While western governments worry over the threat of Ebola, a more pervasive but far less harmful 【C1】______ is spreading through their populations like a winter sniffle: mobile personal technology. The similarity between disease organisms and personal devices is 【C2】______. Viruses and other parasites control larger organisms, 【C3】______ resources in order to multiply and spread. Smartphones and other gadgets do the same thing, 【C4】______ever-increasing amounts of human attention and electricity supplied 【C5】______ wire umbilici. It is tempting to【C6】______a "strategy" to both phages and phablets, neither of which is sentient.【C7】______, the process is evolutionary, consisting of many random evolutions, 【C8】______ experimented with by many product designers. This makes it all the more powerful. Tech【C9】______occurs through actively-learnt responses, or "operant conditioning" as animal behaviourists call it. The scientific parallel here also involves a rodent, typically a rat, which occupies a【C10】______cage called a Skinner Box. The animal is【C11】______with a food pellet for solving puzzles and punished with an electric shock when it fails. "Are we getting a positive boost of hormones when we【C12】______look at our phone, seeking rewards?" asks David Shuker, an animal behaviourist at St Andrews university, sounding a little like a man withholding serious scientific endorsement【C13】______an idea that a journalist had in the shower. Research is needed, he says. Tech tycoons would meanwhile【C14】______that the popularity of mobile devices is attributed to the brilliance of their designs. This is precisely what people whose thought processes have been【C15】______by an invasive pseudo-organism would believe. 【C16】______, mobile technology causes symptoms less severe than physiological diseases. There are even benefits to【C17】______sufferers for shortened attention spans and the caffeine overload triggered by visits to Starbucks for the free Wi-Fi. Most importantly, you can 【C18】______ the Financial Times in places as remote as Alaska or Sidcup. In this【C19】______, a mobile device is closer to a symbiotic organism than a parasite. This would make it【C20】______to an intestinal bacterium that helps a person to stay alive, rather than a virus that may kill you.

Suppose the Martial Art Association in your university wants to recruit new members. Write an ad to all students to 1) inform them of the advantages and requirements of being a member of the association, and 2) encourage them to participate. You should write about 100 words. Do not use your own name. Use "The Martial Art Association" instead.

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

To Google is now in broad usage as a verb for retrieving information from the internet. If the tech giant has its way, "I Googled" will become a standard reply to the question, "How did you get here?" On May 28th Google said it would build 100 prototype driverless cars without pedals, steering wheel or controls. It is the next stage in its apparent quest to be as popular on the road as on computer screens. People have dreamed about driverless motoring since at least the 1930s, but only in recent years have carmakers such as Mercedes-Benz and Volvo given the matter more thought, kitting out test cars with the sensors and sophisticated software required to negotiate busy roads. Google has roared ahead by designing a driverless car from the ground up. But bringing autonomous motoring to the world is proving harder than Google had envisaged.

Could your smartphone prevent a car from hitting you? General Motors and other researchers think that"s a possibility【C1】______an emerging wireless standard works its way into the latest smartphones and new cars. First seen in 2010, Wi-Fi Direct【C2】______ultrafast device-to-device connections over the same radio waves that smartphones, computers and other electronics currently use to connect to routers and home networks. The【C3】______here is that unlike your application-enabled television, Wi-Fi Direct doesn"t【C4】______the Internet. Rather, it"s【C5】______connect local devices directly to each other【C6】______as little as a second, and unlike Bluetooth, the connection doesn"t require special pass keys and works at more than double the【C7】______, at about 656 feet apart. GM says future cars could【C8】______pedestrians carrying Wi-Fi Direct smartphones, gather their【C9】______locations and warn the driver through existing active safety systems such as forward collision【C10】______and auto-braking. Wi-Fi Direct is one part of GM"s research on vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure【C11】______in which both cars and roadways become【C12】______aware and adaptive to real-time information. More and more automakers, such as BMW and Hyundai, use a subscription-based 3G cell network to connect a car"s information & entertainment system to the Web for things such as【C13】______searches. A few automakers, such as Ford and Audi,【C14】______wireless hotspots that allow full【C15】______to the Internet from any mobile device. By 2015, Ford said it【C16】______80 percent of the vehicles it sells in North America to have a Wi-Fi connection. Wi-Fi Direct currently allows file【C17】______between two electronic devices【C18】______having to pair them. If the technology becomes popular and【C19】______it could pull the market away from Bluetooth, the short-range wireless standard for in-car telephone calls and portable audio. With Bluetooth, there isn"t one【C20】______way to connect a device—and many times, as we"ve often found, it still doesn"t work. According to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, nearly 4,900 pedestrians and cyclists were killed by cars last year, for which data were available.

