We already know that gender balanced senior teams are not only better for business, the economy and society, but also crucial to women's continuing success in the workplace. The visibility of women at the top demonstrates to other women that it is possible for them to get there too. For this reason, senior women are often presented as role models to inspire others to follow in their footsteps. Having said this, I believe it is important to recognise that role models and visibility are not one and the same. Role models tend to be more personal, while visibility has a more widespread effect when it comes to changing working culture. It isn't fair to put the pressure of being a perfect role model on the women who have made it to the top of their field. Most female employees are more inspired by realistic, relatable and attainable traits—not just seniority. When women are asked to describe their ideal role model, they often reveal a wide variety of sought-after characteristics, traits and behaviours. From being decisive, intelligent and confident to warm, approachable and inclusive, what makes an ideal role model is often personal and might change over time. We must work instead to normalise gender-balanced leadership, shifting away from the preoccupation with role models. Once we achieve this, the gender of role models becomes redundant anyway: we will simply see them all around. The visible balance of power between women and men sends a clear message to women and girls of all ages that they can climb the career ladder too. This visibility of women in traditionally male-dominated roles and industries cannot be underestimated. This is beautifully illustrated by photographer Leonora Saunders in her series "10%. . . and rising" , which challenges preconceptions of what women can or can't do in the world of work. Once girls and boys see people like themselves employed in all industries, their choices in life will be much greater— and employers will benefit from their capability and talent, not their gender. We need to focus increasingly on visible, balanced leadership at the highest levels of business. This is not to say that senior level women can't be role models to other women in their organisation, but that true role models should be found at all levels, in line managers or even junior staff. Perhaps in time, when it becomes normal to see as many women as men in senior roles, the search for role models will be less about gender and will simply celebrate good leadership—whatever that may look like.

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 III Writing/B

BSection III Writing/B

The price of a bitcoin topped $900 last week, an enormous surge in value that arrived amidst Congressional hearings where top U.S. financial regulators took a surprisingly optimistic view of digital currency. Just 10 months ago, a bitcoin only sold for $13. The【C1】______increase was big news across the【C2】______, from Washington to Tokyo to China, and it left many asking themselves: "What on earth is a bitcoin?" It"s a good question. Bitcoin is a digital currency, meaning it"s money controlled and stored entirely by computers【C3】______across the internet, and this money is finding its way to more and more people and businesses around the world.【C4】______it"s much more than that, and many people—【C5】______the sharpest of internet【C6】______as well as seasoned economists—are still【C7】______to come to terms【C8】______its many identities. Bitcoin isn"t just a currency, like dollars or euros or yen. It"s a way of making【C9】______, like PayPal or the Visa credit card network. It lets you hold money, but it also lets you spend it and【C10】______it and move it from place to place, almost as cheaply and easily as you"d send an email. As the press so often points out, bitcoin lets you do all this without【C11】______your identity. But at the same time, it"s a system that operates【C12】______in the public view. All bitcoin【C13】______are recorded online for anyone to see, lending a certain transparency to the system, a transparency that can drive a new【C14】______in the economy. Bitcoin is much more than a money service. It"s a re-imagining of【C15】______finance, something that【C16】______barriers between countries and frees currency from the control of federal governments. Bitcoin is controlled by open source software that operates according to the【C17】______of mathematics—and by the people who collectively supervise this software. The software【C18】______on thousands of machines around the world, but it can be changed It"s just that a majority of those supervising the software must【C19】______to the change.【C20】______, bitcoin is kind of like the internet, but for money.

