BPart B/B

Look at your smartphone. Think about the decisions you will make on it today. You may snatch a dinner【C1】______, tell your spouse you"re running late, or【C2】______a response to an email from your boss. But you might also decide that the light【C3】______the trees is worth an Instagram. You may write something on Facebook about the【C4】______of seeing your 5-year-old make a new friend at the park, or the frustration of watching your father get old and need to move into a home. You may choose a song on Spotify,【C5】______a movie on Netflix, or open a Kindle book. You may decide how to【C6】______a photo to send to a friend or lover. It"s easy to think of our【C7】______revolutions as purely technological achievements.【C8】______microprocessors let everyone have a PC at home. Internet allowed computers to talk to each other. But that doesn"t【C9】______the reasons these breakthroughs mattered so much to us. At their core, these were also creative revolutions. The PC didn"t truly touch us【C10】______the rise of desktop publishing, followed by the rise of multimedia development tools, followed by the rise of web development tools. Its emotional power arrived with the ability to create amazing things on it.【C11】______, the Internet revolution really took off when we used it not just to download facts and figures but as a【C12】______to share music, writing, movies, and pictures. The number one site on the web may be Google,【C13】______number two and three are Facebook and YouTube,【C14】______—both primarily outlets for personal【C15】______. We created the desktop computer and the Internet as tools for efficiency, productivity, and communication. But they came to have real meaning for us【C16】______our natural creative drive took them over. Now it"s the phone"s turn. The smartphone began with a promise of productivity. Smartphones let us send messages【C17】______launching a computer, that"s what made them【C18】______. The smartphone, like the PC and the Internet before it, has【C19】______a unique outlet for our creative impulses, and it will【C20】______our creative lives even more fundamentally.

BPart ADirections: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D./B

Successful sports professionals can earn a great deal more money than people in other important professions. Some people think it is fully justified, while others think it is unfair. Which side do you agree with? In this section, you are asked to write an essay on sports professionals" earning. You can take either stand and provide specific reasons and examples to support your idea. You should write at least 150 words.

European regulators have contributed to their banks" decline, in two ways. First, they are specifying how much banks can pay in bonuses relative to base pay. Second, they are trying to force banks to hold more capital and to make it easier to allow them to fail by, for instance, separating their retail deposits from their wholesale businesses. The first approach is foolish. It will drive up the fixed costs of Europe"s banks and reduce their flexibility to cut expenses in downturns(低迷时期). They will therefore struggle to compete in America or fast-growing Asian markets with foreign rivals that have the freedom to pay the going rate. The second approach is sensible. Switzerland and Britain are making progress in ending the implicit taxpayer subsidy that supports banks that are too big to fail. The collapse of Ireland"s economy is warning enough of what happens when governments feel compelled to help out banks that weaken their economies. Some European bankers argue that the continent needs investment-banking champions. Yet it is not obvious that European firms or taxpayers gain from having national banks that are good at packaging and selling American subprime loans(次级贷款). Indeed, it is American taxpayers and investors who should worry about the dominance of a few Wall Street firms. They bear the main risk of future bail-outs(紧急援助). They would benefit from greater competition in investment banking. IPO fees are much higher in America than elsewhere, mainly because the market is dominated by a few big investment banks. Wall Street"s new titans say they are already penalised by new international rules that insist they have somewhat bigger capital buffers(缓冲)than smaller banks because they pose a greater risk to economies if they fail. Yet the huge economies of scale and implicit subsidies from being too big to fail more than offset(抵消)the cost of the buffers. Increasing the capital surcharges for big banks would do more for the stability of the financial system than the thicket of Dodd-Frank rules ever will. Five years on from the frightening summer of 2008, America"s big banks are back, and that is a good thing. But there are still things that could make Wall Street safer.

