Direction: In this part of the test, you will hear a passage and read the same passage with blanks in it. Fill in each of the blanks with the words you have heard on the tape. Write your answer in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET. Remember you will hear the passage ONLY ONCE.

 

Most "unassertive" people are not confident and take no for an answer much too easily. There is a growing awareness in our society that this tendency ________ (1) the rights of large numbers of people. For example, in recent years there has been an upsurge in ________ (2) and pressure groups. This is a ________ (3) as there will always be a need for such organizations to ________ (4) individuals and minorities in a competitive society. The danger is that we ________ (5) for our rights and lose the art of asserting ourselves. It is better for ________ (6) with other people if you can learn ________ (7) for yourself.

Now, we have to learn to ignore some of the ________ (8) that may be ringing in our unconscious minds, such as: "If you ask once more, I'll flatten you", and" ________ (9)".

The main technique that we use in ________ (10) to practice the art of persistence is called Broken Record. ________ (11) we hear one sentence over and over again until we reach screaming pitch and ________ (12).

Broken Record is the skill of being able to repeat over and over again, ________ (13), what it is you want or need, until the other person gives in or ________ (14).

Now, this technique is extremely useful for dealing with situations where your rights are clearly________ (15), or coping with situations where you are likely to be diverted by clever, ________ (16).

The beauty of using Broken Record is that you________ (17) because you know exactly what you are going to say, however________ (18) the other person tries to be.

As with most assertive techniques, it must be used appropriately. It is ________ (19) and is not designed to foster deep, interesting conversations and friendships with people! It is primarily of use in situations where ________ (20).

 

Directions: In this part of the test there will be some short talks and conversations. After each one, you will be asked some questions. The talks, conversations and questions will be spoken ONLY ONCE. Now listen carefully and choose the right answer to each question you have heard and write the letter of the answer you have chosen in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET.

1.   (A) Education and health.

      (B) Health in adolescence.

      (C) Sleep deprivation in teens.

      (D) Mysteries of sleep.

2.   (A) A balance in cognitive thoughts and emotions.

      (B) A chronic sleep deprivation.

      (C) A huge wave of sleepiness.

      (D) A mighty sleep hormone.

3.   (A) Melatonin is the source of a big push from biology that makes teenagers night owls.

      (B) Melatonin is a simple signal that turns on in the morning and turns off in the evening.

      (C) Melatonin is secreted several hours later in childhood than it will be during adolescence.

      (D) Melatonin doesn't shut off until 11 o'clock P.M. every day.

4.   (A) They have to struggle to stay up all night.

      (B) They get severely sleep deprived.

      (C) They very often oversleep.

      (D) They fall asleep too soon at night.

5.   (A) Alertness.

      (B) Reaction time.

      (C) Emotion.

      (D) Concentration.

6.   (A) Corporate executives are confident in the stock market trends.

      (B) Investors in general believe that the outlook for profits is worsening.

      (C) Some major company executives are selling more shares than buying.

      (D) The US stock market is expanding at a 5.6 percent annual rate this year.

7.   (A) To inspect the shuttle for potentially critical heat shield damage.

      (B) To rewire the space station for a permanent power source.

      (C) To beat the odds to get off the launch pad in the first night-time launch.

      (D) To make a fiery ascent that turns night into day.

8.   (A) 50.

      (B) 80.

      (C) 150.

      (D) 180.

9.   (A) Forty-five women were killed in the blaze at a drug treatment center.

      (B) The fire was not caused by arson according to a senior firefighter.

      (C) Nine mentally ill patients died in the fire.

      (D) People were trapped behind locked gates and barred windows.

10.  (A) Two detectives investigating the case had tested positive for traces of radiation.

      (B) The ex-wife and the former mother-in-law of the spy were also poisoned.

      (C) The Russian businessman who met the former spy in London has fallen ill.

      (D) There is a high degree of probability that it is polonium that killed the spy.

11.  (A) Closed to the public.                         (B) Silent and empty.

      (C) Packed with                                     (D) Strangely crowded.

12.  (A) New Mexico.                                   (B) Minnesota.

      (C) The coast of Florida.                         (D) The Caribbean.

