阅读理解Passage 1 Hiking on soft sand proved surprisingly hard graft

阅读理解Passage 1 As falling house prices and tightening credit squeeze Americas economy, some worry that the country may suffer a decade of stagnation, as Japan did after its bubble burst in the early 1990s

阅读理解Text 3 In some countries where racial prejudice is acute, violence has so come to be taken for granted as a means of solving differences, that it is not even questioned

阅读理解If we were to search through every class of society in China for the one spiritual force that influences and dominates them all, we should find it to be ancestor worship

阅读理解Masterpieces are dumb

阅读理解Technically, any substance other than food that alters our bodily or mental functioning is a drug

阅读理解Passage 3 The cinema did not emerge as a form of mass consumption until its technology evolved from the initial peepshow format to the point where images were projected on a screen in a darkened theater

阅读理解Passage 2 Psychology is the scientific study of behavior and the mind

阅读理解There is a great irony of 21st-century global health: While many hundreds of millions of people lack adequate food as a result of economic inequities, political corruption, or warfare, many hundreds of millions more are overweight to the point of increased risk for diet-related chronic diseases

阅读理解Passage C Imagine a world in which there was suddenly no emotiona world in which human beings could feel no love or happiness, no terror or hate

阅读理解Taking charge of yourself involves putting to rest some very prevalent myths

阅读理解Directions: There are 4 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 deicide the best choice and mark the corresponding letter on the Answer Sheet with a single line through the center.Passage TwoIt’s hardly news that immigration system is a mess. Foreign nationals have long been slipping across the border with fake papers, and visitors who arrive in the U.S. legitimately often overstay their legal welcome without being punished. But since Sept. 11, it’s become clear that terrorists have been shrewdly factoring the weaknesses of our system into their plans. In addition to their mastery of forging passports, at least three of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers were here on expired visas. That’s been a safe bet until now. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) lacks the resources, and apparently the inclination, to keep track of the estimated 2 million foreigners who have intentionally overstayed their welcome.But this laxness toward immigration fraud may be about to change. Congress has already taken some modest steps. The U.S.A. Patriot Act, passed in the wake of the Sept. 11 tragedy, requires the FBI, the Justice Department, the State Department and the INS to share more data, which will make it easier to stop watch-listed terrorists at the border.But what’s really needed, critics say, is even tougher laws and more resources aimed at tightening up border security. Reformers are calling for a rollback of rules that hinder law enforcement. They also want the INS to hire hundreds more border patrol agents and investigators to keep illegal immigrants out and to track them down once they’re here. Reformers also want to see the INS set up a database to monitor whether visa holders actually leave the country when they are required to.All these proposed changes were part of a new border-security bill that passed the House of Representatives but died in the Senate last week. Before Sept. 11, legislation of this kind had been blocked by two powerful lobbies: universities, which rely on tuition from foreign students who could be kept out by the new law, and business, which relies on foreigners for cheap labor. Since the attacks, they’ve backed off. The bill would have passed this time but for congressional maneuverings and is expected to be reintroduced and to pass next year.Also on the agenda for next year: a proposal, backed by some influential law-makers, to split the INS into two agencies-a good cop that would tend to service functions like processing citizenship papers and a bad cop that would concentrate on border inspections, deportation and other functions. One reason for the division, supporters say, is that the INS has in recent years become too focused on serving tourists and immigrants. After the Sept, 11 tragedy, the INS should pay more attention to serving the millions of ordinary Americans who rely on the nation’s border security to protect them from terrorist attacks.

阅读理解Directions: There are 4 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 deicide the best choice and mark the corresponding letter on the Answer Sheet with a single line through the center.Passage ThreeThe popular dietary supplement ginseng is purported to improve one’s mood. The popular dietary supplement ginseng is purported to improve one’s mood and all-around vigor, but a new study published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association suggests that ginseng has little of any effect on psychological health. The study, conducted by researchers at Oregon State University and Wayne State University, is one of the most extensive peer-reviewed studies of ginseng ever conducted.“Ginseng is being marketed to relatively healthy young people as a way to feel even better—a kind of yuppie supplement,” said Bradley J. Cardinal, an associate professor in the College of Health and Human Performance at Oregon State. “We found it had no real effect on mood at all. It certainly did not live up to some of its over-enthusiastic marketing claims.” Among the claims, the authors say, were that ginseng enhances mood, leads to positive well-being, and generally makes you feel better. Marketing ploys used to push ginseng promoted its use by astronauts and professional athletes, and claimed it did everything from easing childbirth to working as an aphrodisiac.The study by Cardinal and Hermann J. Engels of Wayne State University focused only on the alleged psychological properties of ginseng. The researchers gave a regular, 200-mg daily dose of ginseng to one group of volunteers for eight weeks. A second group received a double dose of 400-mg daily; the third group received a sugar pill. None of the individuals knew what they were taking. At the end of the eight-week period, the researchers measured the effects of the supplements on the volunteers’ “total mood disturbance” using a 65-question “Profile of Mood States” inventory. To eliminate bias, the researchers evaluated the tests without initially knowing which subjects were taking ginseng and which were taking placebos. They compared the results with a baseline survey of the volunteers taken just prior to the study. They found no significant difference among the three groups.“What these findings on psychological effect do is to extend earlier research from our lab that examined physiological outcomes of ginseng,” said Wayne State University’s Engels. “Our previous research found, using a controlled physical exercise stress test, that ginseng had no effects when given to normal, healthy adults.”

阅读理解Passage 3 Just hours before Sunday papers with the last drawings of the Peanuts characters began hitting newsstands, the man who created the worlds most popular comic strip died in his sleep at his Santa Rosa, California home

阅读理解Passage 1 As the 21st century begins, a number of leaders in politics, education, and other professions believe that the United States must adopt some new values to go along the older traditional ones

阅读理解The United States stands apart from most European nations in never having a titled nobility

阅读理解Passage Four It may not be obvious, but hearing two languages regularly during pregnancy puts infants on the road to bilingualism by birth

阅读理解After Chang graduated from university and earned her masters, Nanjing remained only on the periphery of her thoughts

阅读理解Passage 2 When Liam McGee departed as president of Bank of America in August, his explanation was surprisingly straight up

阅读理解Christopher NolansInterstellar fell to Earth at the domestic box office over the weekend, but its international ticket sales are rocketing through the stratosphere faster than commentators can rehash space-based idioms to describe its out-of-this-world success