"It's such a simple thing," said John Spitzer, managing director of equipment standards for the United States Golf Association. "I'm amazed that so many people spend so much time and energy on trying to change it" The simple thing to which he refers is the humble golf tee, a peg made of wood that most of us grab by the handful or buy for a few pennies each, stick in our pockets, and don't give a second thought to. The road to the tee began with a Boston-area dentist named George F. Grant, who received a patent in 1899 for "an Improvement in Golf-Tees." Grant's tees consisted of a small piece of rubber tubing attached to a tapered wooden peg to be pushed into the ground. The rubber held the ball, and yielded when the club contacted it. He had them produced by a nearby manufacturing concern and gave them out to his friends but never tried to sell or market them. That fell to William Lowell—another tooth doctor, coincidentally—who created the Reddy Tee in 1921. It was a one-piece implement of solid wood, painted red at the top so it could be easily found and cleverly named. He paid Walter Hagen and trick-shot artist Joe Kirkwood to endorse and use the device, and it was a commercial success, with more than $100,000 in sales by the time it was patented in 1925. The introduction of the oversize metal driver in the 1980s led most golfers to adopt longer tees to go along with the larger and higher sweet spot of those clubs. The USGA has banned tees longer than 4 inches, a height that is well past the point of diminishing returns. Even back in the 1960s, Jack Nicklaus understood the value of teeing the ball high, which he explained by saying, "Through years of experience I have found that air offers less resistance than dirt." Golfers who have fairly steep swings (like me) break a lot of tees. We can only envy the legendary Canadian pro Moe Norman, who could play for weeks with a single tee. When his playing partners asked him how he managed to stripe his drives without dislodging the peg, he answered, "I'm trying to hit the ball, not the tee." So are we all, Moe. So are we all.

Some historians say that the most important contribution of Dwight Eisenhower' s presidency (总统任期) in the 1950s was the U.S. interstate highway system. It was a【C1】______ project, easily surpassing the scale of such previous human【C2】______ as the Panama Canal. Eisenhower's interstate highways【C3】______ the nation together in new ways and【C4】______ major economic growth by making commerce less【C5】______ . Today, an information superhighway has been built—an electronic network that【C6】______ libraries, corporations, government agencies and【C7】______ . This electronic superhighway is called the Internet,【C8】______ it is the backbone (主干) of the World Wide Web. The Internet had its【C9】______ in a 1969 U. S. Defense Department computer network called ARPAnet, which【C10】______ Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. The Pentagon built the network for military contractors and universities doing military research to【C11】______ information. In 1983 the National Science Foundation (NSF) ,【C12】______ mission is to promote science, took over. This new NSF network【C13】______ more and more institutional users, many of【C14】______ had their own internal networks. For example, most universities that【C15】______ the NSF network had intra-campus computer networks. The NSF network【C16】______ became a connector for thousands of other networks.【C17】______ a backbone system that interconnects networks, Internet was a name that fit. So we can see that the Internet is the wired infrastructure (基础设施) on which web【C18】______ move. It began as a military communication system, which expanded into a government-funded【C19】______ research network. Today, the Internet is a user-financed system tying institutions of many sorts together【C20】______ an " information superhighway".

Aging poses a serious challenge to OECD (Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development) countries, in particular, how to pay for future public pension liabilities. And early retirement places an【C1】______burden on pension financing. There is no easy solution, but【C2】______retirement could help. Early retirement may seem like a【C3】______individual goal, but it is a socially expensive one, and makes the present public pension system difficult to sustain for long. The【C4】______reason is that more people are retiring early and living longer. That means more retirees depending on the funding of those in work for their【C5】______, The【C6】______is worrying. In the next 50 years, low fertility rates and rising life expectancy in OECD countries will cause this old-age dependency rate to roughly double in size. Public pension payments, which【C7】______30c80 % of total retirement incomes in OECD countries, are【C8】______to rise, on average, by over three percentage points in GDP and by as much as eight percentage points in some countries. 【C9】______is the pressure on pension funds that there is a danger of today's workers not getting the pensions they expected or felt they【C10】______for. Action is needed,【C11】______simply aiming to reduce the【C12】______(and cost) of public pensions, or trying to【C13】______the role of privately funded pensions within the system, though necessary steps, may be【C14】______to deal with the dependency challenge. After years of 【C15】______early retirement schemes to avoid【C16】______and higher unemployment, many governments are now looking【C17】______persuading people to stay in work until they are older.【C18】______, the thinking goes, if we are healthier now and jobs are physically less【C19】______and unemployment is down, then perhaps the【C20】______rate should rise a new.

