单选题. Questions 6 to 10 are based on Part Two of the conversation.6.

单选题. Questions 1 to 5 are based on Part One of the interview.1.

单选题. Questions 6 to 10 are based on the second interview.6.

单选题《复合题被拆开情况》 Most West African lorries are not in what one would call the first flush of youth, and I had learnt by bitter experience not to expect anything very much of them. But the lorry that arrived

单选题《复合题被拆开情况》　　1 In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together. Early every morning they would come out from the house where they lived and walk arm in arm down the street to work. The

单选题. Questions 1 to 5 are based on Part One of the interview.1.

单选题《复合题被拆开情况》 1Once again, seething, residual anger has burst forth in an American city. And the riots that overtook Los Angeles were a reminder of what knowledgeable observers have been saying for a qua

单选题. Questions 1 to 5 are based on Part One of the interview.1.

单选题. Questions 1 to 5 are based on Part One of the interview.1.

单选题Have you ever noticed a certain similarity in public parks and back gardens in the cities of the West? A ubiquitous woodland mix of lawn grasses and trees has found its way throughout Europe and the United States, and it’s now spread to other cities around the world. As ecologist Peter Groffman has noted, it’s increasingly difficult to tell one suburb apart from another, even when they’re located in vastly different climates such as Phoenix, Arizona, or Boston in the much chillier north-east of the US. And why do parks in New Zealand often feature the same species of trees that grow on the other side of the world in the UK? Inspired by the English and New England countrysides, early landscape architects of the 19th century created an aesthetic for urban public and private open space that persists to this day. But in the 21st century, urban green space is tasked with doing far more than simply providing aesthetic appeal. From natural systems to deal with surface water run-off and pollution to green corridors to increasing interest in urban food production, the urban parks of the future will be designed and engineered for functionality as well as for beauty. Imagine travelling among the cities of the mid-21st century and finding a unique set of urban landscapes that capture local beauty, natural and cultural history, and the environmental context. They are tuned to their locality, and diverse within as well as across cities. There are patches that provide shade and cooling, places of local food production, and corridors that connect both residents and wildlife to the surrounding native environment. Their functions are measured and monitored to meet the unique needs of each city for food production, water use, nutrient recycling, and habitat. No two green spaces are quite the same. Planners are already starting to work towards this vision. And if this movement has a buzzword it is "hyperfunctionality"—designs which provide multiple uses in a confined space. At the moment, urban landscapes are highly managed and limited in their spatial extent. Even the "green" cities of the future will contain extensive areas of buildings, roads, railways, and other built structures. These future cities are likely to contain a higher proportion of green cover than the cities of today, with an increasing focus on planting on roofs, vertical walls, and surfaces like car parks. But built environments will still be ever-present in dense megacities. We can greatly enhance the utility of green space through designs that provide a range of different uses in a confined space. A hyperfunctional planting, for example, might be designed to provide food, shade, wildlife habitat, and pollution removal all in the same garden with the right choice of plants and management practices. What this means is that we have to maximize the benefits and uses of urban parks, while minimizing the costs of building and maintaining them. Currently, green space and street plantings are relatively similar throughout the Western world, regardless of differences in local climate, geography, and natural history. Even desert cities feature the same sizable street trees and well-watered and well-fertilized lawns that you might see in more temperate climes. The movement to reduce the resources and water requirements of such urban landscapes in these arid areas is called "xeriscaping"—-a concept that has so-far received mixed responses in terms of public acceptance. Scott Yabiku and colleagues at the Central Arizona Phoenix project showed that newcomers to the desert embrace xeriscaping more than long-time residents, who are more likely to prefer the well-watered aesthetic. In part, this may be because xeriscaping is justified more by reducing landscaping costs—in this case water costs—than by providing desired benefits like recreation, pollution mitigation, and cultural value. From this perspective, xeriscaping can seem more like a compromise than an asset. But there are other ways to make our parks and natural spaces do more. Nan Ellin, of the Ecological Planning Center in the US, advocates an asset-based approach to urbanism. Instead of envisioning cities in terms of what they can’t have, ecological planners are beginning to frame the discussion of future cities in terms of what they do have—their natural and cultural assets. In Utah’s Salt Lake City, instead of couching environmental planning as an issue of resource scarcity, the future park is described as " mountain urbanism" and the strong association of local residents with the natural environment of the mountain ranges near their home. From this starting point, the local climate, vegetation, patterns of rain and snowfall, and mountain topography are all deemed natural assets that create a new perspective when it comes to creating urban green space. In Cairns, Australia, the local master plan embraces "tropical urbanism" that conveys a sense of place through landscaping features, while also providing important functions such as shading and cooling in this tropical climate. The globally homogenized landscape aesthetic—which sees parks from Boston to Brisbane looking worryingly similar—will diminish in importance as future urban green space will be more receptive to local values and cultural perceptions of beauty. This will lead to a far greater diversity of urban landscape designs than are apparent today. Already, we are seeing new purposes for urban landscaping that are transforming the 20th century woodland park into bioswales—plantings designed to filter stormwater—green roofs, wildlife corridors, and urban food gardens. However, until recently we have been lacking the datasets and science-based specifications for designs that work to serve all of these purposes at once. In New York City, Thomas Whitlow of Cornell University sends his students through tree-lined streets with portable, backpack-mounted air quality monitors. At home in his laboratory, he places tree branches in wind tunnels to measure pollution deposition onto leaves. It turns out that currently, many street tree plantings are ineffective at removing air pollutants, and instead may trap pollutants near the ground. Rather than relying on assumptions about the role of urban vegetation in improving the environment and health, future landscaping designs will be engineered based on empirical data and state of the art of simulations. New datasets on the performance of urban landscapes are changing our view of what future urban parks will look like and what it will do. With precise measurements of pollutant uptake, water use, plant growth rates, and greenhouse gas emissions, we are better able to design landscapes that require less intensive management and are less costly, while providing more social and environmental uses.