13.  (A) Several gallons of petrol.                   (B) Food for at least three days.

      (C) Plenty of drinking water.                   (D) A sturdy pair of work boots.

14.  (A) The potential damage.

      (B) The unexpected temperature changes.

      (C) The hurricane's possible path.

      (D) The vulnerability of the locals.

15.  (A) Watch, wait and try not to panic.

      (B) Choose another place for a vacation.

      (C) Ask for their money back if there's a hurricane.

      (D) Plan for very bad weather.

 

16.  (A) Car alarms.

      (B) Sirens.

      (C) Jack-hammers.

      (D) Loud music.

17.  (A) Break eggs on the road.

      (B) Take certain legal action.

      (C) Use some minor retaliatory step.

      (D) Paint the windshield or front hood of a car.

18.  (A) It can only alert the police.

      (B) It is of no use.

      (C) It can prevent the car being broken into.

      (D) It is really too expensive.

19.  (A) It makes them noisier than they were 20 years ago.

      (B) It makes it difficult for them to fall asleep.

      (C) It affects their work during the day.

      (D) It does harm to their hearing.

20.  (A) Many New Yorkers agree about banning this form of sonic pollution.

      (B) The police have formed a posse to reduce the amount of noise.

      (C) Police can break into a car as soon as the alarm goes off.

      (D) Car alarms are very effective at preventing theft.

 

Directions: In this section you will read several passages. Each one is followed by several questions about it. 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.

When Harvey Ball took a black felt-tip pen to a piece of yellow paper in 1963, he never could have realized that he was drafting the face that would launch 50 million buttons and an eventual war over copyright. Mr. Ball, a commercial artist, was simply filling a request from Joy Young of the Worcester Mutual Insurance Company to create an image for their "smile campaign" to coach employees to be more congenial in their customer relations. It seems there was a hunger for a bright grin—the original order of 100 smiley-face buttons were snatched up and an order for 10,000 more was placed at once.

The Worcester Historical Museum takes this founding moment seriously. "Just as you'd want to know the biography of General Washington, we realized we didn't know the comprehensive history of the Smiley Face," says Bill Wallace, the executive director of the historical museum where the exhibit "Smiley—An American Icon" opens to the public Oct. 6 in Worcester, Mass.

Worcester, often referred to by neighboring Bostonians as "that manufacturing town off Route 90," lays claim to several other famous commercial firsts, the monkey wrench and shredded wheat among them. Smiley Face is a particularly warm spot in the city's history. Through a careful historical analysis, Mr. Wallace says that while the Smiley Face birthplace is undisputed, it took several phases of distribution before the distinctive rounded-tipped smile with one eye slightly larger than the other proliferated in the mainstream.

As the original buttons spread like drifting pollen with no copyright attached, a bank in Seattle next realized its commercial potential. Under the guidance of advertising executive David Stern, the University Federal Savings & Loan launched a very public marketing campaign in 1967 centered on the Smiley Face. It eventually distributed 150,000 buttons along with piggy banks and coin purses. Old photos of the bank show giant Smiley Face wallpaper.

By 1970, Murray and Bernard Spain, brothers who owned a card shop in Philadelphia, were affixing the yellow grin to everything from key chains to cookie jars along with "Have a happy day." "In the 1970s, there was a trend toward happiness," says Wallace. "We had assassinated a president, we were in a war with Vietnam, and people were looking for [tokens of] happiness. [The Spain brothers] ran with it."

The Smiley Face resurged in the 1990s. This time it was fanned by a legal dispute between Wal-Mart, who uses it to promote its low prices, and Franklin Loufrani, a Frenchman who owns a company called SmileyWorld. Mr. Loufrani says he created the Smiley Face and has trademarked it around the world. He has been distributing its image in 80 countries since 1971.

Loufrani's actions irked Ball, who felt that such a universal symbol should remain in the public domain in perpetuity. So in a pleasant proactive move, Ball declared in 1999 that the first Friday in October would be "World Smile Day" to promote general kindness and charity toward children in need. Ball died in 2001.

The Worcester exhibit opens on "World Smile Day", Oct. 6. It features a plethora of Smiley Face merchandise—from the original Ball buttons to plastic purses and a toilet seat—and contemporary interpretations by local artists. The exhibit is scheduled to run through Feb. 11.