If you intend using humor in your talk to make people smile, you must know how to identify shared experiences and problems. Your humor must be relevant to the audience and should help to show them that you are one of them or that you understand their situation and are in sympathy with their point of view. Depending on whom you are addressing, the problems will be different. If you are talking to a group of managers, you may refer to the disorganized methods of their secretaries; alternatively if you are addressing secretaries, you may want to comment on their disorganized bosses. Here is an example, which I heard at a nurses' convention, of a story which works well because the audience all shared the same view of doctors. A man arrives in heaven and is being shown around by St. Peter. He sees wonderful accommodations, beautiful gardens, sunny weather, and so on. Everyone is very peaceful, polite and friendly until, waiting in a line for lunch, the new arrival is suddenly pushed aside by a man in a white coat, who rushes to the head of the line, grabs his food and stomps over to a table by himself. "Who is that?" the new arrival asked St. Peter. "Oh, that' s God," came the reply, "but sometimes he thinks he's a doctor." If you are part of the group which you are addressing, you will be in a position to know the experiences and problems which are common to all of you and it' 11 be appropriate for you to make a passing remark about the inedible canteen food or the chairman's notorious bad taste in ties. With other audiences you mustn' t attempt to cut in with humor as they will resent an outsider making disparaging remarks about their canteen or their chairman. You will be on safer ground if you stick to scapegoats like the Post Office or the telephone system. If you feel awkward being humorous, you must practice so that it becomes more natural. Include a few casual and apparently off-the-cuff remarks which you can deliver in a relaxed and unforced manner. Often it' s the delivery which causes the audience to smile, so speak slowly and remember that a raised eyebrow or an unbelieving look may help to show that you are making a light-hearted remark. Look for the humor. It often comes from the unexpected. A twist on a familiar quote "If at first you don't succeed, give up" or a play on words or on a situation. Search for exaggeration and understatements. Look at your talk and pick out a few words or sentences which you can turn about and inject with humor.

It would be interesting to discover how many young people go to university without any clear idea of what they are going to do afterwards. If one considers the enormous variety of courses【C1】______, it is not hard to see how difficult it is for a student to select the course most suited to his【C2】______and abilities. If a student goes to university to acquire a broader【C3】______of life, to enlarge his ideas and to learn to think for himself, he will undoubtedly benefit. Schools often have too【C4】______an atmosphere, with its time tables and【C5】______, to allow him much time for independent assessment of the work he is【C6】______to do. Most students would, I believe,【C7】______a year of such exploration of different academic studies, especially those "all rounders" with no【C8】______interest. They should have longer time to【C9】______in what subject they want to take their degrees, so that in later life, they do not【C10】______and say, "I should like to have been an archaeologist.【C11】______I hadn"t taken a degree in Modern Languages, I shouldn"t have ended up as a(n)【C12】______, but it"s too late now. I couldn"t go back and begin all over again." There is, of course, another side【C13】______the question of how to make the best use of one"s time at university. This is the case of the student who excels in a particular branch of learning. He is immediately【C14】______by the University of his choice, and spends his three or four years becoming a specialist, emerging with a first-class Honour Degree and very【C15】______knowledge of what the rest of the world is all about. It【C16】______becomes more and more important that, if students are not to waste their【C17】______there will have to be much more【C18】______information about courses and more advice. Only in this way can we be sure that we are not to have, on the one hand, a band of specialists【C19】______of anything outside of their own subject, and on the other hand, an ever increasing number of graduates【C20】______in subjects for which there is little or no demand in the working world.

