单选题{{B}}Passage 2{{/B}} 　　Landslides happen when large amounts of rock, mud and other loose materials are suddenly uprooted and sent sliding down a slope. This might be caused by an earthquake or it might happen after a heavy rain or when soil becomes waterlogged after a fall of snow. As the material loses its grip and begins to move down the slope it gathers speed and sweeps up more material with devastating results. Nepal suffers from frequent landslides because the hillsides have been stripped of trees. When it rains the water soaks into the soil and this slides down the mountainside. The worst landslide in Wales' history came about with the collapse of an artificial mountain on 21 October 1966. A 250-metre high mountain of waste material from the local coal mine had been piled up outside the village of Aberfan. Two million tons of rock, coal and mud began to move with a thunderous roar towards'the local school, uprooting trees and crushing houses. It was the start of the school day and almost every child in the village was there. The building collapsed under the weight of the avalanche, and crushed children and their teachers beneath it. One hundred and forty five people, among them 116 children, lost their lives.

单选题 {{I}} Questions 11--13 are based on the following passage about Emily Dickinson. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 11--13.{{/I}}

单选题From Paragraph S we learn that ______.

单选题What are features of the Excite Inbox?

单选题 Society was fascinated by science and things scientific in the nineteenth century. Great breakthroughs in engineering, the use of steam power, and electricity were there for all to see, enjoy, and suffer. Science was fashionable and it is not surprising that, during this great period of industrial development, scientific methods should be applied to the activities of man, particularly to those involved in the processes of production. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, international competition began to make itself felt. The three industrial giants of the day, Germany, America, and Great Britain, began to find that there was a limit to the purchasing power of the previously apparently inexhaustible markets. Science and competition therefore provided the means and the need to improve industrial efficiency. Frederick Winslow Taylor is generally acknowledged as being the father of the scientific management approach, as a result of the publication of his book, The Principles of Scientific Management, published in 1911. However, numerous other academics and practitioners had been actively applying such approaches since the beginning of the century. Charles Babbage, and English academic, well-known for his invention of the mechanical computer (with the aid of a government grant as long as 1820) applied himself to the costing of processes, using scientific methods, and indeed might well be recognized as one of the fathers of cost accounting. Taylor was of well-to-do background and received an excellent education but, partly owing to troubles with his eyesight, decided to become an engineering apprentice. He spent some twenty-five years in the tough, sometimes brutal, environment of the US steel industry and carefully studied methods of work when he eventually attained supervisory status. He made various significant innovations in the area of steel processing, but his claim to fame is through his application of methods of science to methods of work, and his personal efforts that proved they could succeed in a hostile environment. In 1901, Taylor left the steel industry and spent the rest of his life trying to promote the principles of managing scientifically and emphasizing the human aspects of the method, over the slave-driving methods common in his day. He died in 1915, leaving a huge school of followers to promote his approach worldwide.

单选题According to Peter Salovey, Yale psychologist and author of the term EQ, IQ gets you hired and EQ gets you promoted. Salovey tells of a simple test. Some four-year-old kids were invited into a room and were given the following instruction: "You can have this marshmallow right now; or if you wait, you can have two marshmallows when I get back." Then, the researcher left. Some kids grabbed for the treat as soon as the researcher was out the door, while others waited for the researcher to return. By the time the kids reached high school, significant differences appeared between the two groups. The kids who held out for two marshmallows were better adjusted, more popular, more adventurous, more confident, and more dependable than kids in the quick gratification group. The latter group was also more likely to be lonely, more easily frustrated, more stubborn, more likely to buckle under stress, and more likely to shy away from challenges. When both groups took scholastic aptitude tests, the "hold out group" walloped the "quick gratification group" by 210 points (the test scores range from a minimum of 200 points to a maximum of 800, with an average for all students of 500 points). Researchers have been discussing whether it"s possible to raise a person"s IQ. Geneticists say No, while social scientists say Yes. But while brain power researchers continue the debate, social science researchers have concluded that it"s possible to improve a person"s EQ, and in particular, a person"s "people skills," such as empathy, graciousness, and the ability to "read" a social situation. According to the social scientists, there is little doubt that people without sufficient EQ will have a hard time surviving in life. EQ is perhaps best observed in people described as either pessimists or optimists. Optimistic people have high EQ and treat obstacles as minor, while the pessimistic people have low EQ and personalizes all setbacks. In social research circles, EQ denotes one"s ability to survive, and it"s here that there may be an overlap between EQ, IQ, genetics and environment. As to that, I am reminded of the words of Darwin, "The biggest, the smartest, and the strongest are not the survivors. Rather, the survivors are the most adaptable." Those of us who survive and thrive in this complex world are not only the most adaptable, but also the most optimistic and the most likely to have a high EQ.

单选题 Questions 14～17 are based on a radio interview. You now have 20 seconds to read Questions 14～17.