单选题In 2011, many shoppers opted to avoid the frenetic crowds and do their holiday shopping from the comfort of their computer. Sales at online retailers gained by more than 15% , making it the biggest season ever. But people are also returning those purchases at record rates, up 8% from last year. What went wrong? Is the lingering shadow of the global financial crisis making it harder to accept extravagant indulgences? Or do people shop more impulsively—and therefore make bad decisions—when online? Both arguments are plausible. However, there is a third factor: a question of touch. We can love the look but, in an online environment, we cannot feel the quality of a texture, the shape of the fit, the fall of a fold or the weight of an earring. And physically interacting with an object makes you more committed to your purchase. When my most recent book Brandwashed was released, I teamed up with a local bookstore to conduct an experiment about the differences between the online and offline shopping. I carefully instructed a group of volunteers to promote my book in two different ways. The first was a fairly hands-off approach. Whenever a customer would inquire about my book, the volunteer would take them over to the shelf and point to it. Out of 20 such requests, six customers proceeded with the purchase. The second option also involved going over to the shelf but, this time, removing the book and then subtly holding onto it for just an extra moment before placing it in the customer’s hands. Of the 20 people who were handed the book, 13 ended up buying it. Just physically passing the book showed a big difference in sales. Why? We feel something similar to a sense of ownership when we hold things in our hand. That’s why we establish or reestablish connection by greeting strangers and friends with a handshake. In this case, having to then let go of the book after holding it might generate a subtle sense of loss, and motivate us to make the purchase even more. A recent study conducted by Bangor University together with the United Kingdom’s Royal Mail service also revealed the power of touch, in, this case when it came to snail mail. A deeper and longer-lasting impression of a message was formed when delivered in a letter, as opposed to receiving the same message online. FMRIs(功能性磁共振成像)showed that, on touching the paper, the emotional centre of the brain was activated, thus forming a stronger bond. The study also indicated that once touch becomes part of the process, it could translate into a sense of possession. In other words, we simply feel more committed to possess and thus buy an item when we’ve first touched it. This sense of ownership is simply not part of the equation in the online shopping experience. As the rituals of purchase in the lead-up to Christmas change, not only do we give less thought to the type of gifts we buy for our loved ones but, through our own digital wish lists, we increasingly control what they buy for us. The reality, however, is that no matter how convinced we all are that digital is the way to go, finding real satisfaction will probably take more than a few simple clicks.