1.   According to the passage, the Worcester Historical Museum ______.

      (A) concentrates on the collection of the most famous commercial firsts the city has invented

      (B) has composed a comprehensive history of the Smiley Face through the exhibition

      (C) treats Smiley Face as the other famous commercial firsts the city has produced

      (D) has organized the exhibit to arouse the Americans' patriotism

2.   When the author used the expression "spread like drifting pollen "(para.4) to describe the gradual distribution of Smiley Face, he implies that ________.

      (A) Harvey Ball did not claim the copyright of the yellow grin button

      (B) the Smiley Face was immediately accepted by the public

      (C) the button was not sold as an ordinary commercial product

      (D) Harvey Ball had the intention to abandon the copyright of Smiley Face

3.   Why did Bill Wallace mention the assassination of the then American president and the Vietnam War in the 1970s?

      (A) To have a review of the contemporary American history.

      (B) To remind people that we should never forget the past.

      (C) To explain why Americans liked the Smiley Face during that period.

      (D) To show how the Spain brothers made a fortune through selling the yellow grin.

4.   In the expression "Loufrani's actions irked Ball" (para.7), the word "irked" can best be replaced by ______.

      (A) perplexed

      (B) provoked

      (C) irritated

      (D) challenged

5.   Which of the following is NOT true about the "World Smile Day"?

      (A) It was established to commemorate the founder Harvey Ball.

      (B) It was to promote general kindness and charity toward children in need.

      (C) It was declared by Harvey Ball in 1999.

      (D) It was decided to be held on the first Friday in October each year.

 

Good teachers matter. This may seem obvious to anyone who has a child in school or, for that matter, to anyone who has been a child in school. For a long time, though, researchers couldn't actually prove that teaching talent was important. But new research finally shows that teacher quality is a close cousin to student achievement: A great teacher can cram one-and-a-half grades' worth of learning into a single year, while laggards are lucky to accomplish half that much. Parents and kids, it seems, have been right all along to care whether they were assigned to Mrs. Smith or Mr. Brown.

Yet, while we know now that better teachers are critical, flaws in the way that administrators select and retain them mean that schools don't always hire the best.

Many ingredients for good teaching are difficult to ascertain in advance—charisma and diligence come to mind—but research shows a teacher's own ability on standardized tests reliably predicts good performance in the classroom. You would think, then, that top-scoring teachers would be swimming in job offers, right? Not so, says Vanderbilt University professor Dale Ballou. High-scoring teaching applicants "do not fare better than others in the job market," he writes. "Indeed, remarkably they do somewhat worse."

Even more surprising, given the national shortage of highly skilled math and science teachers, school administrators are more keen to hire education majors than applicants who have math or science degrees. No one knows for sure why those who hire teachers routinely overlook top talent. Perhaps they wrongly think that the qualifications they shun make little difference for students. Also, administrators are probably naturally drawn to teachers who remind them of themselves.

But failing to recognize the qualities that make teachers truly effective (and to construct incentives to attract and retain more of these top performers) has serious consequences. For example, because schools don't always hire the best applicants, across-the-board salary increases cannot improve teacher quality much, and may even worsen it. That's because higher salaries draw more weak as well as strong applicants into teaching—applicants the current hiring system can't adequately screen. Unless administrators have incentives to hire the best teachers available, it's pointless to give them a larger group to choose from.

If public school hiring processes are bad, their compensation policies are worse. Most districts pay solely based on years of experience and the presence of a master's degree, a formula that makes the Federal General Schedule—which governs pay for U.S. bureaucrats—look flexible. Study after study has shown that teachers with master's degrees are no better than those without. Job experience does matter, but only for the first few years, according to research by Hoover Institution's Eric A. Hanushek. A teacher with 15 years of experience is no more effective, on average, than a teacher with five years of experience, but which one do you think is paid more?

This toxic combination of rigid pay and steep rewards for seniority causes average quality to decline rather than increase as teacher groups get older. Top performers often leave the field early for industries that reward their excellence. Mediocre teachers, on the other hand, are soon overcompensated by seniority pay. And because they are paid more than their skills command elsewhere, these less-capable pedagogues settle in to provide many years of ineffectual instruction.

