BSection I Use of EnglishDirections: Read the following text. Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C or D./B
Directions:Writeanessaybasedonthechart.Inyourwriting,youshould1)describethechart,and2)giveyourcomments.Youshouldwriteabout150words.
BPart BDirections: Write an essay of 160-200 words based on the following information./B
BSection III Writing/B
Crippling health care bills, long emergency-room waits and the inability to find a primary care physician just scratch the surface of the problems that patients face daily. Primary care should be the backbone of any health care system. Countries with appropriate primary care resources score highly when it comes to health outcomes and cost. The U.S. takes the opposite approach by emphasizing the specialist rather than the primary care physician. A recent study analyzed the providers who treat Medicare beneficiaries (老年医保受惠人). The startling finding was that the average Medicare patient saw a total of seven doctors—two primary care physicians and five specialists—in a given year. Contrary to popular belief, the more physicians taking care of you don't guarantee better care. Actually, increasing fragmentation of care results in a corresponding rise in cost and medical errors. How did we let primary care slip so far? The key is how doctors are paid. Most physicians are paid whenever they perform a medical service. The more a physician does, regardless of quality or outcome, the better he's reimbursed (返还费用). Moreover, the amount a physician receives leans heavily toward medical or surgical procedures. A specialist who performs a procedure in a 30-minute visit can be paid three times more than a primary care physician using that same 30 minutes to discuss a patient's disease. Combine this fact with annual government threats to indiscriminately cut reimbursements, physicians are faced with no choice but to increase quantity to boost income. Primary care physicians who refuse to compromise quality are either driven out of business or to cash-only practices, further contributing to the decline of primary care. Medical students are not blind to this scenario. They see how heavily the reimbursement deck is stacked against primary care. The recent numbers show that since 1997, newly graduated U.S. medical students who choose primary care as a career have declined by 50%. This trend results in emergency rooms being overwhelmed with patients without regular doctors. How do we fix this problem? It starts with reforming the physician reimbursement system. Remove the pressure for primary care physicians to squeeze in more patients per hour, and reward them for optimally (最佳地) managing their diseases and practicing evidence-based medicine. Make primary care more attractive to medical students by forgiving student loans for those who choose primary care as a career and reconciling the marked difference between specialist and primary care physician salaries. We're at a point where primary care is needed more than ever. Within a few years, the first wave of the 76 million Baby Boomers will become eligible for Medicare. Patients older than 85, who need chronic care most, will rise by 50% this decade. Who will be there to treat them?
For more than two decades, U.S. courts have been limiting affirmative-action programs in universities and other areas. The legal rationale is that racial preferences are unconstitutional, even those intended to compensate for racism or intolerance. For many colleges, this means students can be admitted only on merit, not on their race or ethnicity. It has been a divisive issue across the U.S., as educators blame the prolonged reaction to affirmative-action for declines in minority admissions. Meanwhile, activists continue to battle race preferences in courts from Michigan to North Carolina. Now, chief executives of about two dozen companies have decided to plunge headfirst into this politically unsettled debate. They, together with 36 universities and 7 non-profitable organizations, formed a forum that set forth an action plan essentially designed to help colleges circumvent court-imposed restrictions on affirmative action. The CEOs' motive: "Our audience is growing more diverse, so the communities we serve benefit if our employees are racially and ethnically diverse as well" , says one CEO of a company that owns nine television stations. Among the steps the forum is pushing; finding creative yet legal ways to boost minority enrollment through new admissions policies; promoting admissions decisions that look at more than test scores; and encouraging universities to step up their minority outreach and financial aid. And to counter accusations by critics to challenge these tactics in court, the group says it will give legal assistance to colleges sued for trying them. "Diversity diminished by the court must be made up for in other legitimate, legal ways, " says, a forum member. One of the more controversial methods advocated is the so-called 10% rule. The idea is for public universities—which educate three-quarters of all U.S. undergraduates—to admit students who are in the top 10% of their high school graduating class. Doing so allows colleges to take minorities who excel in average urban schools, even if they wouldn't have made the cut under the current statewide ranking many universities use.