单选题此题为音频题

单选题. SECTION A MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS In this section there are three passages followed by fourteen multiple choice questions. For each multiple choice question, there are four suggested answers marked A, B, C and D. Choose the one that you think is the best answer. PASSAGE ONE (1) Tell me if this sounds familiar: you just turned off the light, your head is on the pillow, your eyes are closed, and yet, instead of drifting off to dreamland, you find yourself thinking about something that happened earlier in the day. Surprisingly, this process of reactivating your memories occurs even when you aren't aware of it, and not only is it normal, it might actually improve your memory. (2) As a second-language researcher, I am especially interested in harnessing this phenomenon to help people learn new languages. I recently became excited about its potential while attending a symposium at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society's annual meeting in New York City, where researchers discussed what they had learned about reactivation of memory. (3) One avenue of work comes from Columbia University in New York, where the neuroscientist Daphna Shohamy uses fMRI brain scans to measure oxygen metabolism and by association, neural activity. She's found that when one of two related items is rewarded, the second item becomes wrapped up in the positive memory, too. To give a real-world example, say that you bought a pair of brand Y shoes. If someone then compliments you on the shoes, you are more likely to buy brand Y again, even if the compliment had nothing to do with brand Y. Continuing with our analogy, Shohamy's lab finds that the amount of activity generated by the compliment (as measured through fMRI) is positively correlated with how likely you are to buy brand Y again. In other words, the memory center of your brain, the hippocampus, has paired not only the brand and the shoes but also the information associated with both, such as the compliment. All of that is reactivated when you go to buy your next pair of shoes, even if you aren't aware of it. (4) Participants in Shohamy's study were not consciously aware of the effect that such pairings had on their decision—even though they were thoroughly awake. But memory reactivation also occurs during sleep, when we are truly unconscious. At Northwestern University in Illinois, Ken Paller and colleagues have found that slow-wave sleep—more commonly known as deep sleep—can cause memory reactivation because of its periods of heightened neural synchrony, when lots of neurons activate together. (5) Of particular interest for language-learning, Paller's lab has found that memory reactivation during slow-wave sleep can be manipulated to improve specific memories. For example, they found that if you pair a sound with a picture while awake, and then play the sound during slow-wave sleep, this improves later recall of that picture—although the effect depends on how well you had learned the pairing the first time. Paller's lab has found that the effect holds regardless of the type of information cued: everything from playing a melody to unlearning stereotype associations all benefit from reactivation during sleep. (6) The most obvious application for learning a foreign language would be in retaining new vocabulary. Many people already learn foreign-language vocabulary by pairing it with a translation in their native language. This type of pairing is very similar to what Paller's lab has already done, and so it is likely that extending this to second-language learning would be successful. (7) Even more interesting is the possibility that memory reactivation may be instrumental for effective language immersion. I specify effective language immersion because research shows that immersion is hardly a panacea for curing your language-learning ills. Study-abroad experiences are more effective than domestic learning only when learners take advantage of the extra opportunities to use the second language. These opportunities include participating in daily experiences, such as taking the bus or grocery shopping, as well as local cultural experiences—all of it offering a multitude of cues and contexts that are impossible to impart in a typical classroom setting. (8) But getting this benefit simply by spending time in foreign company can be difficult. Popular tourist destinations such as Florence, where I studied, are used to English-speaking visitors, and the well-meaning people there will often return your attempts to speak Italian with English. One of the ways I got around this was through volunteering at local schools. Even though I was there to help the kindergarteners and first-graders with their English, I taught it to them using Italian. Another way to help yourself practice is by simply staying outside the center of town. Visiting shops that don't typically cater to tourists will significantly increase your chances of meeting people who are appreciative of your budding language skills, rather than cynical. That type of positive reinforcement is invaluable: each positive experience I had made me want to keep practising. (9) Moving beyond the obvious idea that more practice is better, it is likely that practice is most effective when combined with sufficient deep sleep. Paller's work, extended to language-immersion students, could allow us to stack the deck in terms of which items are reactivated and consequently retained. Of course, understanding the degree to which memory reactivation during sleep can boost language-learning would require testing—for instance, correlating gains in second-language proficiency with the amount of slow-wave sleep during immersion. Such a study would be the first step towards developing strategies to help us maximize our language-learning efficiency. (10) Shohamy's finding that memory reactivation can influence our decisions, especially when the memories are tinged with positive or negative emotions, could have an impact, too. One of the most important decisions you make in an immersion context is how much to engage with native speakers. If you imagine that your motivation or persistence is based on past experiences, then you can see the beginnings of a potential positive spiral: motivated learners have positive language experiences, which are more likely to be reactivated due to the positive associations, consequently improving their language skills and allowing them to have more experiences, starting the cycle again. (11) Even if you aren't currently learning another language, there is plenty to take away from this research. Memory reactivation appears to improve our recall and guide our decisions. We might be able to manipulate this process to our benefit by sleeping more so that we increase our slow-wave sleep—and simultaneously selectively stimulating memories during that slow-wave sleep, whether for second-language vocabulary or guitar melodies. So the next time you have the option of sleeping in on a Saturday morning, take it. You now have a reason not to set that alarm. PASSAGE TWO (1) A basic source of ambiguity about who is an American Indian stems from the popular stereotypes of American Indians that attribute to them physical characteristics such as well-defined cheekbones, reddish-brown complexions, straight black hair, almond-shaped eyes, and very little male facial hair. It is true that many American Indians have one or more of these characteristics. It is also true that some American Indians have none of these features, and in any event characteristics such as straight black hair and high cheekbones are not found exclusively in the