College rankings are dead! Long live college rankings! At a meeting of the country's leading liberal arts schools this week in Annapolis, Md., a majority of the 80 or so college presidents in attendance said they would no longer participate in the popular annual rankings conducted by US News and World Report. Instead, the Annapolis Group announced it will help develop an alternative set of data to aid students and their families in the bewildering quest to figure out how one school differs from the next. College presidents have long been critical of the US News rankings, in part because 25% of a school's score is based on a survey filled in by roughly half of college presidents and other top administrators, who rate schools based on reputation but often only selectively, leaving most of the list blank and unjudged. The peer survey strikes many in higher education as silly. But they believe the rankings have an additional and more nefarious component. Several college presidents have publicly complained that the rankings' emphasis on the average SAT scores of incoming freshmen has led colleges to fight over high-achieving (and often wealthy) students by offering them merit scholarships and thus leaving fewer financial-aid dollars available to low-income students. But now the Annapolis Group, whose 124 members take up most of the slots in U.S News's list of the top 100 liberal arts schools, is putting its collective weight behind a web-based alternative to the rankings that is being spearheaded by the 900-member National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU). NAICU's easy-to-read template, which is expected to be rolled out by hundreds of schools in September, allows students and their families to pull up extensive information organized in an objective format that includes such data as what percentage of students graduate in four years compared to those who graduate in five or six years. It plans to provide a level of detail that is not included in the US News rankings, but that could be very important to parents' checkbooks. The NAICU template also lists the four most common majors at each school and gives a complete breakdown on class sizes, revealing how many classes have fewer than 20 students, fewer than 40, fewer than 100 or more than 100. NAICU is trying to provide a more complete picture than US News, and the new format doesn't gloss over unpleasant details. For example, it will list a school's current tuition alongside the sticker price from each of the previous four years (Parents, get ready to watch those bar charts keep climbing upwards over time!). It will also include the percentage of students who receive financial aid as well as what the average net tuition is for financial aid recipients. The new set of ratings also contains links to such sought-after details as a school's campus safety report, internship and career-placement services and information about how many of its graduates go on to grad school or are employed in the field of their choice within a certain amount of time after graduation. However, NAICU stops short of ranking schools in numerical order and although the association will serve as a central repository for all the new data, which can also be accessed through an individual school's site, students and their families will have to print out the two-page profiles if they want to see how one institution stacks up against another. "We're letting consumers rank the institutions based on their needs," says NAICU spokesman Tony Pals. Of course, there's nothing to keep US News or anyone else from plugging all this new data into a rankings formula. And more than a few college presidents think that isn't such a bad thing. "Some of my colleagues are ethical purists, and I applaud them," Millsaps College President Dr. Frances Lucas says of the US News rankings' most strident critics at the Annapolis meeting. "But many of us live in the real world." And since the US News rankings are likely here to stay, Lucas and other presidents are hoping that if schools provide more data in a more meaningful, transparent manner, the rankings will become more meaningful, too.

BSECTION 4: TRANSLATION TEST(2)Directions: Translate the following passage into English and write your version in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET./B

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BSECTION 2: STUDA SKILLSDirections: In this section, you will read several passages. Each passage is followed by several questions based on its content. You are to choose one best answer, (A), (B), (C) or (D), to each question. Answer all the questions following each passage on the basis of what is stated or implied in that passage, and write the letter of the answer you have chosen in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET./B

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In like manner we cannot refer the whole phenomena of the Renaissance to any one cause or circumstance, or limit them within the field of any one department of human knowledge. If we ask the students of art what they mean by the Renaissance, they will reply that it was the revolution effected in architecture, painting, and sculpture by the recovery of antique monuments. Students of literature, philosophy, and theology see in the Renaissance that discovery of manuscripts, that passion for antiquity, that progress in philology and criticism, which led to a correct knowledge of the classics, to a fresh taste in poetry, to new systems of thought, to more accurate analysis, and finally to the Lutheran schism and the emancipation of the conscience. Men of science will discourse about the discovery of the solar system by Copernicus and Galileo, the anatomy of Vesalius, and Harvey's theory of the circulation of the blood. The origination of a truly scientific method is the point which interests them most in the Renaissance. The political historian, again, has his own answer to the question. The externalities of Europe, the growth of monarchy, the limitation of the ecclesiastical authority and the erection of the Papacy into an Italian kingdom, and in the last place the gradual emergence of that sense of popular freedom which exploded in the Revolution.

