His essay is ______with more than 120 full-color photographs that depict the national park in all seasons.

How many people can live on the face of the earth? No one knows the answer. It depends on how much food people can grow 【C1】______destroying the environment. More people now exist than ever before, and the population【C2】______growing. Every 15 seconds, about 100 babies are born. Before the end of this century, the earth may【C3】______10 billion people! To feed everyone, farmers must grow more food. They are trying to do so. World food production has gradually【C4】______over the years. In some parts of the world, 【C5】______, the population is growing faster than the food supply. Some experts fear the world will not be able to produce enough food for a【C6】______that never stops increasing. To grow more crops on the same【C7】______of land, farmers use fertilizers and pesticides(杀虫剂). Some plant new kinds of grains that produce more food. These things help—【C8】______they don't provide perfect solutions. The chemicals in fertilizers and pesticides can pollute water supplies. The new seeds developed by scientists have reached the【C9】______of what they can produce. When hungry people can get no more out of【C10】______field, they clear trees from hills and forests for new farmland, and in doing so they expose the soil. Then rain and floods may strip the topsoil from fields. This process is called erosion. Each year erosion steals billions of tons of topsoil from farmers.

If a cat comes too close to its nest, the mocking bird initiates a set of actions to protect its off spring.

There was a misunderstanding about a trifle and I had to resign.

【T9】

A. The disastrous impact on biodiversity.B. Human population growth worsens the problem.C. What is land conversion?D. Protected areas are under threat.E. The land-conversion cascade. Behind the projections of species loss lurk a number of crucial but hard-to-plot variables, among which two are especially weighty; continuing landscape conversion and the growth curve of human population. 【R1】______ Landscape conversion can mean many things, draining wetlands to build roads and airports, turning tallgrass (高杆草) prairies under the plow, fencing savanna (热带大草原) and overgrazing it with domestic stock, cutting second-growth forest Vermont and consig-ning the" land to ski resorts or vacation suburbs, slash-and-burn clearing of Madagascar's (马达加斯加) rain forest to grow rice on wet hillsides, industrial logging in Borneo (婆罗洲 ) to meet Japanese plywood demands. 【R2】______ The ecologist John Terborgh and a colleague Carel P. van Schaik, have described a four-stage process of landscape conversion that they call the land-use cascade. The successive stages are: (1) wildlands, encompassing native floral and faunal communities altered little or not at all by human impact; (2)extensively used areas, such as natural grasslands lightly grazed, savanna kept open for prey animals by infrequent human-set fires, or forests sparsely worked by slash-and-burn farmers at low density;(3)intensively used areas, meaning crop fields, plantations, village commons, travel corridors, urban and industrial zones; and finally(4)degraded land, formerly useful but now abused beyond value to anybody. 【R3】______ Among all forms of landscape conversion, pushing tropical forest from the wildlands category to the intensively used category has the greatest impact on biological diversity. You can see it in the central Amazon, where big tracts of rain forest have been felled and burned, in a largely futile attempt to pasture cattle on sun-hardened clay. By the middle of the next century, if trend continue, tropical forest will exist virtually nowhere outside of protected areas—that is, national parks, wildlife refuges, and other official reserves. 【R4】______ Human population growth will make a bad situation worse by putting ever more pressure on all available land. The annual increase is now 80 million people, with most of that increment coming in less developed countries. According to the UN's middle estimate, human population will rise from the present 5. 9 billion to 9. 4 billion by the year 2050, then to 10. 8 billion by 2150, before leveling off there at the end of the twenty-second century. Anyone interested in the future of biological diversity needs to think about the pressures these people will face, and the pressures they will exert in return. 【R5】______ That direction, necessarily, will be toward ever more desperate exploitation of landscape. Even Noah's Ark only manages to rescue paired animals, not large parcels of habitat. The jeopardy of the ecological fragments that we presently cherish as parks, refuges, and reserves is already severe, due to internal and external forces: internal, because insularity itself leads to ecological unraveling; and external, because those areas are still under siege by needy and covetous people. We shouldn't take comfort in assuming that at least Yellowstone National Park will still harbor bears in the year 2150, that at least Royal Chitwan in Nepal will still harbor tigers and Gir in India will still harbor lions. Those predator populations, arid other species down the cascade, are likely to disappear. "Wildness" will be a word applicable only to urban turmoil. Lions, tigers, and bears will exist in zoos. Nature won't come to an end, but it will look very different.

After a long delay, she______replying to my e-mail.

Teachers of elementary schools are giving more weight to nurturing a student's talent in China.

{{B}}Part Ⅰ Oral Communication{{/B}}

BPaper TwoTranslation/B

{{B}}WritingDirections: In this part, you are to write within 30 minutes a composition of no less than 150 words on the following topic. You could follow the clues suggested by the picture given below. Remember to write the composition clearly on the ANSWER SHEET.{{/B}}

The fun of playing the game was a greater incentive than the prize.