American Indian population. Obviously, physical appearance is a wholly inappropriate criterion for deciding who is and is not an American Indian or Alaska Native. (2) Physical tests designed to measure pre-Columbian genetic traits also are not reliable guides for identifying members of the American Indian population. Over the centuries the pure genotype of the aboriginal pre-Columbian population succumbed to repeated exposures to infectious diseases and from sexual relations with non-Indians. The extent of genetic change cannot be measured precisely, but for modern American Indians "pure" genetic ancestry dating back to the fifteenth century is an unlikely prospect. A "pure" genotype of American Indian ancestry would involve a large and complex lineage spanning 15 to 20 generations in which not a single individual was non-Indian. Such lineages are not impossible, but in view of four centuries of contact with Africans and Europeans they are most likely rare. (3) Thus, the boundaries of the American Indian population are best defined in social terms. Delineating the social boundaries is complicated by ideas about American Indians that shift from one context to another. For example, the federal government has a large stake in defining who is an Indian or an Alaska Native, but different agencies with different missions employ a variety of different definitions. In studying federal policies, the American Indian Policy Review Commission (AIPRC) uncovered so many different definitions for the American Indian population that it declined to propose a single statement that might be widely acceptable. (4) Explicit and consistently applied definitions are vital for social scientific research. An absence of well-understood definitions results in chaotically organized statistical data that are virtually meaningless and useless for making important policy decisions. Commenting on the problems posed by numerous definitions of American Indians, AIPRC warned that "if simply defining who is an Indian presents problems, compiling other vital statistics about Indians and Indian affairs presents almost insurmountable problems." (5) Demographers typically classify the Indian population as either a racial or an ethnic group, or sometimes both. The criteria for defining who is an Indian are derived from theoretical concepts about race and ethnicity which are seldom stated explicitly. These concepts are closely related, and it is not always easy to distinguish racial definitions from ethnic definitions. The strategy of classifying American Indians as a race and as an ethnicity is somewhat unusual because many different ethnic groups are frequently subsumed within a single race; for example, the "white" race includes Germans, Poles, Sicilians, and many other different ethnic groups. By the same token, most ethnic groups do not include members with significantly different racial backgrounds. Furthermore, definitions based on different concepts of race and ethnicity produce remarkably different results in demographic research. In particular, differences in racial and ethnic definitions in the 1980 census generate surprisingly different statistics about the Indian population. (6) Using racial characteristics to define the boundaries of the Native American population presupposes that the concept of race is itself well known and clearly defined. On the contrary, few concepts are as misunderstood as race. In their influential textbook on race relations, Simpson and Yinger divide racial definitions into three types, which they label mystical, biological, and administrative. All three types of definitions have been applied to American Indians. (7) Mystical definitions of race are easily the most pernicious and far removed from reality. They typically assert that modem racial groups are descended from mysterious ancient populations. Drawing on overly romanticized, if not altogether fictional, images of the past, this type of definition has been invoked to support beliefs about racial superiority. The Nazis invented the mythology of the Aryan race to press their claims of superiority; southern racists in the United States used similar ideas to oppose civil rights for blacks. (8) Biological definitions commonly view race as representative of a homogeneous gene pool within a relatively closed population. Scientists use a variety of genetic indicators such as blood type, earwax texture, and other anatomical characteristics to distinguish racial groups. The number of biological races identified by physical scientists varies considerably. The most well-known classification divides the human species into four basic varieties: australoid, caucasoid, mongoloid, and negroid. However, within these major categories, Goldsbys further identifies 26 distinct varieties, or races, of human beings. (9) Administrative definitions of race are promulgated by bureaucratic and political institutions and are designed to serve their particular administrative needs and political agenda. Bureaucratic institutions rarely divulge the reasoning behind their definitions of race, and there is a large amount of variation in these definitions. The 1980 census identifies 13 racial groups, including separate categories for Asian nationalities such as Vietnamese and Japanese and a residual category for "other". In contrast, many universities, for affirmative action policies, classify their students and employees into five categories of American Indian, Asian, black, Hispanic, white, and other. PASSAGE THREE (1) I think I have been more than most men conscious of my age. My youth slipped past me unnoticed and I was always burdened with the sense that I was growing old. Because for my years I had seen much of the world and travelled a good deal, because I was somewhat widely read and my mind was occupied with matters beyond my years, I seemed always older than my contemporaries. But it was not till the outbreak of the war in 1914 that I had an inkling that I was no longer a young man. I found then to my consternation that a man of forty was old. I consoled myself by reflecting that this was only for military purposes, but not so very long afterwards I had an experience which put the matter beyond doubt. I had been lunching with a woman whom I had known a long time and her niece, a girl of seventeen. After luncheon we took a taxi to go somewhere or other. The woman got in and then her niece. But the niece sat down on the strapontin leaving the empty seat at the back beside her aunt for me to sit on. It was the civility of youth (as opposed to the rights of sex) to a gentleman no longer young. I realized that she looked upon me with the respect due to age. (2) It is not a very pleasant thing to recognize that for the young you are no longer an equal. You belong to a different generation. For them your race is run. They can look up to you; they can admire you; but you are apart from them, and in the long run they will always find the companionship of persons of their own age more grateful than yours. (3) But middle age has its compensations. Youth is bound hand and foot with the shackles of public opinion. Middle age enjoys freedom. I remember that when I left school I said to myself: "Henceforward I can get up when I like and go to bed when I like." That of course was an exaggeration, and I soon found that the trammeled life of the civilized man only permits of a modified independence. Whenever you have an aim you must sacrifice something of freedom to achieve it. But by the time you have reached middle age you have discovered how much freedom it is worthwhile to sacrifice in order to achieve any aim that you have in view. When I was a