Alberto Bautista, 30, is a rarity in Santa Cruz Mixtepec: a young adult male. Most of the sons, husbands and brothers from this poor remote hamlet of Mixtec Indians, tucked in the sierras of southern Oaxaca state, are migrant workers in the US. Some 60% of Santa Cruz's population of 3,000 live illegally al otro lado—on the other side of the US-Mexico border—sending back almost $1 million last year. But now Bautista is back—working for his uncle in a new carpentry business financed by a microcredit bank that the wives in Santa Cruz founded recently with all that remittance cash. Bautista made $6 an hour picking strawberries in Arizona, more than many laborers in Mexico earn in a day. But he's hopeful that he can comfortably support his wife and new baby by crafting doors, cabinets and coffins, products that people in Santa Cruz and surrounding villages once had to travel miles to buy. "I didn't want to start a family al otro lado," Bautista says, as wood shavings fall to the floor of his uncle's workshop. "Al otro lado isn't home." Bautista's homecoming is a small but important victory in the battle to curb illegal immigration—not at the border but at its source, in the dusty recesses of impoverished rural Mexico. The nation's massive labor migration—what President Felipe Calderon calls his country's "open wound"—was a top agenda item during his recent meeting with President George W. Bush. But if Bush was serious when he said "the working poor of Latin America need change", then many feel the US should start helping burgs like Santa Cruz build the kind of small enterprises that can jump-start more viable local economies. "There is too much entrepreneurial ambition in this country that never sees one peso of encouragement," says Roberto Hernandez, 29, whose metal-window-frames business was financed by the Santa Cruz microbank, which is called Xu Nuu Ndavi, or Poor People's Money in Mixtec. The Mixtecs send more undocumented workers across the border than any other of the 56 indigenous groups in Mexico, such as the Maya and the Zapotecs. t's easy to see why in Santa Cruz, where farmers still till the soil with oxen and wooden plows. But about five years ago, villagers like Olivia Mendoza, Bautista's aunt, decided to invest remittances in something more productive than pickup trucks and wide-screen TVs. "It was time to use that treasure to find ways to bring our families back together," says Mendoza, 40. With help from the Association of Mexican Social Sector Credit Unions (AMUCSS), they pooled $170,000 and set up Xu Nuu Ndavi. One of its first business-starter loans, about $5,000, went to Mendoza's husband Daniel, 45, whose carpentry shop now employs Alberto and two other locals. Their buddy Modesto Ramos, 33, another returned migrant worker, has used his credit to raise and market tomatoes from a l,200-sq.-ft., irrigation-equipped greenhouse. Xu Nuu Ndavi, whose capitalization today is nearly $1 million, offers loan values at a level beyond typical microcredit operations, which are sometimes criticized as the purview of First World do-gooders helping Third World women market tribal shawls. The handful of institutions like it are the first real banking system most rural Mexicans have ever known. In developed countries there are usually fewer than 2,000 people per bank branch. In Oaxaca the number is 38,000, according to AMUCSS. Mexico's big banks have failed to help. The few large banks that make up Mexico's financial oligopoly have all but shut out small business with exorbitant interest rates and prohibitive red tape—despite the fact that small-and medium-size enterprises employ most Mexicans. Migrants send as much as $25 billion home annually, "but there is virtually no engine to receive it, invest it and turn it into jobs," says AMUCSS director Isabel Cruz. "That's the ugly paradox of Mexico." Another ugly paradox is that neither NAFTA nor other Washington-backed free-market reforms have reduced illegal immigration—or quieted a resurgent left across Latin America, led by Venezuela's anti-US President Hugo Chavez. After winning last year's controversial presidential election with just 36% of the vote, the conservative Calderon has worked his way to a 58% approval rating. That might be enough cover to delve deeper int/ new initiatives for Mexico's development, whether in microbanks, health care or schools. Across the street from Xu Nuu Ndavi, a $300,000 church is rising in Santa Cruz. Some residents see it as a sign of the village's resurrection. Others call it a lavish vanity. But either way, Santa Cruz has a rich new faith in the power of poor people's money.

