阅读理解Passage 1 Learning disabilities are very common

阅读理解Passage One Questions 31 to 35 are based on the following passage

阅读理解A lot of animals are afraid during an eclipse of the sun. Birds stop singing. Sometimes people too are afraid. Astronomers know the dates of eclipses and they are not afraid. The old astronomers ofBabylon and Egypt had no telescopes; but the sky in those countries was usually clear, so they could watch the stars easily. They studied everything in the sky and they also noticed both total and partial eclipses.Because they knew the dates ofeclipses, they had great power. People believed that the sky was important. They believed that an eclipse could kill a man.About 2500 years ago there was a very long war. One battle followed another, and the end never came. During one of the battles, there was a partial eclipse of the sun. The day got very dark, and the soldiers on both sides were filled with fear. They believed that the gods were angry. So they stopped fighting, and ended their long war.The sun is a star. It appears to be bigger than any other star. That is because it is near us; but the other stars are far away. The sun shines because it is very hot, but the moon shines because it reflects the sun’s light. It is like a big mirror. If we visited the moon, we should see the earth. It is also like a mirror and it reflects the light ofthe sun.Does the sun ever get dark during the day? It does so when the moon hides it. Sometimes the moon goes in front of the sun. We can watch its edge when it slowly crosses the sun’s disc. Everything gets darker and darker; then, at last, we cannot see any part of the sun’s disc. The moon is hiding it completely. That is a total eclipse ofthe sun; sometimes only part ofthe sun’s disc is hidden; that is not a total eclipse. It is a partial eclipse ofthe sun.

阅读理解Questions 34-35 Before Michael Pollan came along, eating as a form of politics was a fringe activity

阅读理解Directions: There are 2 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. You should decide on the best choice and write your answers on the Answer Sheet.Passage TwoRussia’s new revolution in conservationWhen naturalist Sergei Smirenski set out to create Russia’s first private nature reserve since the Bolshvik revolution, he knew that the greatest obstacle would be overcoming bureaucratic resistance.The Moscow State University professor has charted a steep course through a variety of foes, from local wildlife service officials who covet his funding to government officials who saw more value in development than conservation. But with incredible dedication, and the support of a wide range of international donors form Japan to the United States, the Murovyovka Nature Reserve has finally come into being.Founded at a small ceremony last summer, the private reserve covers 11000 acres of pristine wetlands along the banks of the Amur River in the Russian Far East. Here, amid forests and marshes encompassing a variety of microhabitats, nest some of the world’s rarest birds—tall, elegant cranes whose numbers are counted in the mere hundreds.The creation of the park marks a new approach to nature conservation in Russia, one that combines traditional methods of protection with an attempt to adapt to the changing economic and political circumstances of the new Russia.“There must be a thousand ways to save a wetland. It is time for vision and risk, and also hard practicality,” wrote Jim Harris, deputy director of the International Crane Foundation, a Wisconsin-based organization dedicated to the study and preservation of cranes, which has been a major supporter of the Murovyovka project.Dr. Smirenski’s vision has been eminently down to earth. At every step, he has tried to involve local officials, businessmen and collective farms in the project, giving them a practical, economic stakes in its success. And with international support, he is trying to introduce new methods of organic farming that will be more compatible with preserving the wetlands.