Are passwords outdated? It's starting to seem like it. Everybody hates them, and nobody can remember all the ones they've【C1】______. These days a typical internet user has dozens of online accounts. If you really want to be safe, you need to have a different password for each one, and each password needs to be incredibly【C2】______, with a mix of capital letters,【C3】______, and numbers. Who can keep all that stuff in their head? Most people don't【C4】______. Some just make up one password and use it everywhere while others might have a few passwords for different usages. Problem is that【C5】______one site gets attacked by hackers, they now have the password that you use elsewhere. In one recent attack on Sony, millions of accounts were exposed. Computer scientists realize the system is【C6】______and they're looking for alternatives. But most【C7】______haven't been very good. Fingerprint readers require special hardware, and smart cards can be lost or【C8】______. "We've tried【C9】______other approaches, but we end up back with passwords. They're the least【C10】______in a series of bad options," says a security consultant. Markus Jakobsson, a veteran security researcher with a Ph.D. in computer science, has come up with something he calls "fastwords." Instead of【C11】______a meaningless and obscure password, you join three simple words that come from a【C12】______known only to you. If one day you were driving to work and【C13】______a frog that ended up flat, you might choose "frog work flat." Some【C14】______: You can enter the three words【C15】______any order ("flat frog work"), and the system【C16】______knows that you're you. If you totally【C17】______, the fastword system will tell you one of the three words, which should enable you to remember the【C18】______idea and thus the three keywords. Jakobsson says one large service provider is evaluating the fast-words concept. Fastwords【C19】______a step in the right direction, 【C20】______it's not the promised land. Someone, somehow, needs to come up with something completely different— and radically better—than what we have today.

Read the following text and answer the questions by choosing the most suitable subheading from the list A-G for each of the numbered paragraphs(41-45). There are two extra subheadings which you do not need to use. Mark your answers on the ANSWER SHEET.(10 points) [A]Think about how your attitude change will affect your life [B]Look for a role model [C]Be clear about your traits [D]Identify and understand what you want to change [E]Believe that you are able to change [F]Get rid of the pessimistic friends [G]Choose the right company "Our attitude toward life determines life's attitude towards us." We've all heard about the power of our attitude, and that it's our attitude that determines how much we succeed in life. If you look around you, you will see that people with a positive attitude enjoy life more and are generally happier and more successful than those who walk around grumpy and pessimistic. Our attitude is the driving force in our lives—it can either push you to do great things or pull you down to your demise. All the things that you have been through, all the people you have met and interacted with can have an impact on your attitude. If you think that all these factors have molded you into a person with a poor attitude towards life, there is no need to worry as there is always an opportunity for change. Let me share with you how I did it. 【R1】______ The first step towards change is clearly understanding what needs to be changed. Setting clear goals is the key to success in any endeavor. When it comes to changing your attitude, you need to do an honest and in-depth self-evaluation so you could point out exactly which of your traits need to be improved or totally changed. 【R2】______ We all need to know that what we' re trying to accomplish can in fact be achieved; that we can be more optimistic, more social or more patient. Find someone who has the kind of attitude that you want to have, and let his or her life give you inspiration and encouragement to move beyond your temporary failures in your journey towards becoming a better person. 【R3】______ To be able to overcome all the difficulties that lie ahead of you in your journey towards self betterment, you need to figure out exactly what this supposed change could bring to your life. Will changing your attitude mean a happier family or social life? Will a change in your attitude mean a more successful career or business? Fix your mind on the things that would come as a result of your attitude change and you will have a greater chance of reaching your goal. 【R4】______ As they say, "Bad company corrupts good character." You don' t expect yourself to be able to change if you go on surrounding yourself with people who possess all the negative traits that you want to change. Consider befriending new people, especially those who are optimistic and have a healthy attitude towards life. You will see that your effort to change will be easier with these kinds of people as friends. 【R5】______ Often, the greatest obstacle between us and our goals is ourselves or our inability to trust in what we are able to do. If you don't believe in yourself or believe that you or your life can change, it just won't happen—you will either never start, or give up quickly so you won't have even given yourself the opportunity to succeed. It cannot be denied that a positive attitude is very important for living a successful and satisfying life, so it is only right to strive to have a positive attitude.

