command all your concentration, which will end up taking a toll, leading to symptoms of stress. Getting out into a green environment helps you switch to a "distracted" attention mode, where your surroundings can drift in and out of your mind without requiring all your attention at once. This, in turn, helps us to relax.[Q] "There's strong evidence to show that as soon as you step into a park your blood pressure levels come down. Your body relaxes quickly in the natural environment," says Cameron. Even having green plants on your desk can help to increase attention span and promote enjoyment at work, he adds.

Baby Boomers Are Killing Themselves at an Alarming Rate [A]It has long held true that elderly people have higher suicide rates than the overall population. But numbers released in May by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show a dramatic rise in suicides among middle-aged people, with the highest increases among men in their 50s, whose rate went up by nearly 50 percent to 30 per 100,000; and women in their early 60s, whose rate rose by nearly 60 percent(though it is still relatively low compared with men, at 7 in 100,000). This is an alarming trend among baby boomers. [B]There are no large-scale studies yet figuring out the reasons behind the increase in baby boomer suicides. Part of it is likely tied to the recent economic downturn. But the trend started a decade before the 2008 recession, and psychologists and academics say it likely stems from a complex series of issues. [C]"We've been a pretty youth-oriented generation," said Bob Knight, professor of gerontology(老人医学)and psychology at the University of Southern California, who is also a baby boomer. "We haven't idealized growing up and getting mature in the same way that age groups have." Even as they become grandparents and deal with normal signs of getting old, such as hearing and vision losses, many boomers are reluctant to accept the realities of aging, Knight said. To those growing up in the 1950s and '60s, America seemed to promise a limitless array of possibilities. The Great Depression and World War II were over, medical innovations such as the polio vaccine(脊髓灰质炎疫苗)and antibiotics(抗生素)appeared to wipe out disease and disability; the birth-control pill sparked a sexual revolution. The economy was thriving, and as they came of age, boomers embraced new ways of living—as civil rights activists, as hippies, as feminists, as war protesters. [D]"There was a sense of rebelliousness, of 'I don't want to live the way my parents did or their parents did,'" said Patrick Arbore, director and founder of the Center for Elderly Suicide Prevention at San Francisco's Institute on Aging. "There was a lot of movement to different parts of the country. With that came a lot of freedom, but there also came a loss of connections. It was not uncommon to see people married three or four times." [E]How did a generation that started out with so much going for it end up so desperate in midlife? It could be that those very advantages made it harder to cope with setbacks, said Barry Jacobs, director of behavioral sciences at the Crozer-Keystone Family Medicine Residency Program in Pennsylvania. "There was an illusion of choice—where people thought they'd be able to re-create themselves again and again," he said. "These people feel a greater sense of disappointment because their expectations of leading glorious lives didn't come to realization." [F]Instead, compared with their parents' generation, boomers have higher rates of weight problems, prescription and illegal drug abuse, alcoholism, divorce, depression and mental disorders. As they age, many add to that list of chronic illness, disabilities and the strains of caring for their parents and for adult children who still depend on them financially. [G]Perhaps a little more adversity in youth could have helped prepare them for the inevitable indignities of aging, Knight suggested, adding that "the earlier-born are sort of tougher in the face of stress." Despite the hardships of life in the first half of the 20th century, he said, older generations didn't have the same kind of concept of being stressed out. [H]Older generations also had clearer milestones for success. "They won the Great War, they saved the world," said David Jobes, a professor of psychology at Catholic University and a clinician at the Washington Psychological Center in Friendship Heights. [I]Baby boomers, on the other hand, have struggled more with existential questions of purpose and meaning. Growing up in a post-Freudian society, they were raised with a new vocabulary of emotional awareness and an emphasis on self-actualization. But that did not necessarily translate into an increased ability to cope with difficult emotions—especially among men. Women tend to be better connected socially and share their feelings more freely—protective factors when looking at their risk for suicide. And African Americans and Hispanics tend to have lower rates of suicide than whites, possibly because of stronger community connections, or because of different expectations. [J]Combine high expectations with a weaker economy, and the risk goes up. "We know that what men want to do is work—that's a very strong ethic for them," Arbore said. "When their jobs are being threatened, they see themselves as still needing to be in that role; they feel ashamed when they're not able to find another job. The idea that so many of us in this country have been brought up with—that you work hard, you get your house, you get your American dream, everything is sunny—hasn't worked out. A lot of these boomers aren't going to earn as much money as their parents did. They aren't going to be as secure as their parents were. And that's quite troubling for the boomers." [K]Mike Murray of Rising Sun, Md., struggled with major depression for most of his adult years, even as he married, raised two children and owned a successful grass-mowing business. His wife, Becky Murray, who ran the business with him, describes him as a perfectionist. "He always did well in school, he was a straight-A student; anything he did, he did well," she said. [L]But in 2004 a back injury forced him to go on disability—and on powerful pain medications. In 2010 he made two attempts to overdose, and in early 2011, two days after his 49th birthday, he killed himself with a shotgun. "He was handsome, he was smart, people loved him," Murray said, but added that he felt increasingly depressed. And while he was grateful for his disability checks, she said, "It was very hard for him to accept this and to not contribute to his family." [M]Nor are women immune. When Liz Strand's 53-year-old friend killed herself two years ago in California, her house was underwater and needed repairs, she had a painful ankle that was made worse by being overweight, and although she had tried to find a partner, she was unmarried, like one-third of baby boomers. [N]"When everything started exploding on her it was too much for her," Strand said, adding that as a boomer she herself recalls the shock of realizing that the good times were not eternal. "I just thought everything was going to continue to improve. I remember hearing at one point in a college class that, 'No, it's a pendulum.' It was a real wake-up call." [O]What makes boomers' anxiety worse is a sense that the world is more hazardous than when they were young, Arbore said. Then, the atom bombs seemed large, but they were distant and abstract; attacks like the ones on the World Trade Center and the Boston Marathon have changed the pattern. "These events used to happen 6,000 miles away; now they happen here," He said. [P]It is unclear whether younger generations will follow or resist the boomer trend as they age, or if boomers will continue to kill themselves at such high rates as they move into retirement.