Expectations surrounding education have spun out of control. On top of a seven-hour school day, our kids march through hours of nightly homework, daily sports practices and band rehearsals, and weekend-consuming assignments and tournaments. Each activity is seen as a step on the ladder to a top college, an enviable job and a successful life. Children living in poverty who aspire to college face the same daunting admissions arms race, as well as the burden of competing for scholarships, with less support than their privileged peers. Even those not bound for college are ground down by the constant measurement in schools under pressure to push through mountains of rote, impersonal material as early as preschool. Yet instead of empowering them to thrive, this drive for success is eroding children' s health and undermining their potential. Modern education is actually making them sick. Working together, parents, educators and students can make small but important changes.

BPart B/B

Suppose the regular meeting of the Student Union this Friday is postponed to next Monday. Write a notice to all members to 1) inform them about postponing the meeting, and 2) explain why. You should write about 100 words. Do not use your own name. Use "The Student Union" instead.

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

Nowadays, amateur photography has become a troubling issue. Citizens of rich countries have got used to being watched by closed-circuit cameras that【C1】______roads and cities. But as cameras【C2】______and the cost of storing data decreases rapidly, it is individuals who are taking the pictures. Some 10,000 people are already testing a【C3】______of Google Glass. It aims to reproduce all the functions of a smartphone in a device placed on a person's nose. Its flexible frame holds both a camera and a【C4】______screen, and makes it easy for users to take photos, send【C5】______and search for things online. Glass may fail, but a wider revolution is under way. In Russia, where insurance【C6】______is common, at least 1 million cars already have cameras with them that film the road ahead. Police forces in America are starting to【C7】______officers with video cameras, pinned to their uniforms, which record their interactions with the public. Widespread recording can already do a lot of good. Car-cams can help resolve insurance claims and encourage people to drive better. Police-cams can discourage criminals from making groundless complaints【C8】______police officers and officers from【C9】______the suspects. Optimists see broader benefits【C10】______Plenty of people carry activity trackers to【C11】______their exercise or sleep patterns; cameras could do the job more effectively, perhaps also【C12】______their wearers' diets. "Personal black boxes" might be able to transmit pictures【C13】______their owner falls victim to an accident or crime. Not everybody will be【C14】______by these prospects. A perfect digital memory would probably be a pain, preserving unhappy events as well as【C15】______ones Suspicious spouses and employers might feel【C16】______review it. The bigger worry is for those in front of the cameras, not【C17】______them. The web is filled with sneaky photos of women,【C18】______in public places. Wearable cameras will make such furtive photography easier. The combination of cameras everywhere—in bars, on streets, in offices, on people's heads—is a powerful and【C19】______one. We may not be far from a world【C20】______which your movements could be tracked all the time.

Television pitchmen for products like Pajama Jeans and lighted slippers once tried to get viewers to place their orders by phone. And then they【C1】______to getting products into retail outlets with labels that screamed "As Seen on TV."【C2】______, they are trying to make impulse buying even easier by【C3】______with new technologies. Mr. Harrington, one of the "sharks" on ABC's "Shark Tank," where entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to direct response executives, bought AsSeenOnTV.com and its【C4】______telephone number in June. The company, which says it has more than two million customers and 700,000 e-mail subscribers, is【C5】______technologies that use cellphones and【C6】______controls to enable purchases directly from a television set. Daily Web videos【C7】______product demonstrations are also being produced, and Facebook pages where users can buy products directly are expected to start【C8】______before the end of the year. "We anticipate most of our sellers being excited about this as a whole new way to generate products and【C9】______," Mr. Harrington said. AsSeenonTV.com lists 650 products from【C10】______sellers. In the online videos, spokesmen like the former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan and some famous entertainers will【C11】______product demonstrations. "It's much like what makes a home shopping network work—it's a visual, it's storytelling, it's presenting and bringing the products to life," Mr. Harrington said. Another development will let viewers use ordinary distant controls to buy products【C12】______a television screen by clicking a【C13】______that opens a purchase window. Advertisers will also be able to【C14】______which commercials led to purchases. The goal, the chief executive of Delivery Agent Mr. Fitzsimmons said, is to have a "widespread【C15】______mechanism for television." Direct response marketers say they are【C16】______watching the new technologies. Realizing that television only is not【C17】______, they refer to web at the same time. 【C18】______online, marketers can sell products more cheaply since they eliminate the【C19】______for someone to take a phone order. "Television marketing【C20】______consumers to go to the Web and make purchases online or make purchases to their phone," Mr. Harrington said.

