单选题 It is all very well to blame traffic jams, the cost of petrol and the quick pace of modem life, but manners on the roads are becoming horrible. Everybody knows that the nicest men become monsters behind the wheel. It is ail very well, again, to have a tiger in the tank, but to have one in the driver's seat is another matter altogether. You might tolerate the odd road-hog, the rude and inconsiderate driver, but nowadays the well-mannered motorist is the exception to the rule. Perhaps the situation calls for a "Be Kind to Other Drivers" campaign, otherwise it may get completely out of hand. Road politeness is not only good manners, but good sense too, It takes the most coolheaded and good-tempered of drivers to resist the temptation to revenge when subjected to uncivilized behavior. On the other hand, a little politeness goes a long way towards relieving the tensions of motoring. A friendly nod or a wave of acknowledgement in response to an act of politeness helps to create an atmosphere of goodwill and tolerance so necessary in modem traffic conditions. But such acknowledgements of politeness are ail too rare today. Many drivers nowadays don't even seem able to recognize politeness when they see it. However, misplaced politeness can also be dangerous. Typical examples are the driver who brakes violently to allow a car to emerge from a side street at some hazard to following traffic, when a few seconds later the road would be clear anyway; or the man who waves a child across a zebra crossing into the path of oncoming vehicles that may be unable to stop in time. The same goes for encouraging old ladies to cross the road wherever and whenever they care to. It always amazes me that the highways are not covered with the dead bodies of these grannies. A veteran driver, whose manners are faultless, told me it would help if motorists learnt to filter correctly into traffic streams one at a time without causing the total blockages that give rise to bad temper. Unfortunately, modem motorists can't even learn to drive, let alone master the subtler aspects of roadsmanship. Years ago the experts warned us that the car-ownership explosion would demand a lot more give-and-take from all road users. It is high time for all of us to take this message to heart.

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单选题 Directions: In this part of the test, you will hear several short talks and conversations. After each of these, you will hear a few questions. Listen carefully because you will hear the talk or conversation and questions ONLY ONCE. When you hear a question read the four answer choices and choose the best answer to that question. Then write the letter of the answer you have chosen in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET. Questions 11-14

单选题My children went to private school, and given the way things are in our education system I am glad they did; but I wish I had not been presented with the choice between the state and private sectors, for I believe that one of the worst things about this country is the chasm in our education system. It is not exclusive to Britain, but it is uniquely divisive here. The difference in quality between state and private schools is particularly large; the division between the two is based almost entirely on money rather than (as in France) religious preferences; the private sector is unusually large and powerful. The consequences for our society are therefore heinous. The private/state divide exacerbates the class consciousness that lurks beneath our relationships, poisons our politics and distorts our decisions. It leads people to hire, argue with and vote for each other for the wrong reasons. It clouds our judgment. It"s not like this in America, mainland Europe or indeed anywhere else in the civilised world, I promise you. So I was relieved when, a few weeks ago, my twin daughters moved on from the class-stratified secondary school system to what I assumed would be the socialist republic of university. When I went to university, it had much in common with the Soviet Union. You had to queue for hours for awful food, people banged on about ideology a lot and, everybody seemed to be pretty much on an equal footing, socially and economically. It doesn"t seem to be that way these days, according to reports from my daughters and their friends. At Edinburgh, Durham, Bristol and Exeter, the private school kids seem to hang out mostly with the private school kids and the state school kids with the state school kids. The twain do meet a bit, at lectures and tutorials, through societies and in pubs and clubs. But most of their social lives seem to be conducted in bubbles similar to those in which they spent their secondary school lives. This has happened not because young people are more tribal than older ones but because universities have been marketised. In the old days they got their income from the state; now they are quasi-businesses. This leads them to behave like profit-maximising firms and offer a range of products to their customers. They can make more money from selling their Finest accommodation to the well-off and Value to the hard-up than if they offered their Value product across the board. So these days the upscale student does not have to queue for tepid showers: if she wants a double bed and ensuite bathroom, she will get it. There are, therefore, big price differences between halls of residence at these universities, the most expensive accommodation costs up to three times the price of the cheapest. Not surprisingly, social stratification follows the money. At Edinburgh (30% private overall), you can pay ￡7,444 at Chancellors Court (70% private). That compares with ￡2,324 for the cheapest non-catered shared room the university offers. At Exeter (33% private overall), you can pay ￡200-plus a week at Holland Hall (60% private) or ￡104 at St David"s (5% private). At Bristol (40% private overall), Churchill Hall (70% private) cost ￡186 a week; Favell House (22% private) costs ￡127 a week. At Durham things seem more mixed. Although there is a wide range of prices the university is divided into Oxbridge-style colleges, which students end up in partly by choice and partly by random allocation. That may be why my daughter studying at Durham says a quarter of her friends are from state school, while my daughter at Edinburgh says 5% of hers are. I am not a Stalinist. I do not believe in the forced break-up of communities. I have no desire to destroy the bonds of affection that tradition and habit have created. I understand that people are tribal and that social stratification is natural. But university is an unnatural experience. That is the whole point of it. It is why we send these near-adults away from home for the third phase of their education. They have jumped through the same hoops to get there, they have been judged to be as clever as each other, and they should be living as equals. University should not let people slip into familiar grooves. Students are there to encounter ideas and people they did not come across at school. They are meant to be stretched—to be pushed, in that ghastly but useful phrase, outside their comfort zone. That"s not going to happen if they spend three or four years in the company of people just like them. They will return to the real world with their prejudices unshaken and horizons unwidened. There is a simple and practical solution= universities should charge everybody the same and allocate rooms by lottery. There would be a cost, which somebody—the students or taxpayer—would have to pay. But I reckon that if it helped to dissipate some of the miasma of class consciousness that still pervades our society, it would be worth it.