BPart B/B

It is common knowledge that healthy foods such as fruits and vegetables contain certain nutrients that promote good health—namely vitamins and minerals that are essential to the body. However, once these compounds enter the body and become digested, do they still possess the same healthful【C1】______? Do they still perform the desired action to create a【C2】______result? That is what researchers at Newcastle University recently set out to【C3】______. Scientists analyzed the polyphenols, a type of antioxidant, in green tea to see how they【C4】______the body once digested.【C5】______the polyphenols in tea are known for health benefits, Dr. Ed Okello and his team wanted to better understand how these polyphenols act once【C6】______the body. Their study, which was recently published in the journal, showed that the chemicals【C7】______the breakdown of polyphenols were more effective at promoting health than the polyphenols【C8】______. "There are certain chemicals we know to be【C9】______and we can identify foods which are rich in them but what happens during the digestion process is【C10】______to whether these foods are actually doing us any good," said Dr. Okello. The research showed that【C11】______the polyphenols were digested in the gut, the resulting compounds had a greater ability to bind to toxic substances. "Green tea has been used in Traditional Chinese Medicine for centuries and what we have here provides the scientific【C12】______why it may be effective【C13】______some of the key diseases we face today." Tea is one of the many common and natural dietary【C14】______in Asian cultures shown by modern science to have【C15】______unique health benefits. Mushrooms are another common food that has been【C16】______for centuries. They are used【C17】______in many cooking, (notably Chinese, Korean, European, Japanese and Indian). They are also used in Traditional Chinese Medicine for their ability to promote immune health. Certain species of mushrooms have great【C18】______abilities to regulate the immune system and promote【C19】______within the body. These mushroom species【C20】______benefits even after digestion and absorption into the blood stream.

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

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

Suppose you hear that your friend Ken is ill. Write hint a letter to 1) comfort him, and 2) offer your help with his missed lessons. You should write about 100 words. Do not use your own name. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write your address.

To master the violin takes 10,000 hours of practice. Put in that time and【C1】______will follow. This, at least, is what many music teachers tell their pupils. Psychologists are more【C2】______. Some agree practice truly is the thing that【C3】______experts from beginners, but others suspect genes play a role, too, and that【C4】______the right genetic make-up even 20,000 hours of practice would be pointless. A study just published in Psychological Science, by Miriam Mosing of the Karolinska Institute, in Sweden, suggests that the skeptics are【C5】______. Practicing music without the right genes to【C6】______that practice up is【C7】______useless. Dr Mosing drew her【C8】______in a time-honored way—by studying twins. She and her colleagues【C9】______1,211 pairs of identical twins (who share all their genes) and 1,358 pairs of fraternal twins (who share half). They asked each participant【C10】______he or she played a musical instrument or actively【C11】______singing. Those who did were asked to【C12】______how many hours a week they had practiced at different ages. From this Dr Mosing was able to calculate a【C13】______for each individual"s lifetime practice. Anyone who did not play an instrument or sing got no point. Next, Dr Mosing tested her volunteers" musical a-bilities. Expert musicians are exceptionally good at【C14】______differences in pitch, melody and rhythm. She therefore expected to find that if someone had put in【C15】______practice time his musical ability would be as high as an expert"s. But that was not true. In fact, there appeared to be no【C16】______between practice and musical ability of the sort she was measuring. A twin who practiced more than his genetically identical co-twin did not appear to have better musical abilities as a result. In one case the difference between two such twins was 20,228 hours of practice,【C17】______the pair"s measured musical abilities were found to be the same. That is not to say practice has no【C18】______. Playing an instrument and singing are physical skills, and do take a long time to【C19】______. And Dr Mosing has shown that musical ability has a big genetic【C20】______.

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)interpretthechart,and2)giveyourcomments.Youshouldwriteabout150words.