Not so long ago, it was the stuff of nightmares: you pick up the landline telephone and there"s no dialing tone. Nothing. The phone is useless,【C1】______in your hand. For most of the 20th century, this was a horror film stereotype, a symbol of isolation and【C2】______foretold. But just 15 years later, the death of the landline is close to being a【C3】______—and one entirely of our own making. BT has announced plans to【C4】______charges for landline calls, in a bid to maintain commercial feasibility for landline services. The move suggests that BT—which has long【C5】______landlines over mobile calls—may have given up on turning back the clock. In the US, the【C6】______of households that have mobile phone connection but no landline has risen to a quarter. The most recent research in the UK, put the【C7】______figure at 15%. For millions of today"s twentysomethings, who have had a mobile number since their teens and for whom a landline makes no【C8】______sense during the transient years before they settle down, the moment of【C9】______into land-line-owning may never come【C10】______it becomes an expensive extra. The death of the landline has gone almost unnoticed. After all, the noise of phone chatting is all around us. What【C11】______does it make whether the cables lie underground or not? A lot,【C12】______. The death of the landline is a cultural【C13】______that affects our personal and public lives. It has separated us【C14】______our groupings—in the office, where email has disconnected us from what the people who sit three feet away do all day, and even more【C15】______, at home. In any household in the days before mobiles【C16】______, the landline served as a switchboard for everyone"s connections outside the home.【C17】______families, couples, roommates, it was a kind of【C18】______knowledge map about the state of everyone"s romantic and social lives, and one we took for granted. And【C19】______though we are to our mobiles, most of the time we aren"t talking but typing. With its arrogant "ignore" button, we all become a little more untouchable in our individual worlds, and less【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

We're moving into another era, as the toxic(有毒的) effects of the bubble(泡沫) and its grave consequences spread through the financial system. Just a couple of years ago investors dreamed of 20 percent returns forever. Now surveys show that they're down to a "realistic" 8 percent to 10 percent range. But what if the next few years turn out to be below normal expectations? Martin Barners of the Bank Credit Analyst in Montreal expects future stock returns to average just 4 percent to 6 percent. Sound impossible? After a much smaller bubble that burst in the mid-1960s Standard & Poor's 5000 stock average returned 6.9 percent a year (with dividends reinvested) for the following 17 years. Few investors are prepared for that. Right now denial seems to be the attitude of choice. That's typical, says Lori Lucas of Hewitt, the consulting firm. You hate to look at your investments when they're going down. Hewitt tracks 500,000 401 (k) accounts every day, and finds that savers are keeping their contributions up. But they're much less inclined to switch their money around. "It's the slot-machine (老虎机) effect," Lucas says. "People get more interested in playing when they think they've got a hot machine"—and nothing's hot today. The average investor feels overwhelmed. Against all common sense, many savers still shut their eyes to the dangers of owning too much company stock. In big companies last year, a surprising 29 percent of employees held at least three quarters of their 402 (k) in their own stock. Younger employees may have no choice. You often have to wait until you're 50 or 55 before you can sell any company stock you get. But instead of getting out when they can, old participants have been holding, too. One third of the people 60 and up chose company stock for three quarters of their plan, Hewitt reports. Are they inattentive? Loyal excessively? Sick? It's as if Lucent, Enron and Xerox never happened. No investor should give his or her total trust to any particular company's stock. And while you're at it, think how you'd be if future stock returns—averaging good years and bad—are as poor as Barnes predicts. If you ask me, diversified stocks remain good for the long run, with a backup in bonds. But I, too, am figuring on reduced returns. What a shame. Dear bubble, I'll never forget. It's the end of a grand affair.