boy I was tortured by shyness, and middle age has to a great extent brought me a relief from this. I was never of great physical strength and long walks used to tire me, but I went through them because I was ashamed to confess my weakness. I have now no such feeling and I save myself much discomfort. I always hated cold water, but for many years I took cold baths and bathed in cold seas because I wanted to be like everybody else. I used to dive from heights that made me nervous. I was mortified because I played games worse than other people. When I did not know a thing I was ashamed to confess my ignorance. It was not till quite late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say: "I don't know." I find with middle age that no one expects me to walk five and twenty miles, or to play a scratch game of golf, or to dive from a height of thirty feet. This is all to the good and makes life pleasant: but I should no longer care if they did. That is what makes youth unhappy, the vehement anxiety to be like other people, and that is what makes middle age tolerable, the reconciliation with oneself. (4) Yesterday I was seventy years old. As one enters upon each succeeding decade it is natural, though perhaps irrational, to look upon it as a significant event. When I was thirty my brother said to me: "Now you are a boy no longer, you are a man and you must be a man." When I was forty I said to myself: "That is the end of youth." On my fiftieth birthday I said: "It's no good fooling myself, this is middle age and I may just as well accept it." At sixty I said: "Now it's time to put my affairs in order, for this is the threshold of old age and I must settle my accounts." I decided to withdraw from the theatre and I wrote The Summing Up, in which I tried to review for my own comfort what I had learnt of life and literature, what I had done and what satisfaction it had brought me. But of all anniversaries I think the seventieth is the most momentous. One has reached the three score years and ten which one is accustomed to accept as the allotted span of man, and one can but look upon such years as remain to one as uncertain contingencies stolen while old Time with his scythe has his head turned the other way. At seventy one is no longer on the threshold of old age. One is just an old man. (5) On the continent of Europe they have an amiable custom when a man who has achieved some distinction reaches that age. His friends, his colleagues, his disciples (if he has any)join together to write a volume of essays in his honor. In England we give our eminent men no such flattering mark of our esteem. At the utmost we give a dinner, and we don't do that unless he is very eminent indeed... (6) My own birthday passed without ceremony. I worked as usual in the morning and in the afternoon went for a walk in the solitary woods behind my house... (7) I went back to my house, made myself a cup of tea and read till dinner time. After dinner I read again, played two or three games of patience, listened to the news on the radio and took a detective story to bed with me. I finished it and went to sleep. Except for a few words to my colored maids I had not spoken to a soul all day. (8) So I passed my seventieth birthday and so I would have wished to pass it. I mused. (9) Two or three years ago I was walking with Liza and she spoke, I don't know why, of the horror with which the thought of old age filled her. (10) "Don't forget," I told her, "that when you're old you won't have the desire to do various things that make life pleasant to you now. Old age has its compensations." (11) "What?" she asked. (12) "Well, you need hardly ever do anything you don't want to. You can enjoy music, art and literature, differently from when you were young, but in that different way as keenly. You can get a good deal of fun out of observing the course of events in which you are no longer intimately concerned. If your pleasures are not so vivid your pains also have lost their sting." (13) I could see that all this seemed cold comfort, and even as I spoke I realized that it afforded a somewhat grey prospect. When later I came to think it over, it occurred to me that the greatest compensation of old age is its freedom of spirit. I suppose that is accompanied by a certain indifference to many of the things that men in their prime think important. Another compensation is that it liberates you from envy, hatred and malice. I do not believe that I envy anyone. I have made the most I could of such gifts as nature provided me with; I do not envy the success of others. I am quite willing to vacate the little niche I have occupied so long and let another step into it. I no longer mind what people think of me. They can take me or leave me. I am mildly pleased when they appear to like me and undisturbed if I know they don't. I have long known that there is something in me that antagonizes certain persons; I think it very natural, no one can like everyone; and their ill will interests rather than discomposes me. I am only curious to know what it is in me that is antipathetic to them. Nor do I mind what they think of me as a writer. On the whole I have done what I set out to do, and the rest does not concern me. I have never much cared for the notoriety which surrounds the successful writer and which many of us are simple enough to mistake for fame, and I have often wished that I had written under a pseudonym so that I might have passed through the world unnoticed. I did indeed write my first novel under one, and only put my own name to it because my publisher warned me that the book might be violently attacked and I did not wish to hide myself under a made-up name. I suppose few authors can help cherishing a secret hope that they will not be entirely forgotten the moment they die, and I have occasionally amused myself by weighing the chances I have of survival for a brief period... (14) I have been asked on occasion whether I would like to live my life over again. On the whole it has been a pretty good life, perhaps better than most people's, but I should see no point in repeating it. It would be as idle as to read again a detective story that you have read before. But supposing there were such a thing as reincarnation, belief in which is explicitly held by three quarters of the human race, and one could choose whether or not one would enter upon a new life on earth, I have in the past sometimes thought that I should be willing to try the experiment on the chance that I might enjoy experiences which circumstances and my own idiosyncrasies, spiritual and corporeal, have prevented me from enjoying, and learn the many things that I have not had the time or the occasion to learn. But now I should refuse. I have had enough. I neither believe in immortality nor desire it. I should like to die quickly and painlessly, and I am content to be assured that with my last breathe my soul, with its aspirations and its weaknesses, will dissolve into nothingness. I have taken to heart what Epicurus wrote to Menoeceus: "Become accustomed to the belief that death is nothing to us. For all good and evil consists in sensation, but death is deprivation of sensation. And therefore a fight understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not because it adds to it an infinite span of time, but because it takes away the craving for immortality. For there is nothing terrible in life for the man who has truly comprehended that there is nothing terrible in not living."1. In the real-life example of buying a pair of brand Y shoes, what is the best explanation to the fact that "you" are more inclined to buy brand Y again?(PASSAGE ONE)