单选题{{B}}Passage 3{{/B}} 　　Diogenes was the founder of the creed called Cynicism (the word means "doggishness"); he spent much of his life in the rich, lazy, corrupt Greek city of Corinth, mocking and satirizing its people, and occasionally converting one of them. He was not crazy. He was a philosopher who wrote plays and poems and essays expounding his doctrine; he talked to those who cared to listen; he had pupils who admired him. But he taught chiefly by example. All should live naturally, he said, for what is natural is normal and cannot possibly be evil or shameful. Live without conventions, which are artificial and false; escape complexities and superfluities and extravagance; only so can you live a free life. The rich man believes he possesses his big house with its many rooms and its elaborate furniture, his pictures and his expensive clothes, his horses and his servants and his bank accounts. He does not. He depends on them, he worries about them, he spends most of his life's energy looking after them; the thought of losing them makes him sick with anxiety. They possess him. He is their slave. In order to procure a quantity of false, perishable goods he has sold the only true, lasting good, his own independence. Diogenes thought most people were only half-alive, most men only half-men. At bright noonday he walked through the market place carrying a lighted lamp and inspecting the face of everyone he met. They asked him why. Diogenes answered, "I am trying to find a man." To a gentleman whose servant was putting on his shoes for him, Diogenes said, "You won't be really happy until he wipes your nose for you; that will come after you lose the use of your hands." And so he lived—like a dog, some said, because he cared nothing for privacy and other human conventions, and because he showed his teeth and barked at those whom he disliked. Now he was lying in the sunlight, as contented as a dog on the warm ground, happier than the Shah of Persia. Although he knew he was going to have an important visitor, he would not move.

单选题One characteristic of weather maps not mentioned by the author in this passage is ______.

单选题According to Plato ,philosophy is originated from

单选题In the third paragraph, the author most probably provides an explanation of the apparent connections among economic, military, and cultural development in order to ______.

单选题Testing has replaced teaching in most public schools. My own children's school week is framed by pretests, drills, tests, and retests. They know that the best way to read a textbook is to look at the questions at the end of the chapter and then skim the text for the answers. I believe that my daughter Erica, who gets excellent marks, has never read a chapter of any of her school textbooks all the way through. And teachers are often heard to state proudly and openly that they teach to the mandated state test. Teaching to the test is a curious phenomenon. Instead of deciding what skills students ought to learn, helping students learn them, and then using some sensible methods of assessment to discover whether students have mastered the skills, teachers are encouraged to reverse the process. First one looks at a commercially available test. Then one distills the skills needed not to master reading, say, or math, but to do well on the test. Finally, the test skills are taught. The ability to read or write or calculate might imply the ability to do reasonably well on standardized tests. However, neither reading nor writing develops simply through being taught to take tests. We must be careful to avoid mistaking preparation for a test of a skill with the acquisition of that skill. Too many discussions of basic skills make this fundamental confusion because people are test obsessed rather than concerned with the nature and quality of what is taught. Recently many schools have faced what could be called the crisis of comprehension or, in simple terms, the phenomenon of students with phonic and grammar skills still being unable to understand what they read. These students are competent at test taking and filling in workbooks and ditto masters. However, they have little or no experience reading or thinking, and talking about what they read. They know the details but can't see or understand the whole. They are taught to be so concerned with grade that they have no time or ease of mind to think about meaning, and reread things if necessary.

单选题 Art is fun; it caters to the basic creative instinct which is present in everyone. It can impart a great feeling of achievement especially to children who as yet have not been able to gain much of a sense of success from their other efforts in life. It also helps backward children to develop mentally and physically. Their confidence grows as they experience success in art, and a confident child learns more easily than a tense one. Physically handicapped children benefit because their motor control improves as they attempt to make more delicate movements with their hands and as they gradually impose more control upon themselves. Art is particularly valuable to mentally handicapped children who find it difficult to communicate their ideas and emotions and who perhaps even find it difficult to comprehend themselves. Subnormal children with very limited vocabularies may find that painting is easier than talking, and through painting they are able to express ideas, emotions, and reactions to situations and experiences. Children need to communicate in two ways. First, they have to convey information to other people, often about their immediate requirements concerning both tangible things— "I want to drink." or "I want to mention." —and less tangible things— "I want you near me." Secondly, they have to communicate with themselves. If children, do not have words to use, their minds are, inevitably, a disorderly mixture of responses to which they can react only emotionally, often with frustrations. Through their paintings such children are not consciously trying to tell other people that they have certain feelings, but with the paint they are able to create a concrete, permanent statement of feeling and so the emotion becomes less intense and under more control. Thus, art helps in the same way that acting and fantasy-play help children to regulate their emotions and recreations, i. e. , by recreating them in a controlled situation. Music, dancing, acting, and storytelling can give similar feelings of satisfaction and offer opportunities which may be of assistance to children either individually or collectively.

单选题 Questions 14—16 are based on the following dialogue about a phone call. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 14—16.