阅读理解Passage Two Questions 36 to 40 are based on the following passage

阅读理解Text D Several recent studies have found that being randomly assigned to a roommate of another race can lead to increased tolerance but also to a greater likelihood of conflict

阅读理解Passage 4 One important thing during the pre-Christmas rush at our house was the arrival of my daughter‟s kindergarten report card

阅读理解Directions: For this rusk, you are to read a short passage with 5 questions. Read the passage carefully Then answer the questions in the fewest possible words on the Answer Sheet.Three hundred years ago news travelled by word of mouth or letter, and circulated in taverns and coffee houses in the form of pamphlets and newsletters. “The coffee houses particularly are very roomy for a free conversation, and for reading at an easier rate all manner of printed news, ” noted one observer. Everything changed in 1833 when the first mass-audience newspaper, The New York Sun, pioneered the use of advertising to reduce the cost of news, thus giving advertisers access to a wider audience. The penny press, followed by radio and television, turned news flora a two-way conversation into a one-way broadcast, with a relatively small number of firms controlling the media.Now, the news industry is returning to something closer to the coffee house. The internet is making news more participatory, social and diverse, reviving the discursive characteristics of the era before the mass media. That will have profound effects on society and politics. In much of the world, the mass media are flourishing. Newspaper circulation rose globally by 6% between 2005and 2009. But those global figures mask a sharp decline in readership in rich countries.Over the past decade, throughout the Western world, people have been giving tip newspapers and TV news and keeping up with events in profoundly different ways. Most strikingly, ordinary people are increasingly involved in compiling, sharing, filtering, discussing and disturbing news. Twitter lets people anywhere report what they are seeing. Classified documents are published in their thousands online. Mobile phone footage of Arab uprisings and American tornadoes is posted on social networking sites and shown on television newscasts. Social networking sites help people find discuss and share news with their friends.And it is not just readers who are challenging the media elite. Technology firms including Google, Facebook and Twitter have become important conduits of news. Celebrities and world leaders publish updates directly via social networks: many countries now make raw data available through “open government” initiatives. The internet lets people read newspapers or watch television channels from around the world. The web has allowed new providers of news, from individual bloggers to sites, to prominence in a very short space of time. And it has made possible entirely new approaches to journalism, such as that practiced by Wikileaks, which provides an anonymous way for whistleblowers to publish documents. The news agenda is no longer controlled by a few press barons and state outlets.In principle, every, liberal should celebrate this. A more participatory and social news environment, with a remarkable diversity and range of news sources, is a good thing. The transformation of the news business is unstoppable, and attempts to reverse it are doomed to failure. As producers of new journalism, individuals can be scrupulous with facts and transparent with their sources. As consumers, they can be general in their tastes and demanding in their standards. And although this transformation does raise concerns, there is much to celebrate in the noisy, diverse, vociferous, argumentative and stridently alive environment of the news business in the age of the Internet. The coffee house is back. Enjoy it.

阅读理解Passage 2 A quality education is the basic liberator

阅读理解Passage B 1

阅读理解Directions: There are three passages in (his section. Eachpassage is followed by some questions or unfinishedstatements. For each of them there are four choices markedA, B, C and D. You should decide on the best choice andthen blacken the corresponding letter on the Answer Sheet.Passage ThreeAlong with red letterboxes and telephone booths, London’ s black taxis are touted as symbolic of the city. Fully 25, 600 drivers trundle around the capital’ s streets. They are privileged: unlike minicabs, they can pick up passengers hailing in the street and run on a pricey meter system rather than a fixed fee. Nationally the average fare is 5. 77 ($9. 56) for two miles; in London it is 7. 20. All cabbies are required to pass the “knowledge” , a test of all the roads within a six-mile radius of central London. If they take a daft route to their destination it is usually deliberate.But becoming a taxi driver is ever harder. In the 1970s the knowledge took around 23months to complete. Last year it took 50 months. “You can get a PhD in the same time. ” complains Malcolm Paice of City Fleet, a radio-taxi firm. Between 2009 and 2012, the number of taxi drivers increased by only 4% in London. Faced with such a high barrier to entry, more people are taking a shorter course that only allows them to drive black cabs in suburban areas, says Tom Moody Of Transport for London (TfL) .But in the same period the number of minicab drivers in London jumped by 19% to 67, 000,The scorn they receive from black-taxi drivers is little deserved. Liana Griffin, the boss of Addison Lee, a large minicab firm, says minicabs have become more comparable to black cabs since 2004, when regulations and criminal- record checks were introduced. All of the company s drivers take a six week course and rely on satellite navigation system__ as do some black-taxi drivers. Their fares are around a third cheaper, Mr. Griffin says.Technology is further bulldozing the distinction between black taxis and minicabs. Fully 14, 000 London taxis have signed up with Hailo, an app for ordering cabs that was introduced to London in 2011. Ron Zeghibe, Hailo’ s chairman, says that some drivers shun taxi ranks or “street work” in favor of punters who order through his service. Minicab companies have their own, similar, apps. One, from Greentomatocars, helped the firm nearly double in revenue in a year.Yet the separation between the two kinds of taxis looks likely to stay. In April the Law Commission, an independent body, will release a report on the taxi trade. Many of its recommendations will boost minicabs outside London. Larger firms Such as Addison Lee will find it easier to expand as licensing rules are simplified. But London’ s black cabs look likely to be protected. They will still be regulated by TfL; barriers to entry will remain high. Instead of nurturing a dwindling trade, this could have the opposite effect. Black cabs might soon become as quaintly archaic as telephone booths.