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单选题Whatdoesthemanoffertodo?[A]Toseethewomanattheairport.[B]Tovisitthewomanatherhotelat8:30a.m.[C]Topickupthewomananddrivehertotheairport.

单选题The ability to negotiate successfully, to reach agreements with other people or parties, is a key skill in any business. This negotiation could be with a buyer or seller and it almost always involves an element of compromise. But, when entering negotiations, you should always keep in mind that it is almost impossible to negotiate and make agreements successfully if you think you can"t afford to "lose" or walk away from what is on offer. This will result in your avoiding asking for anything more than what you think the other side will give without a dispute. You become a passive observer, with the other side dictating the terms. In most negotiations one side has more to offer than the other and proper planning can help minimize the effects of this imbalance. Decide on set limits for what you can offer before negotiations begin. There are always advantages you can offer the other side, and you clearly have benefits they want or need or they would not be negotiating with you. In fact, the buyer or seller often wants you more than you think, so it is to your advantage to try and see things from their point of view. The better you know their real needs or wants—not just the ones they have told you—the more successful you will be, and the less likely you are to fall into the trap of giving them more than you really need to. But it is also true that a concession they really need or will value from you won"t cost you as much as it benefits them, and yet may still leave you with everything you want. If you know the other side must reach agreement on a deal by a certain date for financial reasons, your willingness to comply with that date could be worth a great deal of money to them, without costing you much, if anything at all. It is up to you to find out what the other side really needs. Untrained negotiators often allow their feelings to become too involved and they may take each rejection of a proposal as personal rejection. So they become angry with the other person, or blame them for failing to reach an agreement. While it is important to be yourself and, on occasion, not be afraid to express how you honestly feel, it is important to judge carefully when to do this. It is particularly important to maintain a polite and friendly personal relationship when you are facing a difficult negotiation, but keeping negative personal feelings out of negotiation doesn"t mean hiding your personality. Think carefully about your negotiation schedule. Take breaks, particularly during times when you cannot agree over a particular point. But if you have to continue the negotiation on another day, make it soon, and keep the momentum of the negotiations. As long as you are still talking and meeting, you build rapport with the other party; learn more about what they need and ensure that your company is the one most likely to make the deal. This may require both patience and perseverance—but patience pays! To "win" a negotiation then, means that neither side should feel that they have "lost". You should know what you can offer the other side and know exactly what they want. If you have done everything you can and the deal remains outside the limits you have defined for yourself beforehand, then walk away from it. Either way, you"re a winner!

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单选题We grow all our fruit and vegetables, ______saves money, of course. [A] that [B] which [C] what [D] such