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Passage 1

I met Cameron at his home in the village of Newtonmore, in the Scottish Highlands. He's【C1】______, so when we went out of his comfortable home, up onto the open hillside above the village. I could easily tell how much he loves【C2】______. As he looked round, enjoying the scenery and talking, his face lit up. But when I asked him about memorials to the dead in the countryside【C3】______. He talked about all the stuff he's seen, left by people who've been on the mountains before him.【C4】______, he tells me. But also, more and more monuments, marble plaques, laminated photographs. 【C5】______ in plastic. Children toys cemented onto boulders. He hates them all, he says. He's never destroyed a memorial himself, but he knows other people who have and he【C6】______. On the other side of the argument are Mo and Morag—two women whose friend, Ailsa, died last year of breast cancer. Mo told me Ailsa was【C7】______. It's difficult to believe that she's one. And she talked about the plan for a sponsored walk up Britain's highest mountain, Ben Nevis. The aim is【C8】______ a cancer charity, to help Ailsa's friends say good-bye, and to build a small cairn of piled-up rocks in her memory—complete with【C9】______. Morag explained that they picked Ben Nevis because, on a grey day of mist and low cloud, the summit【C10】______. It was as though the decision had been made for them. And, she added, the top of the mountain is the closest【C11】______. Ben Nevis towers over Fort William, a small town in the west of the Scottish Highlands. It promotes itself as【C12】______ the UK—not least because the mountain is on the doorstep. Admittedly, at one thousand three hundred and forty-three meters the Ben【C13】______ on a world scale. But it does feature some extraordinary wild and rugged scenery, which draws tens of thousands of people every year. They come【C14】______, and in all sorts of ways. Some walk up a wide, easy path to the top because it's something to do on Sunday morning when it feels like everything else in Fort William is shut.【C15】______ the much more challenging Alpine-esque cliffs and ridges on the mountain's north face. And some—like Mo and Morag—come to【C16】______, a family member, or a friend who's died. The mountaineers and walkers say all these memorials are crass, intrusive, and worse than leaving litter in a wild, unspoiled place.【C17】______ that mountains are special, spiritual places—but say that they should be free to leave monuments to the dead in the wilderness, if that's what【C18】______. It's complicated. A sensitive and difficult subject. And it's been dealt with in a variety of different ways. Some land-owners【C19】______ on hill and lake-sides. Others remove anything and everything they find even digging up snow-drops and other wild flowers that have been planted in places【C20】______. Now the Mountaineering Council of Scotland is calling for a debate about what should—and shouldn't—be allowed.