阅读理解Directions: There are 3 passages in this part. 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 the answer on the Answer Sheet.Passage threeAs Philadelphia grew from a small town into a city in the first half of the eighteenth century，it became an increasingly important marketing center for a vast and growing agricultural hinterland. Market days saw the crowded city even more crowded，as farmers from within a radius of 24 or more kilometers brought their sheep, cows, pigs, vegetables, cider, and other products for direct sale to the townspeople. The High Street Market was continuously enlarged throughout the period until 1736, when it reached from Front Street to Third. By 1745 New Market was opened on Second Street between Pine and Cedar. The next year the Callowhill Market began operation.Along with market days, the institution of twice-yearly fairs persisted in Philadelphia even after similar trading days had been discontinued in other colonial cities. The fairs provided a means of bringing handmade goods from outlying places to would-be buyers in the city.Linens and stockingsfrom Germantown, for example, were popular items.Auctions were another popular form of occasional trade. Because of the competition, retail merchants opposed these as well as the fairs. Although governmental attempts to eradicate fairs and auctions were less than successful，the ordinary course ofeconomic development was on the merchants’ side, as increasing business specialization became the order of the day. Export merchants became differentiated from their importing counterparts, and specialty shops began to appear in addition to general stores selling a variety of goods.One of the reasons Philadelphia’s merchants generally prospered was because the surrounding area was undergoing tremendous economic and demographic growth. They did their business, after all，in the capital city of the province. Not only did they cater to the governor and his circle, but citizens from all over the colony came to the capital for legislative sessions of the assembly and council and the meetings of the courts of justice.

阅读理解Directions: There are 3 passages in this part. 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 the answer on the Answer Sheet.Passage TwoPotash (the old name for potassium carbonate) is one of the two alkalis (the other being soda, sodium carbonate) that were used from remote antiquity in the making of glass, and from the early Middle Ages in the making of soap: the former being the product of heating a mixture of alkali and sand, the latter a product of alkali and vegetable oil. Their importance in the communities of colonial North America need hardly be stressed.Potash and soda are not interchangeable for all purposes, but for glass- or soap-making either would do. Soda was obtained largely from the ashes of certain Mediterranean sea plants, potash from those of inland vegetation. Hence potash was more familiar to the early European settlers of the North American continent.The settlement at Jamestown in Virginia was in many ways a microcosm of the economy of colonial North America, and potash was one of its first concerns. It was required for the glassworks, the first factory in the British colonies, and was produced in sufficient quantity to permit the inclusion of potash in the first cargo shipped out of Jamestown. The second ship to arrive in the settlement from England included among its passengers experts in potash making.The method of making potash was simple enough. Logs was piled up and burned in the open, and the ashes collected. The ashes were placed in a barrel with holes in the bottom, and water was poured over them. The solution draining from the barrel was boiled down in iron kettles. The resulting mass was further heated to fuse the mass into what was called potash.In North America potash making quickly became an adjunct to the clearing of land for agriculture, for it was estimated that as much as half the cost of clearing land could be recovered by the sale of potash. Some potash was exported from Maine and New Hampshire in the seventeenth century, but the market turned out to be mainly domestic, consisting mostly of shipments from the northern to the southern colonies. For despite the beginning of the trade at Jamestown and such encouragements as a series of acts “to encourage the making of potash,” beginning in 1707 in South Carolina, the softwoods in the South proved to be poor sources of the substance.