单选题My professor brother and I have an argument about head and heart, about whether he overvalues IQ while I lean more toward EQ. We typically have this debate about people—can you be friends with a really smart jerk(怪物)? —but there’s corollary to animals as well. I’d love it if our dog could fetch the morning paper and then read it to me over coffee, but I actually care much more about her loyal and innocent heart. There’s already enough thinking going on in our house, and we probably spend too much time in our heads. Where we need some role modeling is in instinct, and that’s where a dog is a roving revelation. I did not grow up with dogs, which meant that my older daughter’s respectful but unyielding determination to get one required some adjustment on my part. I often felt she was training me: from ages of 6 to 9, she gently schooled me in various breeds and their personalities, whispered to the dogs we encountered so they would charm and persuade me, demonstrated by her self-discipline that she was ready for the responsibility. And thus came our dog Twist, whom I sometimes mistake for a third daughter. At first I thought the challenge would be to train her to sit, to heel, to walk calmly beside us and not go wildly chasing the neighbourhood rabbits. But I soon discovered how much more we had to learn from her than she from us. If it is true, for example, that the secret to a child’s success is less rare genius than raw persistence, Twist’s ability to stay on task is a model for us all, especially if the task is trying to capture the sunbeam that flicks around the living room as the wind blows through the branches outside. She never succeeds, and she never gives up. This includes when she runs square into walls. Then there is her unfailing patience, which breaks down only when she senses that dinnertime was 15 minutes ago and we have somehow failed to notice. Even then she is more eager than indignant, and her refusal to whine shows a restraint of which I’m not always capable when hungry. But the lesson I value most is the one in forgiveness, and Twist first offered this when she was still very young. When she was about 7 months old, we took her to the vet to be spayed(切除卵巢). We turned her over to a stranger, who proceeded to perform a procedure that was probably not pleasant. But when the vet returned her to us, limp and tender, there was no recrimination(反责), no How could you do that to me? It was as though she already knew that we would not intentionally cause her pain, and while she did not understand, she forgave and curled up with her head on my daughter’s lap. I suppose we could have concluded that she was just blindly loyal and docile. But eventually we knew better. She is entirely capable of disobedience, as she has proved many times. She will ignore us when there are more interesting things to look at, rebuke us when we are careless, bark into the twilight when she has urgent messages to send. But her patience with our failings and fickleness and her willingness to give us a second chance are a daily lesson in gratitude. My friends who grew up with dogs tell me how when they were teenagers and trusted no one in the world, they could tell their dog all their secrets. It was the one friend who would not gossip or betray, could provide in the middle of the night the soft, unbegrudging comfort and peace that adolescence conspires to disrupt. An age that is all about growth and risk needs some anchors and weights, a model of steadfastness when all else is in flux. Sometimes I think Twist’s devotion keeps my girls on a benevolent leash, one that hangs quietly at their side as they trot along but occasionally yanks them back to safety and solid ground. We’ve weighed so many decisions so carefully in raising our daughters—what school to send them to and what church to attend, when to give them cell phones and with what precautions. But when it comes to what really shapes their character and binds our family, I never would have thought we would owe so much to its smallest member.

