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.

BSection II Reading Comprehension/B

BSection III Writing/B

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

Directions: An international conference on global warming will be held in Beijing in December this year. The organization committee is now looking for volunteers who can provide language service, computer aid and at least one week of working for the conference. You're asked to write a letter to apply for this position. You should write about 100 words on ANSWER SHEET 2. Do not use your own name at the end of the notice. Use "Li Ming" instead. Do not write your address. (10 points)

Everyone knows that the first rule of driving is never taking your eyes off the road. Teen drivers【C1】______being careful, but they tend to start multitasking after just a few months behind the wheel, according to research published Tuesday. And【C2】______older drivers can handle eating or talking to passengers, which【C3】______up the new drivers, dialing a cell phone increased the risk of accidents among young and【C4】______drivers alike. This isn"t great news, since it"s well【C5】______that distracted driving is a leading cause of accidents among all drivers. It makes sense that young drivers will start testing their limits after a few months behind the wheel, according to Bruce Simons-Morton, a behavioral scientist. "You increase the difficulty of a task until you make an【C6】______," Simons-Morton says. "It seems like a very natural thing but still it"s very【C7】______, because good driving ability and safety judgment develops【C8】______a very long period of time." Within six months of getting their licenses, young drivers in this study -started texting, eating and【C9】______the radio while driving as much as their more skilled【C10】______But it takes thousands of hours of【C11】______to get good at driving, according to Simons-Morton. That disconnect may help【C12】______the high accident rates among teenage drivers. The researchers compared data from two small studies—one tracked 42【C13】______licensed young drivers and the other looked at 100 drivers with more experience . All the participants had sensors and cameras【C14】______in their cars. The researchers used the sensors to track when drivers got into accidents or close calls. The videos were then used to see what the drivers were doing just before the accidents【C15】______. Because the researchers wanted to focus on the【C16】______of distracted driving, they【C17】______crashes caused by drunk driving and ones that were clearly caused by other drivers. Since the number of people in this study was small, Simons-Morton says the results will have to be【C18】______by other research. A couple of bigger studies already【C19】______the works, might make things clearer. But Simons-Morton says this is the first totally【C20】______look at teen driver distraction.

Some futurologists have assumed that the vast upsurge of women in the workforce may portend a rejection of marriage. Many women, according to this hypothesis, would rather work than marry. The converse of this concern is that the prospects of becoming a multi -paycheck household could encourage marriages. In the past, only the earnings and financial prospects of the man counted in the marriage decision. Now, however, the earning ability of a woman can make her more attractive as a marriage partner. Data show that economic downturns tend to postpone marriage because the parties cannot afford to establish a family or are concerned about rainy days ahead. As the economy rebounds, the number of marriages also rises. Coincident with the increase in women working outside the home is the increase in divorce rates. Yet, it may be wrong to jump to any simple cause-and-effect conclusions. The impact of a wife' s work on divorce is no less cloudy than its impact on marriage decisions. The realization that she can be a good provider may increase the chances that a working wife will choose divorce over an unsatisfactory marriage. But the reverse is equally plausible. Tensions grounded in financial problems often play a key role in ending a marriage. Given high unemployment, inflationary problems, and slow growth in real earnings, a working wife can increase household income and relieve some of these pressing financial burdens. By raising a family' s standard of living, a working wife may strengthen her family' s financial and emotional stability. Psychological factors also should be considered. For example, a wife blocked from a career outside the home may feel caged in the house. She may view her only choice as seeking a divorce. On the other hand, if she can find fulfillment through work outside the home, work and marriage can go together to create a stronger and more stable union. Also, a major part of women's inequality in marriage has been due to the fact that, in most cases, men have remained the main breadwinners. With higher earning capacity and status occupations outside of the home comes the Capacity to exercise power within the family. A working wife may rob a husband of being the master of the house. Depending upon how the couple reacts to these new conditions, it could create a stronger equal partnership or it could create new insecurities.