Tycoons gathering this weekend at Google's Silicon Valley headquarters will be giving money away, not trying to make more. Larry Page, one of the search firm's founders and, with a personal fortune estimated at over $14 billion, one of the world's richest 33-year-olds, is holding a fundraiser for one of his favourite charitable causes, the X Prize Foundation. The foundation is a force behind one of the most intriguing trends in philanthropy: promoting change by offering prizes. It has worked before. The chronometer was invented to win an 18th-century British government prize. Charles Lindbergh flew the Atlantic to win $25,000 offered by Raymond Orteig, a hotelier. That inspired Peter Diamandis, the X Prize's creator, to offer $10 million for the first private space flight, won in 2004 by SpaceShipOne. In October the foundation launched its second prize, for genomics: $10 million to the first inventor able to sequence 100 human genomes in ten days. In the same month Mo Ibrahim, a Sudanese mobile-phone entrepreneur, endowed an annual prize of $5 million plus $200,000 a year for life for former African leaders reckoned to have governed well. Last month a British entrepreneur, Sir Richard Branson, launched the Virgin Earth Challenge, offering $25 million to the inventor of a commercially and environmentally viable method of removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. The Rockefeller Foundation has recently formed a partnership with InnoCentive, an entrepreneurial website, to offer financial rewards to people who solve specific social challenges posted on the site. The $1.5 billion Advance Market Commitments, recently put up by a group of rich states and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to stimulate the production of vaccines, is a prize of sorts. And if this weekend's event goes well, the X Prize Foundation plans to add to the boom by announcing a further ten prizes worth $200 million over the next five years, in areas ranging from space and medicine (again) to education, energy and entrepreneurship. This spring, a further X Prize for the creator of a super-efficient car is likely. Matthew Leerberg of Duke University, points out that prizes are more commonly based on recognition of past achievement (such as the Nobel awards), or promote awareness of causes favoured by the donor. "Incentivising" prizes, by contrast, stimulate achievement of specific goals. That has big attractions for businesslike philanthropists such as Mr. Page. This new generation of donors believes that traditional philanthropy is hugely inefficient. On past experience, Dr. Diamandis reckons that a prize means "ten to 40 times the amount of money gets spent". Transatlantic fliers spent a combined $400,000 to win $25,000 from Mr. Orteig; the 26 teams competing for the $10 million spaceflight prize spent $100 million. Dr. Diamandis says Mr. Page's fundraising efforts offer even greater leverage: "Larry says that if he were to give to a university, he'd get about 50 cents on the dollar of value, maybe $2 if there are matching funds. But he gets ten-times leverage by launching a prize, and 100-times leverage by supporting a prize-giving organisation." Prizes may also stimulate those whom old-style grant-making processes fail to reach, such as people outside mainstream research institutions and corporate life. It can go wrong: prizes, such as that for honest government in Africa, may be too small, given other incentives. The criteria need to be clear and sensible—easier in science than in woollier areas such as social policy. The efficiency of a car engine can be defined in terms of a miles-per-gallon equivalent. But, as the X Prize Foundation may soon discover, coming up with a clear, testable and useful challenge in, say, education is tricky. Developing rules for such tricky prizes is one reason why the foundation needs $50 million for its running costs, which will support a staff of 40 "prize experts" who will identify suitable prizes, write the rules and try to generate public excitement. Even clear rules and a big prize may not deliver the desired result. From 1994 to 1999 the Rockefeller Foundation offered a $1 million prize for a cheap, reliable test for sexually transmitted diseases. The offer expired without being claimed. Sir Richard describes the chances of the Virgin Earth Challenge being won as "less likely than likely". And yet, he says, if the prize is won, "It will be the happiest day of my life, the best cheque I've ever written."

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These are the questions you might be interested in. First,【B1】______. If you're an【B2】______ in any field or【B3】______, you shall spend between four and【B4】______ hours a week for each class attending lectures. Note-taking is【B5】______, too. In a【B6】______ week you will have one or two【B7】______ of discussion on the 【B8】______, the 【B9】______, and the【B10】______. Majoring in【B11】______, or【B12】______, or another【B13】______, you shall spend several hours a week in a【B14】______, doing【B15】______. Second, exams. They might include object questions, such as 【B16】______, and essay questions. Third,【B17】______ papers. Finally, see your instructor【B18】______ when having problems. So today I've talked about courses【B19】______, exams, papers, and getting【B20】______.

Las Vegas was founded【B1】______ years ago and was officially【B2】______ in 1905. Since then, Las Vegas has transformed itself into the fastest growing city in the United States. I assumed the city is a fantastic fountain of【B3】______ and 【B4】______, the high 【B5】______ of Kitsch. I consumed its image from the 【B6】______ and 【B7】______ in "Ocean's Eleven" to the high rolling【B8】______ of Scorsese's "Casino". You'll partake freely of the supposed "【B9】______" the city sells; from gambling, to shopping to the【B10】______ of sex. On the【B11】______ the city is everything it promises to be: home to the【B12】______ museum, a mini 【B13】______ tower, a shiny black pyramid, a【B14】______ and out of scale replicas of【B15】______ St. Mark's Square, New York's skyline and【B16】______Bridge. For the right price, Vegas can make anything possible. It is an unabashed advert for【B17】______ and cash. But the truth is slightly different. Las Vegas is all about【B18】______. Everything that happens here takes on a【B19】______ quality. For many people, the ultimate American dream offering anyone who cares to try their【B20】______ the chance to get rich quick will never be realised.