阅读理解Directions: There are 2 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. You should decide on the best choice and write your answers on the Answer Sheet.Passage TwoGenetic engineering holds great potential payoffs for farmers and consumers by making crops resistant to pets, diseases, and even chemicals used to kill surrounding weeds. But new research raises concerns that altering crops to withstand such threats may pose new risks—from none other than the weeds themselves. This is due to the weeds’ ability to acquire genes from the neighboring agricultural crops. Researchers found that when a weed cross-breeds with a farm-cultivated relative and thus acquires new genetic traits—possibly including artificial genes engineered to make the crop hardier —the hybrid weed can pass along those traits to future generations.“The result may be very hardy, hard-to-kill weeds,” said Allison Snow, a plant ecologist at Ohio State University in Columbus who conducted the experiments over the past six years along with two colleagues. They presented their results last week at the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Madison, Wisconsin.The findings suggest that genetic engineering done with the aim of improving crops—giving them new genetic traits such as resistance to herbicides or pests—could ultimately have unintended and harmful consequences for the crops if weeds acquire the same trait and use it to out- compete the crops. “Gene movement from crops to their wild relatives is an ongoing process that can be ultimately harmful to crops,” said Snow.The results of the experiments challenge a common belief that hybrids gradually die out over several generations, Snow explained. “There has been an assumption that genes wouldn’t persist in crop-weed hybrids, because hybrids are thought to be less successful at reproducing,” she said. However, Snow’s research contradicted this assumption: Hybrid wild radishes survived in all six generations that were grown since the study began.Although the genetic traits the scientists monitored were natural and not genetically engineered, the findings nonetheless suggest that artificial improvements introduced into crops through genetic engineering could spread to weeds and become permanent traits of the weed population.So strengthened, the weeds may pose a serious risk to the long-term health of agricultural crops. The anger exists in a number of crop plants— including rice, sunflower, sorghum, squash, and carrots—that are closely related to weeds with which they compete. Snow is concerned that the transfer of genes from crops to related weeds could rapidly render many herbicides ineffectual. That situation, she said, would be much like bacterial disease acquiring resistance to antibiotics.Because plant hybrids arise in a single generation, however, it could happen much more quickly. “Modern agriculture is heavily dependent on herbicides,” she said, “so people will notice when those don’t work anymore.”

阅读理解1. In what is shaping up as an academic Battle of the Titansone that offers vast new learning opportunities for students around the worldHarvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Wednesday announced a new nonprofit partnership, known as edX, to offer free online courses from both universities. Harvards involvement follows M.I.T.s announcement in December that it was starting an open online learning project, MITx. Its first course, Circuits and Electronics, began in March, enrollin

阅读理解Passage ThreeIt is hard to predict how science is going to turn out, and if it is really good science it is impossible to predict. If the things to be found are actually new, they are by definition unknown in advance. Ybu cannot make choices in this matter- Ybu either have science or you dont, and if you have it you are obliged to accept the surprising and disturbing pieces of information, along with the neat and promptly useful bits.The only solid piece of scientific truth about which I feel totally confident is that we are profoundly ignorant about nature. Indeed, I regard this as the major discovery of the past hundred years of biology. It is, in its way, an illuminating （启示性的）piece of news. It would have amazed the brightest minds of the 18th century Enlightenment to be told by any of us how little we know and how bewildering （困惑）seems the way ahead. It is this sudden confrontation with the depth and scope of ignorance that represents the most significant contribution of the 20th century science to the human intellect （智力）.In earlier times, we either pretended to understand how things worked or ignored the problem, or simply made up stories to fill the gaps. Now that we have begun exploring in earnest, we are getting glimpses of how huge the questions are, and how far from being answered. Because of this, we are depressed. It is not so bad being ignorant if you are totally ignorant; the hard thing is knowing in some detail the reality of ignorance, the worst spots and here and there the not-so-bad spots, but no true light at the end of the tunnel nor even any tunnels that can yet be trusted.But we are making a beginning, and there ought to be some satisfaction. There are probably no questions we can think up that cant be answered, sooner or later, including even the matter of consciousness. To be sure, there may well be questions we cant think up, ever, and therefore limits to the reach of human intellect, but that is another matter Within our limits, we should be able to work our way through to all our answers, if we keep at it long enough, and pay-attention.

阅读理解In the early days of nuclear power, the United States make money on it. But today opponents have resisted its development that no nuclear plants have been ordered or built here in 12 years.The greatest fear of nuclear power opponents has always been a reactor “meltdown”. Today, the chances ofa meltdown that would threaten U. S. public health are very little. But to even further reduce the possibility, engineers are testing new reactors that rely not on human judgment to shut them down but on the laws ofnature. Now General Electric is already building two advanced reactors in Japan. But don’t expect them even on U. S. shores unless things change in Washington.The procedure for licensing nuclear power plants is a bad dream. Any time during or even after construction, an objection by any group or individual can bring everything to a halt while the matter is investigated or taken to court. Meanwhile, the builder must add nice-but-not-necessary improvements, some of which force him to knock down walls and start over. In every case when a plant has been opposed, the Nuclear Regulation Commission has ultimately granted a license to construct or operate. But the victory often costs so much that the utility ends up abandoning the plant anyway.A case in point is the Shoreham plant on New York’s Long Island. Shoreham was a virtual twin to the Millstone plant in Connecticut, both ordered in the mid-60’s. Millstone, completed for $101 million, has been generating electricity for two decades. Shoreham, however, was singled out by antinuclear activists who, by sending in endless protests, drove the cost over $5 billion and delayed its use for many years.Shoreham finally won its operation license. But the plant has never produced a watt power. Governor Mario Cuomo, an opponent of a Shoreham startup, used his power to force New York’s public-utilities commission to accept the following settlement: the power company could pass the cost of Shoreham along to its consumers only if it agreed not to operate the plant. Today, a perfectly good facility, capable of servicing hundreds of thousands of homes, sits rusting.