Before the global financial crisis, emerging economies like China aspired to "decouple" themselves from the rich world, hoping that local demand and regional trade would sustain them even if Western markets faltered. After the crisis, rich economies aspired to couple themselves with China, one of the few sources of growth in a moribund world. Car-makers in Germany, iron-ore miners in Australia and milk-powder makers in New Zealand all benefited enormously from exports to the Middle Kingdom. Every company needed a China story to tell. But as China slows and America gradually recovers, those stories are becoming less compelling. Some of them are turning into cautionary tales. Exposure to China does not always endear a firm to investors, as GlaxoSmithKline, a British pharmaceutical giant embroiled in a corruption scandal in the country, is now discovering. As a rough gauge of multinational exposure to China The Economist in 2010 introdued the "Sinode-pendency index" (中国依赖指数), a stock market index that weights American multinationals according to their China revenues. The latest version of the index includes many of the member companies of the S&P 500 index (美国标准普尔500指数) that provide a usable geographical breakdown of their revenues. The biggest members of the "Sinodependency index" are Apple, with an 11% weight in 2013, followed by Qualcomm (8. 3%) and Intel (7%). The top three firms in the index are more dependent on China now than they were. China accounted for 11. 2% of their revenues on average in 2015,compared with 9. 8% in 2009. Although the dependence has risen, the rewards of members of the " Sinodependency index" have not. After handily outperforming the S&P 500 benchmark from 2009 to 2011, the Sinodependency index has since struggled to keep pace. So far this year it has risen by 9. 6%. That is far better than China's own stock markets, which have fallen by over 9%. But both have been overshadowed by the much stronger performance of the conventional S&P 500 index, which is up by 18%. Perhaps the 367 S&P 500 companies that are not in our index should loudly proclaim their Sino-in-dependence.

Beauty is big business in China. The country"s cosmetics market is worth $26 billion a year, making it the third-biggest in the world. Euromonitor, a research firm, believes it will grow 8% each year from now to 2017. It would seem【C1】______then, that some of the world"s best-known brands are giving up on such an【C2】______market. This week L"Oreal of France, the world"s biggest cosmetics firm, said that it will stop selling its Garnier line of beauty products in China. This came on the【C3】______of an announcement by Revlon, an American【C4】______that it would leave the country altogether. L"Oreal insists that this is not a step【C5】______from the Chinese market, of which it【C6】______an 11% share, but rather a【C7】______in strategy. It says it will henceforth【C8】______selling Chinese consumers its L"Oreal Paris and Maybelline New York lines. Revlon has done rather less well in China, which【C9】______a tiny share of its global【C10】______. It is said to have【C11】______a big fall in sales in recent months and【C12】______this on a slowing Chinese economy. A few years ago, when China"s annual GDP growth was in double digits and its consumers had【C13】______begun to fill their repressed desire for foreign luxury, the firms that sold it set themselves ambitious targets. Now China is coming to【C14】______a more normal emerging market: still with much potential for growth,【C15】______with no guarantee that every【C16】______foreign product entering it will get a piece of the action. Consumers are becoming more【C17】______, and are increasingly unwilling to pay extra money for all but the very best brands. At the same time costs are high. Wages for "beauty assistants" and other saleswomen are【C18】______at double-digit rates annually. Marketing in such a huge and diverse country, are【C19】______To cap it all, Chinese cosmetics firms are quickly catching up with the foreign ones. As the costs rise and the【C20】______slows, L"Oreal and Revlon are unlikely to be the last foreign cosmetics firms to think again about their ambitions in China

Write an email of about 100 words to relevant departments to give some advice on how to live a low-carbon life. 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)