Global average temperatures are set to rise by 1°C above pre-industrial levels for the first time, as the world's climate enters "uncharted territory", scientists at the Met Office said. This year is also expected to be the hottest on record, with the temperatures so far in 2015 beating past records " by a country mile", the meteorologists said. The World Meteorological Organization further announced yesterday that 2016 would be the first year in which the average concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be above 400 parts per million(ppm), because of the continued burning of fossil fuels. The three landmark indicators were announced three weeks before a crunch UN summit in Paris starting on 30 November where world leaders including Barack Obama, Xi Jinping and David Cameron will try to reach a legally binding and universal deal on cutting emissions. The Met Office' s data from January to September 2015 already shows global average temperatures have risen by 1 °C compared to pre-industrial times, for the first time. The increase is due to the "unequivocal" influence of increasing carbon emissions combined with the El Nino climate phenomenon currently under way. The Met Office expects the full-year temperature for 2015 to remain above the 1 °C level. In contrast, it was below 0. 9C in 2014, marking a sharp increase in climate terms. "This is the first time we're set to reach the 1 °C marker and it's clear that it is human influence driving climate into uncharted territory," said Prof Stephen Belcher, "We have passed the halfway mark to the 2 °C target. " The announcement of symbolic milestones in the runup to the Paris summit will increase pressure on negotiators to deliver a strong deal to avert the catastrophic global warming expected beyond 2 °C of warming. "Mother Nature has been kind to the French, but it should not be that way," said Prof Myles Allen from Oxford, referring to the impetus the milestones should give to the Paris conference. "International negotiations on climate change should not be in hock to what happens ... in the preceding nine months." In any case, he said: "The last three months of 2015 would have to be really odd to change [projections of unprecedented warming for 2015] as we are beating the records by a country mile. " Amber Rudd, the UK's energy and climate change secretary, said: "Climate change is one of the most serious threats we face to our economic prosperity, poverty eradication and global security. Pledges to reduce emissions made by countries [are] just the beginning. We need to ensure that as the costs of clean energy fall, countries can be more ambitious with their climate targets. " Climate change is clear in the Central England Temperature record, which is the longest in the world and stretches back to 1772, said Ed Hawkins, a climate scientist at the University of Reading. "We can see the fingerprint of global warming in our own backyard. Central England has warmed 20% more than the global average and we expect that to continue," he said. The impacts of climate change have been analysed in other research presented yesterday by the UK's Avoid project. It found that, compared with unchecked global warming, keeping the temperature rise below 2 °C would reduce heatwaves by 89%, flooding by 76%, cropland decline by 41% and water stress by 26%. Joanna Haigh, professor of atmospheric physics said the last UN climate summit in Denmark in 2009 failed, making Paris crucial in preventing widespread damage: "Copenhagen was generally considered a complete disaster, so it is very important that countries get together at Paris. " Belcher said 4 °C of warming would be much more harmful than simply doubling the impacts expected with 2 °C. He said the European heatwave of 2003 with 70,000 deaths would be "a rather mild summer" in a 4 °C world. The Met Office report also showed that two-thirds of the world's "carbon budget" —the maximum CO 2 that can be emitted over time to keep below 2 °C—had been used up by the end of 2014. But only one-third of the sea-level rise expected from 2 °C of warming—60cm by 2100—has so far occurred, because of the time it takes for large ice sheets to melt. Prof Andrew Shepherd, at the University of Leeds, said a recent NASA study indicating that ice mass grew in Antarctica from 2003-2008 was contradicted by 57 other studies and had just a 5-10% chance of being a correct prediction.

BC: Listening Translation/B

{{B}}Part A Directions: In this part of the test, you will hear 2 passages in English. After you have heard each paragraph, interpret it into Chinese. Start interpreting at the signal.., and stop it at the signal...You may take notes while you are listening. Remember you will hear the passages ONLY ONCE. Now let us begin Part A with the first passage.{{/B}}