Do you know that all human beings have a "comfortable zone" regulating the distance they stand from someone when they talk? This distance varies in interesting ways among people of different cultures. Greeks, others of the Eastern Mediterranean, and many of those from South America normally stand close together when they talk, often moving their faces even closer as they warm up in a conversation. North Americans find this awkward and often back away a few inches. Studies have found that they tend to feel most comfortable at about 21 inches apart. In much of Asia and Africa, there is even more space between two speakers in conversation. This greater space subtly lends an air of dignity and respect. This matter of space is nearly always unconscious, but it is interesting to observe. This difference applies also to the closeness with which people sit together, the extent which they lean over one another in conversation, how they move as they argue, or make an emphatic point. In the United States, for example, people try to keep their bodies apart even in a crowded elevator; in Paris they take it as it comes! Although North Americans have a relatively wide "comfortable zone" for talking, they communicate, a great deal with their hands—not only with gestures but also with touch. They put a sympathetic hand on a person's shoulder to demonstrate warmth of feeling or an arm around him in sympathy; they nudge a man in the ribs to emphasize a funny story; they pat an arm in reassurance or stroke a child's head in affection, they readily take someone's arm to help him across a street or direct him along an unfamiliar route. To many people—especially those from Asia or the Muslim countries—such bodily contact is unwelcome, especially if inadvertently done with the left-hand. (The left hand carries no special significance in the U. S. Many Americans are simply left-handed and use that hand more.)

There are hidden factors which scientists call "feedback mechanisms". No one knows quite how they will interact with the changing climate. Here's one example: plants and animals adapt to climate change over centuries. At the current estimate of half a degree centigrade of warming per decade, vegetation(植物)may not keep up. Climatologist James Hansen predicts climate zones will shift toward the poles by 50 to 75 kilometres a year— faster than trees can naturally migrate. Species that find themselves in an unfamiliar environment will die. The 1,000-kilometre-wide strip of forest running through Canada, the USSR and Scandinavia could be cut by half. Millions of dying trees would soon lead to massive forest fires, releasing tons of CO 2 and further boosting global warming. There are dozens of other possible "feedback mechanisms". Higher temperatures will fuel condensation and increase cloudiness, which may actually damp down global warming. Others, like the "albedo" effect, will do the opposite. The "albedo" effect is the amount of solar energy reflected by the earth's surface. As northern ice and snow melts and the darker sea and land pokes(戳)through, more heat will be absorbed, adding to the global temperature increase. Even if we were to magically stop all greenhouse-gas emissions tomorrow the impact on global climate would continue for decades. Delay will simply make the problem worse. The fact is that some of us are doing quite well the way things are. In the developed world prosperity has been built on 150 years of cheap fossil fuels. Material progress has been linked to energy consumption. Today 75 percent of all the world's energy is consumed by a quarter of the world's population. The average rich world resident adds about 3. 2 tons of CO 2 yearly to the atmosphere, more than four times the level added by each Third World citizen. The US, with just 7 percent of the global population, is responsible for 22 percent of global warming.

Lateral thinking(迂回思维), first described by Edward de Bone in 1967, is just a few years older than Edward' s son. You might imagine that Caspar was raised to be an adventurous thinker, but the de Bone was so famous, Caspar's parents worried that any time he would say something bright at school, his teachers might snap, "Where do you get that idea from?" "We had to be careful and not overdo it," Edward admits. Now Caspar is at Oxford—which once looked unlikely because he is also slightly dyslexic(诵读困难). In fact, when he was applying to Oxford, none of his school teachers thought he had a chance. "So then we did several thinking sessions," his father says, "using my techniques and, when he went up for the exam, he did extremely well. " Soon after, Edward de Bone decided to write his latest book, Teach Your Child How to Think, in which he transforms the thinking skills he developed for brainstorming businessmen into informal exercises for parents and children to share. Thinking is traditionally regarded as something executed in a logical sequence, and everybody knows that children aren't very logical. So isn't it an uphill battle, trying to teach them to think? "You know," Edward de Bone says, "if you examine people's thinking, it is quite unusual to find faults of logic. But the faults of perception are huge! Often we think ineffectively because we take too limited a view. " Teach Your Child How to Think offers lessons in perception improvement, of clearly seeing the implications of something you are saying and of exploring the alternatives.