About 3 billion people live within 100 miles of the sea, a number that could double in the next decade as humans flock to coastal cities like gulls. The oceans produce $ 3 trillion of goods and services each year and untold value for the Earth"s ecology. Life could not exist without these vast water reserves—and, if anything, they are becoming even more important to humans than before. Mining is about to begin under the seabed in the high seas—the regions outside the exclusive economic zones administered by coastal and island nations, which stretch 200 nautical miles offshore. Nineteen exploratory licences have been issued. New summer shipping lanes are opening across the Arctic Ocean. The genetic resources of marine life promise a pharmaceutical bonanza: the number of patents has been rising at 12% a year. One study found that genetic material from the seas is a hundred times more likely to have anti-cancer properties than that from terrestrial life. But these developments are minor compared with vaster forces reshaping the Earth, both on land and at sea. It has long been clear that people are damaging the oceans—witness the melting of the Arctic ice in summer, the spread of oxygen starved dead zones and the death of coral reefs. Now, the consequences of that damage are starting to be felt onshore. Thailand provides a vivid example. In the 1990s it cleared coastal mangrove swamps to set up shrimp farms. Ocean storm surges in 2011, no longer cushioned by the mangroves, rushed in to flood the country"s industrial heartland, causing billions of dollars of damage. More serious is the global mismanagement of fish stocks. About 3 billion people get a fifth of their protein from fish, making it a more important protein source than beef. But a vicious cycle has developed as fish stocks decline and fishermen race to grab what they can of the remainder. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization(FAO), a third of fish stocks in the oceans are over-exploited; some estimates say the proportion is more than half. One study suggested that stocks of big predatory species—such as tuna, swordfish and marlin—may have fallen by as much as 90% since the 1950s. People could be eating much better, were fishing stocks properly managed.

BSection III Writing/B

The EU"s climate chief is seeking to extend the bloc"s renewable energy targets, in a move apparently designed to protect the green energy sector from an intensifying attack by the gas industry. This is the first time the European commission has【C1】______the issue of official targets beyond 2020, when the current commitment—to【C2】______20% of energy from renewable sources—expires. An extension would boost the renewable energy industry【C3】______lobbying efforts by the gas industry, which is trying to rebrand gas【C4】______a cheaper "green" alternative to renewables. In its【C5】______to push this line, the gas industry has held a series of high-level meetings with senior【C6】______in the European commission and the European parliament, 【C7】______with the governments of member states. Connie Hedegaard, the climate change commissioner in Brussels, is【C8】______at the lobbying, and is determined to maintain Europe"s【C9】______in developing renewable energy and clean technology. "We should be looking to avoid a lock-in to fossil fuels," she said. "We should be discussing a renewable energy target for 2030. We need to have【C10】______targets. It would be one way to send a long-term price【C11】______for renewable energy—that renewable energy is not just going to stop growing after 2020." The push to extend the target is likely to be【C12】______by some member states who fought hard against the 2020 targets when they were unveiled in early 2007. Poland is known to be concerned that its heavy【C13】______on coal may attract penalties, and Italy has a history of【C14】______climate targets. An official in the department of Gunther Oettinger, the EU commissioner for energy, said no targets were【C15】______needed for later. He is also against raising the current target to【C16】______emissions from 20% by 2020 to 30%,【C17】______some member states—including the UK, France and Germany-have proposed. In its "Roadmap to 2050", the European commission【C18】______that the share of low-carbon technologies—【C19】______renewables, nuclear power, and carbon capture and【C20】______—in the electricity mix would have to rise to 75% or 80% by 2030.

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