Glaciers consist of fallen snow that compresses over many years into large, thickened ice masses. Most of the world's glacial ice is found in Antarctica and Greenland, but glaciers are found on nearly every continent, even Africa. Presently, 10% of land area is covered with glaciers. Glacial ice often appears blue because ice absorbs all other colors but reflects blue. Almost 90% of an iceberg is below water; only about 10% shows above water. What makes glaciers unique is their ability to move. Due to sheer mass, glaciers flow like very slow rivers. Some glaciers are as small as football fields, whereas others grow to be over 100 kilometers long. Within the past 750, 000 years, scientists know that there have been eight Ice Age cycles, separated by warmer periods called interglacial periods. Currently, the earth is nearing the end of an interglacial, meaning that another Ice Age is due in a few thousand years. This is part of the normal climate variation cycle. Greenhouse warming may delay the onset of another glacial era, but scientists still have many questions to answer about climate change. Although glaciers change very slowly over long periods, they may provide important global climate change signals. The girth of the ice, combined with gravity's influence, causes glaciers to flow very slowly. Once a mass of compressed ice reaches a critical thickness of about 18 meters thick, it becomes so heavy that it begins to deform and move. Ice may flow down mountains and valleys, fan across plains, or spread out to sea. Movement along the underside of a glacier is slower than movement at the top due to the friction created as it slides along the ground's surface. Most glaciers are found in remote mountainous areas. However, some found near cities or towns present a danger to the people living nearby. On land, lakes formed on top of a glacier during the melt season may cause floods. At the narrow part of a valley glacier, ice falling from the glacier presents a hazard to hikers below. When ice breaks off over the ocean, an iceberg is formed. Glaciers are a natural resource and contain 75% of the world's freshwater. People worldwide are trying to harness the power of these frozen streams. Some towns rely on glacial melting from a nearby ice cap to provide drinking water. Some farmers spread soil or ashes over snow to promote melting, hoping that the melting will provide water to irrigate crops in drought-stricken areas. Others have channeled meltwater from glaciers to their fields. Scientists and engineers have worked together to tap into glacial resources, using electricity that has been generated in part by damming glacial meltwater.

For thousands of Canadians, bad service is neither make-believe nor amusing. It is an aggravating and worsening real-life phenomenon that encompasses (包含) behaviors ranging from indifference and rudeness to naked hostility and even physical violence. Across the country, better business bureaus report a lengthening litany of complaints about contractors, car dealers, and repair shops, moving companies, airlines and department stores. There is almost an adversarial(对抗的) feeling between businesses and consumers. Experts say there are several explanations for ill feeling in the marketplace. One is that customer service was an early and inevitable casualty when retailers responded to brutal competition by replacing employees with technology such as 1 - 800 numbers and voice mail. Another factor is that businesses have generally begun to place more emphasis on getting customers than on keeping them. Still another is that strident, frustrated and impatient shoppers vex(使生气) shop owners and make them even less hospitable—especially at busier times of the year like Christmas. On both sides, simple courtesy has gone by the board. And for a multitude of consumers, service went with it. The Better Business Bureau at Vancouver gets 250 complaints a week, twice as many as five years ago. The bureau then had one complaints counselor and now has four. People complain about being insulted, having their intelligence and integrity questioned, and being threatened. One will hear about people being hauled almost bodily out the door by somebody saying things like "I don't have to serve you!" or "This is private property, get out and don't come back!" What can customers do? If the bureau's arbitration (仲裁) process fails to settle a dispute, a customer's only recourse is to sue in claims court. But because of the costs and time it takes, relatively few ever do. There is a lot of support for the notion that service has, in part, fallen victim to generational change. Many young people regard retailing as just a bead-end job that you're just going to do temporarily on your way to a real job. Young clerks often lack both knowledge and civility. Employers have to train young people in simple manners because that is not being done at home. Salespeople today, especially the younger ones, have grown up in a television-computer society where they've interacted largely with machines. One of the biggest complaints from businesses about graduates is the lack of inter-personal skills. What customers really want is access. They want to get through when they call, they don't want busy signals, they don't want interactive systems telling them to push one for this and two for that — they don't want voice mail. And if customers do not get what they want, they defect. Some people go back to local small businesses; the Asian greengrocer, a Greek baker and a Greek fishmonger. They don't wear name tags, but one gets to know them, all by name.[A] business always emphasized the maintenance of customers.[B] they can directly get the service they need.[C] few customers will appeal to claims court.[D] impoliteness is a kind of bad service.[E] they regard retailing as a temporary job. [F] they have spent much time on TV and computers.[G] shoppers are usually strident, frustrated and impatient.