单选题《复合题被拆开情况》 1The Term "CYBERSPACE" was coined by William Gibson, a science-fiction writer. He first used it in a short story in 1982, and expanded on it a couple of years later in a novel, "Neuromancer

单选题. SECTION A MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS In this section there are several passages followed by fourteen multiple choice questions. For each multiple choice question, there are four suggested answers marked A, B, C and D. Choose the one that you think is the best answer and mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET TWO. PASSAGE ONE This fishing village of 1,480 people is a bleak and lonely place. Set on the southwestern edge of Iceland, the volcanic landscape is whipped by the North Atlantic winds, which hush everything around them. A sculpture at the entrance to the village depicts a naked man facing a wall of seawater twice his height. There is no movie theater, and many residents never venture to the capital, a 50-minute drive away. But Sandgerdi might be the perfect place to raise girls who have mathematical talent. Government researchers two years ago tested almost every 15-year-old in Iceland for it and found that boys trailed far behind girls. That fact was unique among the 41 countries that participated in the standardized test for that age group designed by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development. But while Iceland's girls were alone in the world in their significant lead in math, their national advantage of 15 points was small compared with the one they had over boys in fishing villages like Sandgerdi, where it was closer to 30. The teachers of Sandgerdi's 254 students were only mildly surprised by the results. They say the gender gap is a story not of talent but motivation. Boys think of school as sufferings on the way to a future of finding riches at sea; for girls, it's their ticket out of town. Margret Ingporsdottir and Hanna Maria Heidarsdottir, both 15, students at Sandgerdi's gleaming school—which has a science laboratory, a computer room and a well-stocked library—have no doubt that they are headed for university. "I think I will be a pharmacist," says Heidarsdottir. The teens sat in principal Gudjon Kristjansson's office last week, waiting for a ride to the nearby town of Kevlavik, where they were competing in West Iceland's yearly math contest, one of many throughout Iceland in which girls excel. Meanwhile, by the harbor, Gisli Tor Hauksson, 14, already has big plans that don't require spending his afternoons toiling over geometry. "I'll be a fisherman," he says, just like most of his ancestors. His father recently returned home from 60 days at sea off the coast of Norway. "He came back with 1.1 million krona," about $18,000, says Hauksson. As for school, he says, "it destroys the brain." He intends to quit at 16, the earliest age at which he can do so legally. "A boy sees his older brother who has been at sea for only two years and has a better car and a bigger house than the headmaster," says Kristjansson. But the story of female achievement in Iceland doesn't necessarily have a happy ending. Educators have found that when girls leave their rural enclaves to attend universities in the nation's cities, their science advantage generally shrinks. While 61% of university students are women, they make up only one-third of Iceland's science students. By the time they enter the labor market, many are overtaken by men, who become doctors, engineers and computer technicians. Educators say they watch many bright girls suddenly flinch back in the face of real, head-to-head competition with boys. In a math class at a Reykjavik school, Asgeir Gurdmundsson, 17, says that although girls were consistently brighter than boys at school, "they just seem to leave the technical jobs to us." Says Solrun Gensdottir, the director of education at the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture: "We have to find a way to stop girls from dropping out of sciences." Teachers across the country have begun to experiment with ways to raise boys to the level of girls in elementary and secondary education. The high school in Kevlavik tried an experiment in 2002 and 2003, separating 16-to-20-year-olds by gender for two years. That time the boys slipped even further behind. "The boys said the girls were better anyway," says Kristjan Asmundsson, who taught the 25 boys. "They didn't even try." PASSAGE TWO A period of climate change about 130,000 years ago would have made water travel easier by lowering sea levels and creating navigable lakes and rivers in the Arabian Peninsula, the study says. Such a shift would have offered early modern humans—which arose in Africa about 200,000 years ago—a new route through the formerly scorching northern deserts into the Middle East. The new paper was spurred by the discovery of several 120,000-year-old tools at a desert archaeological site in the United Arab Emirates. The presence of the tools—whose design is uniquely African, experts say—so early in the region suggests early humans marched out of Africa into the Arabian Peninsula directly from the Horn of Africa, roughly present-day Somalia. Previously, scientists had thought humans first left via the Nile Valley or the Far East. "Up till now we thought of cultural developments leading to the opportunity of people to move out of Africa," said study co-author Hans-Peter Uerpmann, a retired archaeobiologist at the University of Tubingen in Germany. "Now we see, I think, that it was the environment that was the key to this," Uerpmann said during a press briefing Wednesday. The discovery "leaves a lot of possibilities for human migrations, and keeping this in mind, might change our view completely." During the past few years, a series of tools were discovered at the Jebel Faya site in the U. A. E., some of which—such as hand axes—had a two-sided appearance previously seen only in early Africa. Scientists used luminescence dating to determine the age of sand grains buried with the stone tools. This technique measures naturally occurring radiation stored in the sand. For the climatic data, scientists studied the climate records of ancient lakes and rivers in cave stalagmites, as well as changes in the level of the Red Sea. This warmer period 130,000 years or so ago caused more rainfall on the Arabian Peninsula, turning it into a series of lush rivers that humans might have boated or rafted. During this period the southern Red Sea's levels dropped, offering a "brief window of time" for humans to easily cross the sea—which was then as little as 2.5 miles wide, according to Adrian Parker, a physical geographer from Oxford Brookes University in the United Kingdom. Once humans entered the peninsula, they dispersed and likely reached the Jebel Faya site by about 125,000 years ago, according to the study, published in the journal Science. Geneticist Spencer Wells called the discovery a "very interesting find," especially because the Arabian Peninsula is becoming a hot spot for archaeological finds—particularly underwater, since the Persian Gulf was a fertile river delta during early human migrations. But he noted that the study doesn't "rewrite the book on what we know about human migratory history." That's because tools dating to the same period have already been found in Israel, so it's "consistent with what we suspected" about an earlier wave, of migration into the Middle East, said Wells, director of the National Geographic Society's Genographic Project. Wells also noted there's no evidence yet that the migrants in the new paper were our ancestors—the group, and their genes, may have died out long ago. Bence Viola, of the Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, agreed the finding was interesting but not that surprising, also citing the evidence of humans in Israel about 120,000 years ago. Viola, who wasn't involved in the study, added that the migration route proposed in the paper makes sense on another level—the Arabian Peninsula would have been something early humans were used to. "If you look even today, the environment in the Horn of Africa, in Somalia or nort hern Ethiopia, is similar to what you see in Oman or Yemen—not like the big desert," Viola noted. "It's not like they needed to adapt to a completely different environment—it's an environment that they knew." Why they made the trek is another question, since they wouldn't have been hurting for food or resources in their African homeland, Viola noted. "Curiosity," he said, "is a pretty human desire." PASSAGE THREE Perhaps it's the weather, which sometimes seals London with a gray ceiling for weeks on end. Or maybe it is Britons' penchant for understatement, their romantic association with the countryside or their love of gardens. Whatever the reason, while other cities grew upward as they developed, London spread outward, keeping its vast parks, its rows of townhouses and its horizon