For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay commenting on the remark "Misfortune rather than prosperity helps people to gain a greater understanding of themselves and the world around them." You can cite examples to illustrate your point. You should write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words.

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{{B}}Part II Listening Comprehension{{/B}}

In the world of entertainment, TV talk shows have undoubtedly flooded every inch of space on daytime television. And anyone who watches them regularly knows that each one varies in style and format. But no two shows are more profoundly opposite in content, while at the same time standing out above the rest, than the Jerry Springer and the Oprah Winfrey shows. Jerry Springer could easily be considered the king of "trash talk(废话)". The topics on his show are as shocking as shocking can be. For example, the show takes the ever-common talk show themes of love, sex, cheating, guilt, hate, conflict and morality to a different level. Clearly, the Jerry Springer show is a display and exploitation of society's moral catastrophes(灾难), yet people are willing to eat up the intriguing predicaments(困境)of other people's lives. Like Jerry Springer, Oprah Winfrey takes TV talk show to its extreme, but Oprah goes in the opposite direction. The show focuses on the improvement of society and an individual's quality of life. Topics range from teaching your children responsibility, managing your work week, to getting to know your neighbors. Compared to Oprah, the Jerry Springer show looks like poisonous waste being dumped on society. Jerry ends every show with a "final word". He makes a small speech that sums up the entire moral of the show. Hopefully, this is the part where most people will learn something very valuable. Clean as it is, the Oprah show is not for everyone. The show's main target audience are middle-class Americans. Most of these people have the time, money, and stability to deal with life's tougher problems. Jerry Springer, on the other hand, has more of an association with the young adults of society. These are 18 to 21-year-olds whose main troubles in life involve love, relationship, sex, money and peers. They are the ones who see some value and lessons to be learned underneath the show's exploitation. While the two shows are as different as night and day, both have ruled the talk show circuit for many years now. Each one caters to a different audience while both have a strong following from large groups of fans. Ironically, both could also be considered pioneers in the talk show world.

BPart III Reading Comprehension/B

With its recession-friendly coffee prices, plentiful tables and available bathrooms, McDonald' s restaurants all over the country, and even all over the world, have been adopted by wise customers as a coffeehouse for grass roots, a sort of everyman's Starbucks. Behind the Golden Arches, older people seeking company and conversation, schoolchildren putting off homework time and homeless people escaping the cold have transformed the banquettes into headquarters for the kind of leisurely socializing. And so restaurant managers and franchise owners are often frustrated by these, their most loyal customers. Such regulars hurt business, some say, and leave little room for other customers. Tensions can sometimes erupt. In the past month, those tensions came to a boil in New York City. When management at a McDonald' s in Flushing, Queens, called the police on a group of older Koreans, prompting outrage at the company's perceived rudeness, calls for a worldwide boycott and a truce mediated by a local politician, it became a famous case of a struggle that happens daily at McDonald' s outlets in the city and beyond. Is the customer always right, even when they sit for long hours without spending? The answer seems to be yes among those who do the endless sitting at McDonald's restaurants in Crown Heights, Brooklyn: Midtown Manhattan: Astoria, Queens: and the East Village. If Mike Black's friends are looking for him, they know to check the McDonald's on Utica Avenue in Flatbush, Brooklyn, he said. That is where Mr. Black, who is in his 50s, spends hours opening and reading his junk mail."I don't eat fast food," he said, arguing that his one coffee entitled him to all the leisure time he needed. "I just come here to hang out and deal with my mail." At some of New York City's 235 McDonald's outlets, customers say they have adopted the fast-food franchise as a cafe for a less affluent crowd, a view strengthened by the company's newer offerings, like McCafe coffee drinks. "We're pleased many of our customers view us as a comfortable place to spend time," Lisa Mc-Comb, a spokeswoman for the company, said in an email, citing free Wi-Fi and areas for children to play as part of the appeal. "McDonald' s offers convenience and value in a fun and familiar atmosphere." But the leisurely cafe culture and the business plan behind fast food are in opposition. Although signs hang in many McDonald's stores instructing customers to spend half an hour or less at the tables, Ms. McComb said there was no national policy about discouraging longtime sitting.