【T9】

Some of the most popular attractions across America are the many free concerts offered to the public throughout the year. These involve not only amateur performers, but professional artists as well. The public parks of many cities across the country usually have bandstands and large lawns. As a service to citizens, they rent out space to performers free of charge. Amateur groups, with nothing more than a desire to perform, offer their talents freely to the public. Semi-professional artists are pleased to get the chance to perform before the public to perfect their craft and nurture the hope of being discovered before beginning a professional career. Famous professionals also give free concerts to make contact with their admiring fans. Often such concerts are sponsored by a large corporate organization and offered to the public free of charge as a cultural service and support for the arts. The free concerts feature all kinds of music from rock and roll, jazz, country-western to the classics. In addition, free performances may include the plays of Shakespeare or experimental theater of modern dramatists. In New York's Central Park there has long been a summer Shakespeare festival which draws huge crowds to the free performances. Of these concerts the ones held on a summer evening in the park are the most popular. They take on a festive air. Friends and groups gather together after work and spread out a blanket on the lawn facing the performers' stage. The early comers get the best locations and enjoy a picnic supper while it is still daylight. The free seating is on a first come basis. Therefore, by the time the concert begins, as many as five thousand or more people may be in attendance. The concerts usually begin at 8 p. m. and are performed under the stars. The sound is made sufficiently loud so that no matter where one chooses to sit, he can hear very well. The only disturbance may be the sound of an overhead airplane on its final approach to an airport or the far-off siren (警笛声) of an ambulance on its way to the hospital. This matters little! What counts is to soak up the atmosphere created by the music and to be with friends in the fresh open air. The best part of it all is that it's free!

Oxford and Cambridge University Boat Clubs have both taken the opportunity to travel to Spain this month to train in less testing weather conditions than those which have, quite literally, already blown around the UK in January of 2007. Each group of athletes has been focused on training to the maximum, working on technique and molding themselves into two potential fighting units per Club for the 2007 Boat Race, sponsored by Xchanging. One set will be in the Blue Boat for each club and one set will race as reserves in Isis, for Oxford, and Goldie, for Cambridge. In these modern times, the Head Coach for each club has a huge input on selection even though the crew is still named by the President. Just twenty years ago the balance was not quite the same. The year 1987 will always be remembered in the history of this great Race as the year of the "mutiny" at Oxford. It is a tale which has since been retold and reworked in both a book and a movie. This was the season for which mature Scottish student, Donald Macdonald, was elected President, having all ready won a Blue in 1986. Macdonald reappointed Daniel Topolski (now a renowned rowing journalist and broadcaster) as Chief Coach. Part of the 1986/87 squad at Oxford included American Chris Clark, now a coach at an American University, and four fellow US internationals. Allegedly, a split appeared in the squad between the American quintet , all experienced and leading oarsmen, and those rowers closest to MacDonald. The Scot's group were happy to follow Topolski's regime whilst the others were not so sure. Following a contentious seat racing trial in January of 1987, Topolski decided to move Clark to the bow-side of the beat. Clark disagreed. Topolski held firm. As a result Clark and his "group" within the squad decided not to row and sought a takeover. The squabble was played out extensively in the UK national media and caught the public imagination. MacDonald sought support from the college captains and eventually won a vote of confidence by 28 votes to 11. Without the Americans, the Oxford crew was immediately considered a lost cause. Cambridge were overwhelming favorites to win. As it turned out, though, this was a Race which would prove why sport, and particularly The Boat Race, can be so fascinating.

Panic swept through the swimmers as they caught sight of a huge shark approaching menacingly.

He is a rare celebrity scientist. He's even had a TV cameo role (小角色) in Star Trek in which he plays poker with scientific icons (偶像) Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein. Yet when asked about comparisons between himself and the two scientists, he calls it all "media hype (炒作). " Once asked how he felt about being labeled the world's smartest person, he responded: "It is very embarrassing. It is rubbish, just media hype. They just want a hero, and I fill the role model of a disabled genius. At least I am disabled, but I am no genius. " Hawking has ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease, a neuromuscular disease that progressively weakens muscle control. He gets around in a wheelchair, and after completely losing the use of his vocal chords in an operation to assist his breathing in 1985, he communicates through a computer. A speech synthesizer "speaks" for him after he punches in what he wants to say, selecting words in the computer software by pressing a switch with his hand. Unfortunately, it makes him sound like he has an American accent, he says. Despite his humorous, self-effacing manner, Hawking is one of the world's leading theoretical physicists. Many consider him to be the most brilliant since Einstein. Since 1979, he's held the post of Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge University— which was once held by Isaac Newton no less—and has twelve honorary degrees. He's also a best-selling author. His book, A Brief History of Time, has been translated into 33 languages and has sold nine million copies. For much of his academic life, Hawking has been among a group of theoretical physicists searching for a "theory of everything"—one unified scientific theory that explains the big cosmological questions like How did the universe begin? Why is the universe the way it is? and How will it end? You are probably familiar with the existing theories, such as the Big Bang theory. However, these theories are inconsistent with each other. So Hawking—among a group of theoretical physicists—has been on a quest to come up with a theory of quantum (量子) gravity that would incorporate these theories—the theory of everything (TOE)—which would solve the problem of what caused the universe to start expanding. How successful have the world's leading cosmologists been? Hawking predicts we'll have the TOE in the next 20 years.