单选题If the old maxim that the customer is always right still has meaning, then the airlines that fly the world"s busiest air route between London and Paris have a flight on their hands. The Eurostar train service linking the UK and French capitals via the Channel Tunnel is winning customers in increasing numbers. In late May, it carried its one millionth passenger, having run only a limited service between London, Paris and Brussels since November 1994, starting with two trains a day in each direction to Paris and Brussels. By 1997, the company believes that it will be carrying ten million passengers a year, and continue to grow from there. From July, Eurostar steps its service to nine trains each way between London and Paris, and five between London and Brussels. Each train carries almost 800 passengers, 210 of them in first class. The airlines estimate that they will initially lose around 15%-20% of their London-Paris traffic to the railways once Eurostar starts a full service later this year (1995), with 15 trains a day each way. A similar service will start to Brussels. The damage will be limited, however, the airlines believe, with passenger numbers returning to previous levels within two to three years. In the short term, the damage caused by the 1 million people-level traveling between London and Paris and Brussels on Eurostar trains means that some air services are already suffering. Some of the major carders say that their passenger numbers are down by less than 5% and point to their rivals-particularly Air France-as having suffered the problems. On the Brussels route, the railway company had less success, and the airlines report anything from around a 5% drop to no visible decline in traffic. The airlines" optimism on returning traffic levels is based on historical precedent. British Midland, for example, points to its experience on Heathrow Leeds Bradford service which saw passenger numbers fold by 15% when British Rail electrified and modernized the railway line between London and Yorkshire. Two years later, travel had risen between the two destinations to the point where the airline was carrying record numbers of passengers.

单选题Gene therapy and gene based drugs are two ways we could benefit from our growing mastery of genetic science. But there will be others as well. Here is one of the remarkable therapies on the cutting edge of genetic research that could make their way into mainstream medicine in the coming years. While it"s true that just about every cell in the body has the instructions to make a complete human, most of those instructions are inactivated, and with good reason: the last thing you want for your brain cells is to start churning out stomach acid or your nose to mm into a kidney. The only time cells truly have the potential to turn into any and all body parts is very early in a pregnancy, when so called stem cells haven"t begun to specialize. Yet this untapped potential could be a terrific boon to medicine. Most diseases involve the death of healthy cells—brain cells in Alzheimer"s, cardiac cells in heart disease, pancreatic cells in diabetes, to name a few; if doctors could isolate stem cells, then direct their growth, they might be able to furnish patients with healthy replacement tissue. It was incredibly difficult, but last fall scientists at the University of Wisconsin managed to isolate stem cells and get them to grow into neural, gut, muscle and bone cells. The process still can"t be controlled, and may have unforeseen limitations; but if efforts to understand and master stem cell development prove successful, doctors will have a therapeutic tool of incredible power. The same applies to cloning, which is really just the other side of the coin; true cloning, as first shown with the sheep Dolly two years ago, involves taking a developed cell and reactivating the genome within, resetting its developmental instructions to a pristine state. Once that happens, the rejuvenated cell can develop into a full fledged animal, genetically identical to its parent. For agriculture, in which purely physical characteristics like milk production in a cow or low fat in a hog have real market value, biological carbon copies could become routine within a few years. This past year scientists have done for mice and cows what Ian Wilmut did for Dolly, and other creatures are bound to join the cloned menagerie in the coming year. Human cloning, on the other hand, may be technically feasible but legally and emotionally more difficult. Still, one day it will happen. The ability to reset body cells to a pristine, undeveloped state could give doctors exactly the same advantages they would get from stem cells: the potential to make healthy body tissues of all sorts, and thus to cure disease. That could prove to be a true "miracle cure".