阅读理解Passage Three Questions 41 to 45 are based on the following passage

阅读理解Passage 2 A study of older men in the Netherlands, known for its delicious chocolate, showed those who ate the same amount of one-third of a chocolate bar every day had lower blood pressure and a reduced risk of death

阅读理解Directions: In the section, there are five numbered blanks where appropriate sentences are needed to fill in respectively. Choose the most suitable one from the list A-G to fit into the blanks. There are two extra choices, which do not fit in any of the blanks. Please write your answers on the Answer Sheet.Has English become the global language of communication and education? The question might seem obvious, but the answer is not so simple. Yes, English is the international language of commerce and science. And its utility has spread because up to now it has also been the prime moving language of the Internet. But this is beginning to change, and very fast.【A1】 ________ Languages like German, Russian and Spanish are spreading at exponential speed on the Web, Mr. Montviloff said. Because the Internet makes it possible, other languages are also starting to challenge the hegemony of English in distance education. The Internet is helping to revive minority languages and cultures by bringing together widely scattered linguistic communities.【A2】________. Global Reach Inc., a market research company, estimates that English is now the mother tongue of less than half of all Internet users, and the proportion is falling all the time. David Graddol, a language researcher and lecturer at the Open University in Britain, said that, on the one hand, English is becoming a language of everyday usage in some countries in Northern Europe. 【A3】________. “In other countries, however, English is more truly a foreign language,” said Mr. Graddol, “In some countries, like China, there is not very much English in the environment and people may be learning it from teachers who may not speak English very well themselves.” In a third group of countries, like India and Nigeria where English has been used a long time, distinct local varieties of the language are emerging, complete with their own dictionaries, textbooks, and literature. This means that different centers of authority are starting to emerge. 【A4】________. “Thus, the very reason for the rise of English—its guarantee of mutual intelligibility among people of different cultures—could dissolve if the language continues to fragment into a variety of ‘Englishes’”. Bertrand Menciassi, of the European Bureau for Lesser Used Languages in Europe, said the use of a world language both helps and hinders linguistic diversity. People can use English for their outside contacts, while cultivating their own tongue or dialect for use at home. On the other hand, he added, English is tending to push European national languages like Dutch or Danish into a corner. 【A5】________The Commission argues that the ability to speak two or three tongues will give the Europeans economic and technical advantages over their monolingual American rivals in world of diversity, and is about to kick off “The European Year of Languages” in an attempt to promote multilingualism. A. “Something like 70 percent of the Dutch population claim now that they can hold a conversation in English quite comfortably. In countries like the Netherlands, Sweden or Denmark you need English to complete your education,” said Mr. Graddol. B. In England, people like Spencer and Shakespeare went on an inventive spree of creating new words and usages and made the language suitable for literature. C. “We are observing that more and more other languages are taking over the Internet,” said Victor Montviloff, who is responsible for information policy in the communication and information sector at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization here. D. English, like Latin before it, has become a language that is no longer the property of its native speakers, and like Latin, it too may give way to variety of vernacular tongues. E. Researches note a sudden surge of interest in endangered languages, such as those spoken by indigenous groups in North America. F. That could be extremely dangerous, because the university is the brain of the country and this proposal raised the question whether Dutch continues to be an all-purpose language. G. Maintaining linguistic diversity is an important aim of the European Commission, which is concerned that the increasing acceptance of English as the European lingua franca should not detract from the vitality of other languages.

阅读理解Passage A 1

阅读理解Questions 31-32 Half a century ago a radio astronomer called Frank Drake thought of a way to calculate the likelihood of establishing contact with aliens

阅读理解Passage 1 What we know of prenatal development makes all this attempt made by a mother to mold the character of her unborn child by studying poetry, art, or mathematics during pregnancy seem utterly impossible

阅读理解Passage 2 Open up most fashion magazines and you will see incredibly thin models with impossible hair and wearing unreasonably expensive, impracticably styled clothes

