BPart B/B

BSection III Writing/B

BPart ADirections: Write a composition/letter of no less than 100 words on the following information./B

Directions:Writeanessaybasedonthefollowingtable.Inyourwriting,youshould1)describethetable,and2)giveyourcomments.Youshouldwriteabout150words.

Write an email of about 100 words to a newspaper editor to advocate people to be responsible for their words on the Internet. You should include the details you think necessary. You should write neatly on the ANSWER SHEET. Do not use your own name. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write the address. (10 points)

BSection III Writing/B

Directions:Writeanessaybasedonthechart.Inyourwriting,youshould1)interpretthechart,and2)giveyourcomments.Youshouldwriteabout150words.

When school officials and unions work together, students have a real chance to come out on top. That was clear this week【C1】______the State Education Department and New York's teachers' unions【C2】______agreement on a rigorous teacher evaluation system. The Legislature should quickly approve the【C3】______. It would improve New York's schools and the state's chances in the second round of the federal Race to the Top competition for hundreds of millions of dollars in e-ducation【C4】______. The proposal, which resembles one developed through a(n)【C5】______partnership in New Haven, does away with the poor evaluation system【C6】______which teachers are observed briefly in the classroom and【C7】______the most ineffective ones regularly receive glowing ratings. The new system would require more【C8】______monitoring and would finally take student【C9】______into account. Teachers would eventually be【C10】______on a 100-point scale, with 25 points based on how much students improve on the【C11】______state exams and 15 percent based on locally selected measures. The【C12】______part of the e-valuation would be locally determined, consistent with state regulations, and could include such things as evaluations by a school principal, peer observations, a teacher's ability to【C13】______lesson plans and so on. Teachers would be【C14】______as highly effective, effective, developing or ineffective. Those who need help would be given【C15】______. Those rated ineffective for two【C16】______years could be fired through a hearing process that would take no longer than 60 days. Right now that process can【C17】______for more than a year. The State Education Department deserves particular praise,【C18】______do the two union presidents, Richard Iannuzzi of New York State United Teachers and Michael Mulgrew of the United Federation of Teachers, the city's union. They worked on this deal even though their members are angry about coming【C19】______Legislature should move swiftly on the bill【C20】______the state can meet the next Race to the Top application deadline. It is due on June 1.

BSection III Writing/B

Three years ago, on January 13th, Rukhsar Khatun, then 15 months old, was diagnosed with polio. She now has a crippled leg and struggles to keep up with her friends. But this little girl, from a West Bengali village, can claim some fame: she is, with luck, the last Indian to be infected with the wild polio virus. Enough time has passed with no new case for India shortly to be certified as free of the pain. That is a big success. India"s anti-polio campaign began in 1995 with severe disadvantages. The country spends little on public health, barely 1% of GDP, and has been awful at immunising children. Too few parents know the basics of hygiene and nutrition, let alone the benefits of vaccines. India has bad sanitation, large remote populations and vast migration from village to slum. Yet much has gone right. The anti-polio campaign received over $ 3 billion, mostly from within India itself, and deployed 2.4m vaccinators. UNICEF, the World Health Organisation(WHO), Rotary International and the Gates Foundation(both charities)gave technical help. Religious leaders reassured people suspicious about vaccinations, and politicians knocked on doors to make sure children took their medicine. At the peak of coverage, 99. 7% of the target population swallowed anti-polio drops, says An-uradha Gupta of the national health ministry. That is surprisingly high, considering that a decade ago "universal" vaccination coverage for seven preventable diseases was a pitiful 30% in Bihar, a big, poor northern state. India"s campaign has been successful enough for its lessons to be applied in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria, the last places with endemic polio. Vaccinators learned to attend especially to mobile populations, like seasonal workers at brick kilns, and found that many migrants are best reached not at home but in bus and railway stations. Good monitoring was crucial, too. In Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, vaccinators visited 60m households several times a year, says Hamid Jafari of the WHO. To compile data on receivers, some 400,000 hard-to-reach population groups were carefully tracked and plotted, down to each household. Data passed early to decision-makers, at the district-official level, allowed a quick response to new cases.