单选题Questions 6～10 There has been much hullabaloo about corporate accounting scams in America, yet perhaps the biggest accounting oversight of all time remains hidden in governments" own national figures. GDP per head is the most commonly used measure of a country"s success, yet it is badly flawed as a guide to a nation"s economic well-being. A new study in the OECD"s 2006 "Going for Growth" report considers some alternatives. Economists spend much time discussing how to boost GDP growth. The OECD itself drew attention this week to the widening gap between American" s and Europe"s GDP per head. Yet a nation"s well-being depends on many factors ignored by GDP, such as leisure time, income inequality and the quality of the environment. GDP was developed primarily as a planning tool to guide the huge production effort of the Second World War. It was never intended to be the definite yardstick of economic welfare. Would another indicator change the ranking of countries or their relative performance over time? GDP is not even the best gauge of the monetary aspects of living standards. It measures the value of goods and services produced by the residents of a country. But some of the income of earned in Britain, say, is paid to non-residents, while residents receive income from abroad. Adding net income from abroad to GDP gives us gross national income (GNI, also known as gross national product), which is more relevant for the prosperity of a nation. Most countries" rank by GNI pre head is similar to that by GDP. One exception is Ireland: its GDP per head is one of the highest in the OECD, but because of large net outflows of investment income, its GNI per head is merely around the OECD average. Its average GNI growth rate over the past decade has also been about one percentage point less than on a GDP basis. Another flaw is that GDP makes no allowance for the depreciation of the capital stock. Subtracting this from GNI leaves net national income (NNI), which is probably the best national account measure of welfare. Awkwardly, the numbers are harder to come by, making it difficult to compare across countries and over time. But even NNI is an imperfect measure of people"s welfare: it excludes the value of such important things as leisure, inequality and the environment. GDP should ideally be reduced to take account of pollution and the using-up of non-renewable resources, but no standard accounts that can do this are yet available. On the other hand, the OECD has made a brave attempt to adjust GDP for the distribution of income. To most observers, a country where a few families enjoy huge wealth but most live in abject poverty would have a lower level of well-being than one with the same GDP but less poverty. A dollar of income is, in effect, worth more in the hands of the poor, though just how much more depends on attitudes towards inequality, the gap between American and most other rich countries, which have a more equal distribution of income, should be greatly reduced. By this measure, adjusted income per head is higher in France than in America. Inequality has also risen in recent years in most countries. Assuming again a strong aversion to equality, average adjusted income per head grew by only 0.6% a year in OECD countries between 1985 and 2002, against 1.4% for GDP per head. But such estimates are sensitive to big value judgments. If, instead, people care little about inequality, then the adjustment will be much smaller. Longer holidays and shorter working hours increasing an individual"s well-being, yet conventional national accounts completely overlook such benefits. America is one of the world"s richest countries, yet its workers toil longer hours than those elsewhere. As a result, adjusting GDP for leisure also narrows the gap between America and Europe. So far, neither the adjustment for inequality nor that for leisure alone overturns America"s economic superiority. However, if both adjustments were made, then on certain assumptions, the gap between United States and several European countries could vanish. This does not mean that Europe can afford to abandon economic reforms. Leisure time is valuable, but it will not pay for future pensions. Nevertheless, the OECD is to be congratulated for being the first mainstream organization to challenge the conventional GDP numbers. Its task now is to encourage governments to start producing more relevant statistics.

单选题School bullying has many parents worried, and not just those whose kids have been on the receiving end. A series of shocking incidents has made headlines and provoked outrage in communities across the country. In Columbus, Indiana, a 13-year-old was charged with felony intimidation after he held a knife against a fellow student"s throat in a classroom while the teacher"s back was turned. In Yorktown, Virginia, 16-year-old Christian Taylor took his own life shortly after his mother, Alise Williams, complained to high school officials that her son had suffered months of relentless bullying by classmates, including one student who she says told Christian to "just go ahead and commit suicide and get it over with." Those cases have prompted parents and school officials to ask whether we"re just seeing the tip of the iceberg, since bullying often takes place off the radar screen of grown-ups. While overall incidents of school violence, such as assault and theft, have declined in the last decade, bullying is on the rise. Indeed, researchers have found that kids are particularly sensitive to intimidation and emotional cruelty. It makes them feel more fearful and anxious than if they were the victims of theft or a physical attack. And the suffering goes far beyond momentary humiliation. They are more likely to be distracted from learning, get poorer grades and become victims of violent crime. They feel powerless, and lose faith in the ability of adults to help them. Peer abuse has always existed at school, but the kinds of kids who are harassing others have changed. The stereotype of yesteryear—a physically intimidating, low-achieving, socially maladjusted loner—no longer applies. Instead, bullies these days are, often as not, popular kids and academic achievers. "They are alpha girls and quarterbacks and not necessarily kids struggling to gain a social foothold," says Elizabeth Englander, director of the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center at Bridgewater State College, which runs anti-bullying programs in K-12 schools. Girls are slightly more likely than boys to act out against others—not physically, but by using tactics like alienation and deliberate rumors calculated to inflict maximum psychological damage. So what causes a student who is doing well to go out of his or her way to hurt another? For one, there"s the momentary rush kids get from being perceived as dominant in a group situation. But research suggests that the growing frequency and intensity of bullying may be the result of a troubling decline in social skills among adolescents. In a 2009 study, 75 percent of educators perceived a significant drop and 25 percent said they saw a slight decline. Psychologists say that these changes may be connected to the way we"re raising our kids. In the last 20 years opportunities for preschoolers and elementary school kids to engage in free play with other children have pretty much evaporated. Instead, parents relentlessly cram their kids" schedules with an array of adult-led academic and sports enrichment activities.

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单选题Questions 23-26

单选题Fighting has stopped and things are changing for______. [A] better [B] the better [C] the best [D] best

单选题What does the author mean by "the American flag, for all of its beauty and deep meaning, is symbolic" in the last paragraph?