In spite of "endless talk of difference," American society is an amazing machine for homogenizing people. There is" the democratizing uniformity of dress and discourse, and the casualness and absence of deference" characteristic of popular culture. People are absorbed into "a culture of consumption" launched by the 19th-century department stores that offered " vast arrays of goods in an elegant atmosphere. Instead of intimate shops catering to a knowledgeable elite, "these were stores" anyone could enter, regardless of class or background. This turned shopping into a public and democratic act." The mass media, advertising and sports are other forces for homogenization. Immigrants are quickly fitting into this common culture, which may not be altogether elevating but is hardly poisonous. Writing for the National Immigration Forum, Gregory Rodriguez reports that today's immigration is neither at unprecedented levels nor resistant to assimilation. In 1998 immigrants were 9.8 percent of population; in 1990,13.6 percent. In the 10 years prior to 1990,3.1 immigrants arrived for every 1,000 residents; in the 10 years prior to 1890,9.2 for every 1 ,000.Now,consider three indices of assimilation—language, home ownership and intermarriage. The 1990 Census revealed that "a majority of immigrants from each of the fifteen most common countries of origin spoke English 'well' or 'very well' after ten years of residence. "The children of immigrants tend to be bilingual and proficient in English. "By the third generation, the original language is lost in the majority of immigrant families." Hence the description of America as a" graveyard" for languages. By 1996 foreign-born immigrants who had arrived before 1970 had a home ownership rate of 75.6 percent, higher than the 69.8 percent rate among native-born Americans. Foreign-born Asians and Hispanics" have higher rates of intermarriage than do U.S.-born whites and blacks." By the third generation, one third of Hispanic women are married to non-Hispanics, and 41 percent of Asian-American women are married to non-Asians. Rodriguez notes that children in remote villages around the world are fans of superstars like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Garth Brooks, yet "some Americans fear that immigrants living within the United States remain somehow immune to the nation' s assimilative power." Are there divisive issues and pockets of seething anger in America? Indeed. It is big enough to have a bit of everything. But particularly when viewed against America's turbulent past, today's social indices hardly suggest a dark and deteriorating social environment.

BSection II Reading Comprehension/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 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

In the 20th century the planet's population doubled twice. It will not double even once in the【C1】______century, because birth rates in much of the world have【C2】______steeply. But the number of people over 65 is set to【C3】______within just 25 years. This shift in the structure of the population is not as momentous as the【C4】______that came before. But it is more than enough to reshape the world economy. 【C5】______the UN's population【C6】______, the standard source for demographic estimates, there are a-round 600m people aged 65 or older【C7】______today. That is in itself remarkable; the author Fred Pearce claims it is【C8】______that half of all the humans who have ever been over 65 are alive today. But【C9】______a share of the total population, at 8%, it is not that【C10】______to what it was a few decades ago. By 2035,【C11】______, more than 1. 1 billion people—13% of the population—will be above the age of 65. This is a【C12】______result of the dropping birth rates that are slowing overall population growth; they mean there are【C13】______fewer young people around. The "old-age dependency ratio"—the ratio of old people to those of working age—will【C14】______even faster. In 2010 the world had 16 people aged 65 and over for every 100 adults between the ages of 25 and 64,【C15】______the same ratio it had in 1980. By 2035 the UN【C16】______that number to have risen to 26. In rich countries it will be much higher. Japan will have 69 old people for every 100 of working age by 2035, Germany 66.【C17】______America, which has a relatively high【C18】______rate, will see its old-age dependency rate rise by more than 70% , to 44. Developing countries,【C19】______today's ratio is much lower, will not see absolute levels rise that high;【C20】______the proportional growth will be higher. Over the same time period the old-age dependency rate in China will more than double from 15 to 36. Latin America will see a shift from 14 to 27.

BSection II Reading Comprehension/B

Writeanessaybasedonthefollowingchart.Inyourwriting,youshould1)interpretthechart,2)explainthephenomenon,and3)giveyourcomments.Youshouldwriteabout150wordsontheANSWERSHEET.(15points)

BPart CDirections: Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese./B

BSection II Reading Comprehension/B

BPart CDirections: Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese./B

A recent study, which was published in last week's Journal of the American Medical Association, offers a picture of how risky it is to get a lift from a teenage driver. Indeed, a 16-year-old driver with three or more passengers is three times as likely to have a fatal accident as a teenager driving alone. By contrast, the risk of death for the drivers between 30 and 59 decreases with each additional passenger. The authors also found that the death rates for teenage drivers increased dramatically after 10 p.m., and especially after midnight. With passengers in the car, the driver was even more likely to die in a late-night accident. Robert Foss, a scientist at the University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center, says the higher death rates for teenage drivers have less to do with " really stupid behavior" than with just a lack of driving experience. "The basic issue" he says, "is that adults who are responsible for issuing licenses fail to recognize how complex and skilled a task driving is." Both he and the author of the study believe that the way to mitigate (使……缓解)the problem is to have states institute so-called graduated licensing systems, in which getting a license is a multistage process. A graduated license requires that a teenager should first prove himself capable of driving in the presence of an adult, followed by a period of driving with night or passenger restrictions, before graduating to full driving privileges. Graduated licensing systems have reduced teenage driver crashes, according to recent studies. About half of the states now have some sort of graduated licensing system in place, but only 10 of those states have restrictions on passengers. California is the strictest, with a novice(新手) driver prohibited from carrying any passenger under 20 (without the presence of an adult over 25) for the first six months.

BPart B/B