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 3The making of classifications by literary historians can be a somewhat risky enterprise. When Black poets are discussed separately as a group, for instance, the extent to which their work reflects the development of poetry in general should not be forgotten, or a distortion of literary history may result. This caution is particularly relevant in an assessment of the differences between Black poets at the turn of the century (1900-1909) and those of the generation of the 1920’s. These differences include the bolder and more forthright speech of the later generation and its technical inventiveness. It should be remembered, though, that comparable differences also existed for similar generations of White poets.When poets of the 1910’s and 1920’s are considered together, however, the distinctions that literary historians might make between “conservative” and “experimental” would be of little significance in a discussion of Black poets, although these remain helpful classifications for White poets of these decades. Certainly differences can be noted between “conservative” Black poets such as Counter Cullen and Claude McKay and “experimental” ones such as Jean Toomer and Langston Hughes. But Black poets were not battling over old or new styles; rather, one accomplished Black poet was ready to welcome another, whatever his or her style, for what mattered was racial pride.However, in the 1920’s Black poets did debate whether they should deal with specifically racial subjects. They asked whether they should only write about Black experience for a Black audience or whether such demands were restrictive. It may be said, though, that virtually all these poets wrote their best poems when they spoke out of racial feeling, race being, as James Weldon Johnson rightly put it, “perforce the thing the Negro poet knows best.”At the turn of the century, by contrast, most Black poets generally wrote in the conventional manner of the age and expressed noble, if vague, emotions in their poetry. These poets were not unusually gifted, though Roscoe Jamison and G. M. McClellen may be mentioned as exceptions. They chose not to write in dialect, which, as Sterling Brown has suggested, “meant a rejection of stereotypes of Negro life,” and they refused to write only about racial subjects. This refusal had both a positive and a negative consequence. As Brown observes, “Valuably insisting that Negro poets should not be confined to issues of race, these poets committed [an] error...they refused to look into their hearts and write.” These are important insights, but one must stress that this refusal to look within was also typical of most White poets of the United States at the time. They, too, often turned from their own experience and consequently produced not very memorable poems about vague topics, such as the peace of nature.

阅读理解Passage 3 Planet Earth was stricken by floods, drought and fire in 1997, a year which ended with the worlds major polluters quarreling about ways to prevent further environmental disaster

阅读理解Passage B Of all the lessons taught by the financial crisis, the most personal one has been that American aren‟t too slick with money

阅读理解Directions: There are 3 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 ThreeKnowledge economyThere have long been markets in tin, cocoa, silver and the like. There used to be security in thinking that somewhere there was a product, something you could touch and see. Now there are new markets in abstractions, trade in ideas and knowledge. Everyone has knowledge but there used to be no way to trade it—except through jobs. That simple fact of economic life was the basis for white collar employment for centuries. The whole job culture grew up because there was no alternative way to sell knowledge, other than the worker or manager providing for a fixed price, his or her knowledge to an employer to own or control. The quantity of knowledge provided has typically been measured in time.But today we stand at the threshold of a new era. The information economy has matured and become smarter. According to many business commentators, we are now living in a knowledge economy. There has always been a market for knowledge, of course. The publishing industry is based on it. But today the internet is making the distribution of knowledge ever easier. The days when the publisher decided what got published are over. Anyone with a PC and a modem can talk to the world. This is reducing the friction in the knowledge economy.Everyone has knowledge of whatever industry she or he is in. say you are a computer dealer, for example. Over the years you have compiled a list of the ten best lowest price places to buy wholesale computer equipment. Now you can sell your knowledge to newer, younger computer dealers who have no way to build up this knowledge without losing thousands of pounds finding it out the hard way. Until now, such knowledge remained securely locked in the recipient’s head, accumulated and then worthlessly withered away. This no longer needs to be the case. Such knowledge can be sold via websites.Knowledge has a distinct advantage in today’s marketplace. It’s a renewable resource. Better yet, it’s worth actually increases. “Knowledge is the only asset that grows with use,” observes Stanford University Professor Paul Romer. But what exactly is knowledge and how can it be packaged to trade on an open market? “Knowledge is experiential information, intelligence applied thorough and gained from experience,” says Joseph Pine and James Gilmore in their book The Experience Economy.The value of knowledge often depends on variables such as time and the credibility of the seller. Certain knowledge may have a very limited shelf life. In sights concerning how to set up an internet business in one country, might be worth a fortune on one day and nothing the next, depending on changes in government policy. Markets in knowledge will be significance for one thing. They represent one of the most original uses of the web technology. In some corner of the globe there is a company wanting to source plastic widgets from Poland, and somewhere else another company that wishes to set up a plastics factory there. It’s simply a case of connecting the two.Indicater.com is a good example of a knowledge trader. It is targeted at food service managers throughout the hospitality industry. “We started with the context rather than extracting money from suppliers,” explains founder Mike Day, “we offer food service professionals interactive support to increase sales and profits. People don’t want another one-dimensional site full of advertising that doesn’t help them to do their job more effectively. It has to be customized offering real solutions to real problems.” The site’s features include access to online training and a tariff tracker to restaurants can check prices throughout the sector.