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In the atmosphere, carbon dioxide acts rather like a one-way mirror—the glass in the roof of a greenhouse which allows the sun's rays to enter but prevents the heat from escaping. According to a weather expert's prediction, the atmosphere will be 31 warmer in the year 2050 than it is today, if man continues to burn fuels at the present rate. If this warming up took place, the ice caps in the poles would begin to melt, thus raising sea level several meters and severely flooding coastal cities. Also, the increase in atmospheric temperature would lead to great changes in the climate of the northern hemisphere, possibly resulting in an alteration of the earth's chief food-growing zones. In the past, concern about a man-made warming of the earth has concentrated on the Arctic because the Antarctic is much colder and has a much thicker ice sheet. But the weather experts are now paying more attention to West Antarctic, which may be affected by only a few degrees of warming: in other words, by a warming on the scale that will possibly take place in the next fifty years from the burning of fuels. Satellite pictures show that large areas of Antarctic ice are already disappearing. The evidence available suggests that a warming has taken place. This fits the theory that carbon dioxide warms the earth. However, most of the fuel is burnt in the northern hemisphere, where temperatures seem to be falling. Scientists conclude, therefore, that up to now natural influences on the weather have exceeded those caused by man. The question is: Which natural cause has most effect on the weather? One possibility is the variable behavior of the sun. Astronomers at one research station have studied the hot spots and "cold" spots(that is, the relatively less hot spots)on the sun. As the sun rotates, every 27.5 days, it presents hotter or "colder" faces to the earth, and different aspects to different parts of the earth. This seems to have a considerable effect on the distribution of the earth's atmospheric pressure, and consequently on wind circulation. The sun is also variable over a long term: its heat output goes up and down in cycles, the latest trend being downward. Scientists are now finding mutual relations between models of solar-weather interactions and the actual climate over many thousands of years, including the last Ice Age. The problem is that the models are predicting that the world should be entering a new Ice Age and it is not. One way of solving this theoretical difficulty is to assume a delay of thousands of years while the solar effects overcome the inertia(惯性)of the earth's climate. If this is right, the warming effect of carbon dioxide might thus be serving as a useful counter-balance to the sun's diminishing heat.

In the 1920s America enjoyed what was to become known as "an Age of Excess". From 1921-1929 manufacturing output increased with only a small check—the mild recession of 1924, and real GNP(1929 prices)rose 45.6 percent. In real terms it was a vigorous expansion with the added attractions of stable prices, rising real wages, and mainly "full" employment. So the 1920s' boom remains a legend in the American economic history. The boom was created by several factors that worked together. The three presidents of the twenties, Harding, Coolidge and Hoover were all Republicans who supported business and the stock market. The Republicans were against any kind of welfare state or the government regulating business. They introduced lower tax rates and raised tariffs on foreign goods so they could not compete with American business. This was known as "protectionism". America's economy had not suffered from World War I. In fact it had been strengthened by trading arms to the allies. In the twenties, there was a substantial growth in production, jobs, profits, wages and the standard of living. The growth in production created more jobs, and because more people had more money they could buy the newly produced goods. More goods needed to be produced so more jobs and profits were created. This led to the twenties seeing the start of mass production and consumerism. For the first time items like cars and refrigerators were available and affordable to the middle classes, and secondary industries such as advertising became very profitable. There was an inevitable change in the ideas and actions of society. People could afford to enjoy their leisure time and the leisure industries also boomed. Much of American Society was changed by the Boom. More people could go out and enjoy themselves because of the increased leisure time and affluence of society. Writer F. Scott Fitzgerald called it "the Age of Excess". Jazz music had a massive effect on the youth of America, as they became more outgoing. More started smoking and going out, and women started to wear shorter skirts and other more outrageous fashions. Older generations hated the new music and showed apparent disrespect of younger people. A new kind of woman was created, called a "flapper". Hollywood promoted these women and their fashions as the rogue actresses became icons for other young ladies. To most, these women were nothing but a sign of the times, a decline in traditional standards.