lines intact. But as the city's population and its prominence as a global business capital continue to grow, it sometimes seems ready to burst at the seams. In response, developers are turning to a type of building that used to be deeply unfashionable here, even as it flourished in other capitals of commerce: the skyscraper. In recent years, a cluster of sizable office towers have sprouted on the periphery of London, in its redeveloped Docklands at Canary Wharf. But skyscrapers now are pushing into the heart of the City, London's central financial district, and surrounding areas along the Thames. The mayor, Ken Livingstone, champions tall buildings as part of his controversial plans to remake central London as a denser, more urban sort of place, with greater reliance on public transport. First he angered some drivers by charging them a toll to enter the city center on workdays, and now he finds himself opposed by preservation groups, including English Heritage, that want to keep London's character as a low-rise city. For now, the mayor seems to be getting his way. One prominent tower, a 40-story building designed by Norman Foster for the Swiss Re insurance company was completed this year. A handful of others have received planning permission and at least a dozen more have been proposed. By far the most prominent of these buildings—and one that finally looks like it will go ahead after a drawn-out approval process—is the London Bridge Tower, designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano. The developer Irvine Sellar won government approval for the building late last year and says he is completing the financing and hopes to start work by early 2005. The 306-meter, or 1,016-foot, tower would be by far the tallest building in Britain, in all of Europe, in fact, surpassing the 264-meter Triumph Palace in Moscow, a residential building that was finished late last year. To be sure, even the London Bridge Tower would be modest by the standards of American or Asian skyscrapers, or some of the behemoths on the drawing boards for places like Dubai and Shanghai. The tallest building in the world at the moment is the 509-meter Talpei 101 tower in Talwan, according to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. But it will surely be surpassed soon amid a boom in construction that persists. In a city that has been reluctant to reach for the sky, perhaps it is appropriate that Piano is the architect for what probably will be London's tallest building. He is ambivalent about skyscrapers, too, and has designed only a handful alongside such projects as the Pompidou Center in Paris, with Richard Rogers, and parts of the reconstructed Potsdamer Platz in Berlin. English Heritage has been far less enthusiastic, arguing that the building would obstruct views of a high-rise from a much earlier era, Christopher Wren's St. Paul's Cathedral. To overcome opposition, the building was designed with a mixed-use function. Much of the bottom half of the building will house offices, but above that there will be a "public piazza" with restaurants, exhibition spaces and other entertainment areas. Further above, the loftier, narrower floors will be taken up by a hotel and apartments. On the 65th floor there will be a viewing gallery. The upper 60 meters, exposed to the elements, will house an energy-saving cooling system in which pipes will be used to pump excess heat up from the offices below and dissipate it into the winds. "We knew we had no chance of getting it approved unless we had a high-quality design from a top international name," Sellar said. The emphasis on quality is a reflection not only of an aversion to skyscrapers, but also of a desire not to repeat mistakes. London had one previous fling with tall—or semi-tall—buildings, in the 1960s and 70s, but their blocky, concrete shapes did little to impress. PASSAGE FOUR Mark Twain's instructions were quite clear: his autobiography was to remain unpublished until 100 years after his death. Who could resist a pay cheque in the here and now for deferred immortality in the hereafter? More to the point, could any modem writer be certain their lives would still be interesting to anyone so long after their death? Pride never came into Twain's calculations. He was the American writer, the rags-to-riches embodiment of the American dream, and it never seems to have occurred to him that his popularity would fade. Nor has it. He is still the writer before whom everyone from Faulkner to Mailer has knelt. And even though his literary executors might not have followed his instructions to the letter—various chunks of his autobiography have been published over the years—the publication of the first of three planned collections of Twain's full autobiographical writings to coincide with the centenary of his death has still been one of the literary events of the year. Still more remarkable is that Twain's reputational longevity is based on so few books. As John Sutherland, professor of English at University College London, points out, "Huckleberry Finn has been largely off-limits in American schools and colleges because of Twain's use of the word 'nigger', so most readers only know him for his maxims and Tom Sawyer. And even that is overrated. What makes him the 'father' of American fiction?" Sutherland suggests the answer lies in voice, eye and attitude. Twain was a gifted public speaker; he turned literature into something that was heard as well as seen; and east himself as an innocent, with a decidedly resentful, feisty (好争辩的) gaze on the rest of the world. "Take these three elements," he says, "and, as Hemingway argued, you have the essence of a national literature. After Twain, no one could dismiss it as 'English literature written in America'. It was itself." And it's the voice that shines through his autobiography. "The general reader gets to see the man beyond the maxims," says Harriet Smith, editor of the Mark Twain Project, "What we get is him speaking to us from beyond the grave; even in the passages that seem quite boring his appeal still resonates for the infelicities—rather than being a flaw—are a window into how he thought and what jogged his memory." Above all, there is no linear narrative. He first toyed with the idea of writing his autobiography in the 1870s but abandoned the idea because he couldn't find a way of telling the truth about himself. Finally, after the death of his wife, Olivia, in 1904, he came up with two solutions. The first—almost certainly borrowed from the Freudian psychoanalytic model of free association—was to dictate his thoughts to a stenographer (速记); for 15 minutes each day he would start by deliberating on an item of news that had captured his attention and see where it led. The second was to self-impose a 100-year role, so that by the time any judgment was passed he would be "dead, unaware and indifferent". Not that any of this necessarily had the desired effect. "If you're relying on memory," says novelist Michael Frayn, "how—even with the best of intentions—can you distinguish between what you remember and what you make up? A biographer can seek corroboration elsewhere; a personal memoir does not have that advantage." Twain understood the value of his image and went to some lengths to protect it. Some of the more fascinating passages in the autobiography are those that have been crossed out. These are, more often than not, the ones about which he was particularly sensitive. And they aren't to do with the personal, such as his feelings of loss over the deaths of his wife and daughter, Susy, or his suspicions about being financially ripped off by his manager, Ralph Ashcroft, and his secretary., Isabel Lyon. "There are some extracts, including one in which he confuses the Virgin birth and the Immaculate Conception, in which he declares his religious scepticism robustly, about which Twain was extremely nervous," says Smith. "He was so worried he would be ostracised (排斥) and shunned for this by God-fearing Americans that he actually set a publication date of 2406 for those sections." Imagine. A man so protective and nervous of his own reputation that he sought to keep some of the ideas he thought might alienate his public silent for 500 years. Yet equally a man so sure of his reputation that he had no doubts people would still want to read him 500 years after his death. There, in essence, is Twain's ambivalence between the public and the private, between truth and spin. Needless to say, his executors didn't adhere to the 500-year demand and the American public continue to adore him regardless. Then Twain being Twain, he'd have hardly expected anything less.1. Which of the following words can best describe Sandgerdi?(PASSAGE ONE)

单选题. Questions 6 to 10 are based on Part Two of the interview.6.

单选题. Questions 6 to 10 are based on Part Two of the interview.6.

单选题[此试题无题干]

单选题. Questions 1 to 5 are based on Part One of the interview.1.