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

Writeanessaybasedonthefollowingpiechart.Inyouressay,youshould1)interpretthepiechartand2)giveyourcomments.Youshouldwriteatleast150wordsontheANSWERSHEET.(15points)

BPart BDirections: Write an essay of 160-200 words based on the following information./B

Who's poor in America? That's a question hard to answer. Hard because there's no conclusive definition of poverty. Low income matters, though how low is unclear. Poverty is also a state of mind that fosters self-defeating behavior—bad work habits, family breakdowns, and addictions. Finally, poverty results from bad luck: accidents, job losses, disability. Despite poverty's messiness, we've measured progress against it by a single statistic: the federal poverty line. By this measure, we haven't made much progress. But the apparent lack of progress is misleading for two reasons. First, it ignores immigration. Many immigrants are poor and low-skilled. They add to the poor. From 1989 to 2007, about three quarters of the increase in the poverty population occurred among Hispanics(西班牙裔美国人) —mostly immigrants and their children. Second, the poor's material well-being has improved. The official poverty measure obscures this by counting only pre-tax cash income and ignoring other sources of support, including food stamps and housing subsidies. Although many poor live from hand to mouth, they've participated in rising living standards. In 2005, 91% had microwaves, 79% air-conditioning, and 48% cell phones. The existing poverty line could be improved by adding some income sources and subtracting some expenses. Unfortunately, the administration's proposal for a "supplemental poverty measure" in 2011 goes beyond that. The new poverty number would compound public confusion. It also raises questions about whether the statistic is tailored to favor a political agenda. The "supplemental measure" ties the poverty threshold to what the poorest third of Americans spend on food, housing, clothing, and utilities. The actual threshold will probably be higher than today's poverty line. Many Americans would find this curious; people get richer, but "poverty" stays stuck. What produces this outcome is a different view of poverty. The present concept is an absolute one: the poverty threshold reflects the amount estimated to meet basic needs. By contrast, the new measure embraces a relative notion of poverty: people are automatically poor if they're a given distance from the top, even if their incomes are increasing. The new indicator is a "propaganda device" to promote income redistribution by showing that poverty is stubborn or increasing. The Census Bureau has estimated statistics similar to the administration's proposal. In 2008, the traditional poverty rate was 13. 2%; estimates of the new statistic range up to 17%. The new poverty statistic exceeds the old, and the gap grows larger over time. As senator Daniel Moynihan said, the administration is defining poverty up. It's reasonable to debate how much we should aid the poor or reduce economic inequality. But the debate should not be swayed by misleading statistics that few Americans could possibly understand. Government statistics should strive for political neutrality. This one fails.

Although Consumers Union concedes that "no confirmed cases of harm to humans from manufactured nanoparticles have been reported", it adds that "there is cause for concern based on several worrisome findings from the limited laboratory and animal research so far." It worries that particles that are nontoxic at normal sizes may become toxic when nanosized; that these nanoparticles, which are already present in cosmetics and food, can more easily "enter the body and its Vital organs, including the brain", than normal particles; and that nanomaterials will linger longer in the environment. All of this really comes down to pointing out that some particles are smaller than others. Size is not a reliable indicator of potential harm to human beings, and nature itself is filled with nanoparticles. But the default assumption of danger from the new is palpable . Anti-nanotech sentiment has not been restricted to Consumers Union's relatively short list of concerns. In France, groups of hundreds of protesters have rallied against even such benign manifestations of the technology as the carbon nanotubules that allow Parkinson' s sufferers to stop tremors by directing medicine to their own brains. In England members of a group called THRONG (The Heavenly Righteous Opposed to Nanotech Greed) have disrupted nanotech business conferences dressed as angels. In 2005 naked protesters appeared in front of an Eddie Bauer store in Chicago to condemn one of the more visible uses of nanotech: stain-resistant pants. These nanopants employ billions of tiny whiskers to create a layer of air above the rest of the fabric, causing liquids to roll off easily. It's not quite what Kurzweil and Crichton had in mind, nor is it "little robots in your pants", as CNN put it. But nanotechnology arguably embraces any item that incorporates engineering at the molecular level, including mundane products like this one. Just as the nano label can be broadly applied to products for branding and attention-grabbing purposes, so too can critics use the label to condemn barely related developments by linking them to the (still hypothetical) problems of nanopollution and gray goo. But there's a danger in thinking of nanotech only in god-or-goo terms. People at both extremes of the controversy fail to appreciate the humble, incremental, yet encouraging progress that nanotech researchers are making. And focusing on dramatic visions of nanotech heaven or hell may foster restrictions that delay or block innovations that can extend and improve our lives.