Directions:Writeanessaybasedonthediagram.Inyourwriting,youshould1)describethediagram,and2)giveyourcomments.Youshouldwriteabout150words.
Anonymity is not something which was invented with the Internet. Anonymity and pseudonymity has occurred throughout history. For example, William Shakespeare is probably a pseudonym, and the real name of this 【C1】______ author is not known and will probably never be known. Anonymity has been used for many purposes. A well-known person may use a pseudonym to write messages, where the person does not want people' s【C2】______of the real author【C3】______their perception of the message. Also other people may want to【C4】______certain information about themselves in order to achieve a more 【C5】______ evaluation of their messages. A case in point is that in history it has been【C6】______that women used male pseudonyms, and for Jews to use pseudonyms in societies where their 【C7】______ was persecuted. Anonymity is often used to protect the 【C8】______ of people, for example when reporting results of a scientific study, when describing individual cases. Many countries even have laws which protect anonymity in certain circumstances. For instance, a person may, in many countries, consult a priest, doctor or lawyer and【C9】______personal information which is protected. In some【C10】______, for example confession in catholic churches, the confession booth is specially【C11】______to allow people to consult a priest,【C12】______seeing him face to face. The anonymity in【C13】______situations is however not always 100%. If a person tells a lawyer that he plans a【C14】______crime, some countries allow or even【C15】______that the lawyer tell the【C16】______. The decision to do so is not easy, since people who tell a priest or a psychologist that they plan a crime, may often do this to【C17】______their feeling more than their real intention. Many countries have laws protecting the anonymity of tip-offs to newspapers. It is regarded as【C18】______that people can give tips to newspapers about abuse, even though they are dependent【C19】______the organization they are criticizing and do not dare reveal their real name. Advertisement in personal sections in newspapers are also always signed by a pseudonym for【C20】______reasons.
BPart CDirections: Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese./B
BSection III Writing/B
Directions:Writeanessaybasedonthechart.Inyourwriting,youshould1)interpretthechart,and2)giveyourcomments.Youshouldwriteabout150words.
When next year's crop of high-school graduates arrive at Oxford University in the fall of 2009, they'll be joined by a new face: Andrew Hamilton, the 55-year-old provost (教务长) of Yale, who'll become Oxford's vice-chancellor—a position equivalent to university president in America. Hamilton isn't the only educator crossing the Atlantic. Schools in France, Egypt, Singapore, etc. have also recently made top-level hires from abroad. Higher education has become a big and competitive business nowadays, and like so many businesses, it's gone global. Yet the talent flow isn't universal. High-level personnel tend to head in only one direction: outward from America. The chief reason is that American schools don't tend to seriously consider looking abroad. For example, when the board of the University of Colorado searched for a new president, it wanted a leader familiar with the state government, a major source of the university's budget. "We didn't do any global consideration," says Patricia Hayes, the board's chair. The board ultimately picked Bruce Benson, a 69-year-old Colorado businessman and political activist who is likely to do well in the main task of modern university presidents: fund-raising. Fund-raising is a distinctively American thing, since U. S. schools rely heavily on donations. The fund-raising ability is largely a product of experience and necessity. Many European universities, meanwhile, are still mostly dependent on government funding. But government support has failed to keep pace with rising student number. The decline in government support has made funding-raising an increasing necessary ability among administrators and has hiring committees hungry for Americans. In the past few years, prominent schools around the world have joined the trend. In 2003, when Cambridge University appointed Alison Richard, another former Yale provost, as its vice-chancellor, the university publicly stressed that in her previous job she had overseen "a major strengthening of Yale's financial position." Of course, fund-raising isn't the only skill outsiders offer. The globalization of education means more universities will be seeking heads with international experience of some kind to promote international programs and attract a global student body. Foreigners can offer a fresh perspective on established practices.