阅读理解What Trumps Election Means for China Battlegrounds have been drawn this past week in the United States historic election, and POTUS 2017 will, for the first time since Dwight Eisenhower, go to a man who has never before held public office as an elected official

阅读理解Passage 3Questions 31 to 35 are based on the following passageFor most of the 20th century, Asia asked itself what it could learn from the modern, innovating West. Now the question must be reversed: what can the West’s overly indebted and sluggish nations learn from a flourishing Asia?Just a few decades ago, Asia’s two giants were stagnating under faulty economic ideologies. However, once China began embracing free-market reforms in the 1980s, followed by India in the 1990s, both countries achieved rapid growth. Crucially, as they opened up their markets, they balanced market economy with sensible government direction. As the Indian economist Amartya Sen has wisely said, the invisible hand of the market has often relied heavily on the visible hand of government.Contrast this middle path with America and Europe, which have each gone ideologically overboard in their own ways. Since the 1980s, America has been increasingly clinging to the ideology of uncontrolled free markets and dismissing the role of government—following Ronald Reagan’s idea that—government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.Of course, when the markets came crashing down in 2007, it was decisive government intervention that saved the day. Despite this fact, many Americans are still strongly opposed to “big government”.If Americans could only free themselves from their antigovernment doctrine, riley would begin to see that America’s problems are not insoluble. A few sensible federal measures could put the country back on the right path. A simple consumption tax of, say, 5% would significantly reduce the country’s huge government deficit without damaging productivity. A small gasoline tax would help free America from its dependence on oil imports and create incentives for green energy development. In the same way, a significant reduction of wasteful agricultural subsidies could also lower the deficit. But in order to take advantage of these common-sense solutions, Americans will have to put aside their own attachment to the idea of smaller government and less regulation. American politicians will have to develop the courage to follow what is taught in all American public-policy schools: that there are good taxes and bad taxes. Asian countries have embraced this wisdom, and have built sound long-term fiscal policies as a result.Meanwhile, Europe has fallen prey to a different ideological trap: the belief that European governments would always have infinite resources and could continue borrowing as if there were no tomorrow. Unlike the Americans, who felt that the markets knew best, the Europeans failed to anticipate how the markets would react to their endless borrowing. Today, the European Union is creating a $580 billion fund to ward off sovereign collapse. This will buy the EU time, but it will not solve the bloc’s larger problem.

作文题Directions: For this part, you are to write a composition on the topic Attending TV PK Shows Does (or Does no) good to Young People. You should write at least 150 words and you should base your composition on the following instructions. 1)现在各种各样的电视选秀节目吸引了许多年轻人

作文题Directions: Write on the Answer Sheet a composition of about 400 words on the following topic

作文题With the growing popularity of the MOOCs (or Massive Open Online Courses), which allow students to sign up for courses given by famous professors from famous universities, many people argue that many Chinese universities should be closed in the near future

作文题For this part, you are required to write a composition of about 400 words entitled Say No to Chinese in English Class

作文题According to a recent survey of Chinese women, a majority of mothers born after 1990 want to be stay-at-home moms

作文题There are two types of people in the world

作文题Directions: For this part, you are asked to write a composition entitled How I Overcome My Difficulty in Learning English. You should write at least 120 words and base your composition on the outline below. 1. 你在英语学习中有哪些困难? 2. 你是如何克服这些困难的? 3. 这些方法给你带来的收获

完形填空Whats more important to you, money, a comfortable life, or self-respect? Many people believe that we are living in an age where values are in decline

完形填空Movie makers feared for a while that they might be put out of business by television