One reason why shareholder activism has been increasing is that regulators have encouraged it, especially on pay. For a decade Britain has required firms to give shareholders a non-binding annual vote on executive pay. The colossal Dodd-Frank act of 2010 gave shareholders in American companies a " say on pay" , too. Now comes two new moves. On March 3rd the Swiss voted to oblige firms to hold a binding annual vote on director"s pay: in the small print, the referendum also banned golden handshakes and severance packages for board members, and bonuses that encourage the buying or selling of firms. Then on March 5th EU finance ministers(with only Britain objecting)agreed to cap bankers" bonuses to 100% of their basic salary, or 200% if shareholders vote for it. If the Swiss had merely given shareholders an annual vote on pay, it would have been a good thing; but the accompanying bans are not. There are times when a golden handshake to a talented manager can be in shareholders" interests: far better to let the owners vote on it than restrict the firm from trying it. The EU"s proposal has less still to recommend it. The rationale for it is that banking bonuses have encouraged risk taking, because they reward bankers hugely for bets that come off and punish them only slightly for those that don"t. But banks have come a long way since the crisis, by deferring bonuses and making them partly payable in their own debt and equity. Blunt laws could undermine such progress. And bonus caps will either hold pay down, thus sending clever people elsewhere, or push up salaries, thus making pay less responsive to performance. Enpowering shareholders is a good idea; requiring them to channel populist fury is not.

Directions:Writeanessaybasedonthefollowingchart.Inyourwriting,youshould1)interpretthechart,and2)giveyourcomments.Youshouldwriteabout150wordsonANSWERSHEET2.(15points)

Suppose you have invited Laura to your birthday tea party. But there is some emergency and you have to cancel the party. Write her a note to 1) cancel the invitation, and 2) explain why. You should write about 100 words. Do not use your own name. Use "Li Ming" instead.

In a sweeping overall inspection of its $21 billion Medicaid program, the Florida Legislature approved a bill to shift nearly three million Medicaid recipients into managed-care programs【C1】______saving money and improving services. "Medicaid has grown faster than any other part of our budget," said State Senator Joe Negron, who took the【C2】______on the bill. "It is【C3】______out funding for education, economic development and other parts of the budget that are equally【C4】______." If signed into law as expected, the bill will make Florida,【C5】______one of the largest number of Medicaid patients and a high rate of those who are not insured, one of the biggest states to jump【C6】______entirely from a traditional Medicaid payment system into managed care. The bill, a【C7】______between the House and the Senate versions, would allow the state to decide how much to spend on Medicaid each year,【C8】______in the profits of managed-care companies if they exceed 5 percent and punish networks that【C9】______contracts. To help ensure【C10】______care for patients, the bill would【C11】______require plans to include specialists and provide higher refund rates to doctors. Patients would be charged $10 monthly premiums and $100【C12】______they showed up at the emergency room with a non-emergency. The state and managed -care companies would control which services to provide to Medicaid patients. In so doing, the legislation would【C13】______the existing fee-for-service system, in which the state pays providers for each service, a practice that has led to widespread care【C14】______. Refund rates have dropped so low that many doctors【C15】______not to treat Medicaid patients. The Legislature's bill seeks to【C16】______those issues with the requirement that plans include specialists and the higher repayment rates to doctors. Another good news for doctors and hospitals is a【C17】______that limits the amount they would have to pay out in【C18】______caused by not proper practice, for pain and suffering to $300,000 for each Medicaid claimant. Senator Negron said the upper limit was【C19】______because doctors who treat Medicaid patients are basically providing a public service and should be【C20】______to do so.

In interviews, famous people often say that the key to becoming both happy and successful is to "do what you love." But mastering a skill,【C1】______one that you deeply love, requires a huge【C2】______of dull practice. Any challenging activity requires【C3】______and concentrated practice. Anyone who wants to master a skill must【C4】______through the cycle of practice, critical feedback, modification, and progressive improvement again, again, and again. Some people seem able to【C5】______practicing an activity like this for years and take【C6】______in their gradual improvement.【C7】______others find this kind of concentrated, time-intensive work to be【C8】______or boring. Why? The difference may turn on the ability to enter into a state of "flow," the feeling of being completely【C9】______what you are doing. A flow state is a special experience. Flow states can happen in the【C10】______of any activity, and they are most common when a task has well-defined goals and is at an appropriate skill level, and where the individual is able to adjust their performance【C11】______clear and immediate feedback. Flow states turn the dull practice into an autotelic activity—that is, one that can be enjoyed for its own sake, rather than as a【C12】______to an end or for attaining some external reward. That raises the question of how we can turn this to our【C13】______: How can we get into a flow state for an activity that we want to master, so that we enjoy both the process of【C14】______skills and the rewards of being a master? Psychologists suggested that those who most readily entered into flow states had an "autotelic personality". For those who aren"t necessarily【C15】______with an autotelic personality, there is evidence that flow states can be【C16】______by environmental factors. While there isn"t yet a pill that can turn dull practice into a【C17】______activity for anyone, it is encouraging that we seem, at least to some degree, to be able to push ourselves toward flow states【C18】______we are given unstructured, open-ended time,【C19】______distractions, and a task set at a【C20】______level of difficulty.