Secondhand smoke is accountable for 42,000 deaths annually to nonsmokers in the United States, including nearly 900 infants, according to a new study. Altogether, annual deaths from secondhand smoke【C1】______ nearly 600,000 years of potential life lost—an average of 14.2 years per person—and $6.6 billion in lost productivity,【C2】______ to $158,000 per death, report the researchers. The new research reveals that despite public health efforts to reduce tobacco use, secondhand smoke continues to【C3】______ a grievous toll on nonsmokers. "In general, fewer people are smoking and many have made lifestyle changes, but our research shows that the impacts of secondhand smoke are【C4】______ very large," said lead author Wendy Max, PhD, professor of health economics at the University of California. "The【C5】______ of information on biomarker-measured (生物指标测量 ) exposure allows us to more accurately assess the impact of secondhand smoke exposure on health and productivity. The impact is particularly great for communities of color." Exposure to secondhand smoke is linked to a number of【C6】______ illnesses including heart and lung disease, as well as conditions affecting newborns such as low birth weight and respiratory distress syndrome. In the research, the scientists【C7】______ the economic implications— years of potential life lost and the value of lost productivity—on different racial and ethnic groups. "Our study probably underestimates the true economic impact of secondhand smoke on【C8】______ ," said Max. "The toll is substantial, with communities of color having the greatest【C9】______ . Interventions need to be designed to reduce the health and economic burden of smoking on smokers and nonsmokers alike, and on particularly【C10】______ groups."A) losses E) adhering I) fatal M) amountingB) turbulent F) generalized J) henceforth N) vulnerableC) nonetheless G) take K) mortality O) gaugedD) availability H) triumphs L) represent

For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write an essay entitled On Self-improvement by commenting on the saying, " There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man: true nobility is being superior to your former self. " You should write at least 150 words but no more than 200 words.

汉字(Chinese character)是世界上最古老的文字之一，其历史可以追溯到5000年前。

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Marketplace or peer-to-peer(P2P)lending matches borrowers and lenders on low-cost online platforms. By skirting banks, P2P lending allows borrower and lender alike to achieve better rates of interest. Essentially, P2P lending is a way of capitalizing on the network effect of social media and the volumes of data generated therein to allow cheaper access to capital. According to Liberum, P2P lending in the U. K. will grow at 98 percent year-on-year in 2015, with ￡3.5 billion presently lent out. Worldwide in 2015, it's estimated that $77 billion will be lent via P2P platforms— $60 billion China, $12 billion U. S. A. and $5 billion U. K. Morgan Stanley's Huw Steenis says, "While marketplace lending is still about 1 percent of unsecured consumer and SME lending in the U. S. , we think it can reach approximately 10 percent by 2020... We forecast the global market to grow to $150 - $490 billion by 2020. " As Liberum's Cormac Leech says, "We are witnessing the biggest changes to the banking sector for 400 years. " P2P lending offers huge opportunities, mainly at the expense of banks, whose biggest margins are traditionally in unsecured lending. Herein is the layer of fat P2P platforms are guzzling(大肆掠食的), picking off the banks' best customers. P2P platforms have also proved superior at harvesting and managing big data, and have lower cost bases than banks. A significant development is that institutional money is now alighting. The largest quoted institutional P2P lender, P2P Global Investment PLC, floated in London last year. It has raised nearly ￡500m and aims to double that this year. As a reward for lofting "transformational" amounts of cash on to various platforms, P2P Global has been accumulating warrants and options on their equity, notably Ratesetter, Zopa, Direct Money and Lending Works. In a twist to this development, Neil Woodford, Britain's most famous fund manager, recently upped his stake in P2P Global. Last August Woodford sold out of HSBC, fearing "fine inflation". This seems a ringing endorsement of this disruptive but nascent(初期的)sector. Perhaps most significantly, in May this year, Zopa, the P2P platform, announced its debut in secured(most P2P lending is unsecured)lending by collaborating with Uber. Uber drivers in U. K. will be able to borrow via Zopa to buy their cars, with loans secured against the cars themselves. Of course, the sector presents risks. The credit dry-up when interest rates rise. A P2P platform may go bust. But some investors, refugees from the banking sector perhaps, will simply like the idea of being on the right side of regulatory and technological upheaval(突变). And when the banks finally understand, how will they react? Who knows? So far, none of them have.