BSection II Reading Comprehension/B
Scientists say they have found a way to turn body fat into a better type of fat that burns off calories and weight. The US Johns Hopkins team made the【C1】______in rats but believe the same could be done in humans, offering the hope of a new way to treat obesity. 【C2】______the expression of a protein linked to【C3】______not only reduced the animals" calorie intake and weight, but also【C4】______their fat composition. Brown fat is【C5】______in babies, which they use as a【C6】______source to generate body heat,【C7】______calories at the same time. But as we age our brown fat largely【C8】______and gets replaced by "bad" white fat, which【C9】______sits as a spare tyre around the waist. "We will need a lot more work to tease this out, but it could offer a(n)【C10】______way to develop new treatments for obesity", an expert said. Experts have【C11】______that stimulating the body to make more brown fat【C12】______white fat could be a helpful way to control weight and【C13】______obesity and its related health problems. Various teams have been searching for a way to do this, and Dr Sheng Bi and colleagues at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine believe they may have cracked it. They designed an experiment to see【C14】______suppressing an appetite-stimulating protein called NPY would decrease body weight in rats. When they silenced NPY in the brains of the rats they found their appetite and food【C15】______decreased. Even when the rats were fed a very【C16】______, high-fat diet they still managed to keep more weight【C17】______than rats who had fully functioning NPY. The scientists then checked the fat【C18】______of the rats and found an interesting change had occurred. In the rats with silenced NPY expression, some of the bad white fat had been replaced with good brown fat. The researchers are【C19】______that it may be possible to achieve the same effect in people by injecting brown fat stem cells【C20】______the skin to burn white fat and stimulate weight loss.
BPart CDirections: Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese./B
Most of us are happy to have long holidays, such as Labor Day, National Day and Spring Festival. But there are also some disadvantages of a long holiday. In this section, you are asked to write an essay on a major advantage/disadvantage of a long holiday. You can take either stand and provide specific reasons and examples to support your idea. You should write at least 150 words.
BPart BDirections: Write an essay of 160-200 words based on the following information./B
BSection I Use of EnglishDirections: Read the following text. Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C or D./B
BSection II Reading Comprehension/B
The mythology of a culture can provide some vital insights into the beliefs and values of that culture. By using fantastic and sometimes incredible stories to create an oral tradition by which to explain the wonders of the natural world and teach lessons to younger generations, a society exposes those ideas and concepts held most important. Just as important as the final lesson to be gathered from the stories, however, are the characters and the roles they play in conveying that message. Perhaps the epitome of mythology and its use as a tool to pass on cultural values can be found in Aesop' s Fables, told and retold during the era of the Greek Empire. Aesop, a slave who won the favor of the court through his imaginative and descriptive tales, almost exclusively used animals to fill the roles in his short stories. Humans, when at all present, almost always played the part of bumbling fools struggling to learn the lesson being presented. This choice of characterization allows us to see that the Greeks placed wisdom on a level slightly beyond humans, implying that deep wisdom and understanding is a universal quality sought by, rather than steanning from, human beings. Aesop's fables illustrated the central themes of humility and self-reliance, reflecting the importance of those traits in early Greek society. The folly of humans was used to contrast against the ultimate goal of attaining a higher level of understanding and awareness of truths about nature and humanity. For example, one notable fable features a fox repeatedly trying to reach a bunch of grapes on a very high vine. After failing at several attempts, the fox gives up, making up its mind that the grapes were probably sour anyway. The fable' s lesson, that we often play down that which we can' t achieve so as to make ourselves feel better, teaches the reader or listener in an entertaining way about one of the weaknesses of the human psyche. The mythology of other cultures and societies reveal the underlying traits of their respective cultures just as Aesop' s fables did. The stories of Roman gods, Aztec ghosts and European elves all served to train ancient generations those lessons considered most important to their community, and today they offer a powerful looking glass by which to evaluate and consider the contextual environment in which those culture existed.