So how can we separate the wheat from the chaff in the teaching profession? To make American schools competitive, we must rethink seniority pay, the value of master's degrees, and the notion that a teacher can teach everything equally well—especially math and science—without appropriate preparation in the subject.

Our current education system is unlikely to accomplish this dramatic rethinking. Imagine, for a moment, that American cars had been free in recent decades, while Toyotas and Hondas sold at full price. We'd probably be driving Falcons and Corvairs today. Free public education suffers from a lack of competition in just this way. So while industries from aerospace to drugs have transformed themselves in order to compete, public schooling has stagnated.

School choice could spark the kind of reformation this industry needs by motivating administrators to hire the best and adopt new strategies to keep top teachers in the classroom. The lesson that good teachers matter should be taught, not as a theory, but as a practice.

6.   The beginning sentence "Good teachers matter." can mainly be explained as which of the following?

      (A) Good teachers help students establish confidence.

      (B) Good teachers determine the personality of students.

      (C) Good teachers promote student achievement.

      (D) Good teachers treat students as their own children.

7.   According to the author, seniority pay favors ________.

      (A) good teachers' with master's degrees

      (B) young and effective teachers

      (C) experienced and effective teachers

      (D) mediocre teachers of average quality

8.   The expression "separate the wheat from the chaff in the teaching profession" is closest in meaning to ________.

      (A) distinguish better teachers from less capable ones

      (B) differentiate young teachers from old ones

      (C) tell the essential qualities of good teaching

      (D) reevaluate the role of senior teachers

9.   When the author uses the automobile industry as an example, she argues that ________.

      (A) Japan's auto industry is exceeding America's auto industry

      (B) the public schooling has stagnated because of competition

      (C) the current American education system is better than the Japanese one

      (D) competition must be introduced into the public education system

10.  Which of the following CANNOT be concluded from the passage?

      (A) Most average teachers want to leave school because of high pressure.

      (B) Excellent teachers often leave schools for better jobs.

      (C) The average quality of the teachers in America is declining.

      (D) Teachers' quality is closely related to a number of factors.

 

The British author Salman Rushdie is selling his personal archive to a wealthy American university. The archive, which includes personal diaries written during the decade that he spent living in hiding from Islamic extremists, is being bought by the Emory University in Atlanta for an undisclosed sum. The move has sparked concern that Britain's literary heritage is being lost to foreign buyers. The archive also includes two unpublished novels.

Rushdie, 59, said last week that his priority had been to "find a good home" for his papers, but admitted that money had also been a factor. "I don't see why I should give them away," he said. "It seemed to me quite reasonable that one should be paid." The sum involved is likely to match or exceed similar deals. In 2003 Emory bought the archive of Ted Hughes, the late poet laureate, for a reported $600,000. Julian Barnes, the author of Flaubert's Parrot, is said to have sold his papers to the University of Texas at Austin for $200,000.

Rushdie was born in Bombay (Mumbai) but educated in Britain. His book Midnight's Children was voted the best Booker prize winner in 25 years and he is regarded as a leading British literary novelist. The sale of his papers will annoy the British Library, which is about to hold a conference to discuss how to stop famous writers' archives being sold abroad.

Yesterday Clive Field, the director .of scholarship and collections at the library, said: "I am pleased that Rushdie's papers will be preserved in a publicly accessible institution, but disappointed that we didn't have an opportunity to discuss the acquisition of the archive with him." Rushdie' said the British Library "never asked me about the archive".

Emory University enjoys a large endowment thanks to a student who became a senior executive at Coca-Cola, and already holds the archives of the poets W B Yeats and Seamus Heaney, as well as Hughes. "Emory seems to be very serious about building a collection of contemporary literature," said Rushdie. "Not only do they have the papers of Hughes and Heaney, but also Paul Muldoon and other writers. I got the sense that they want to collect contemporary novelists as well and it just felt very good to be part of that."

Rushdie, who now lives in New York, has accepted a position as a visiting fellow and will spend a month on the campus in Decatur, a leafy suburb of Atlanta, every year until 2012. "They asked if I'd ever thought about putting my archive anywhere and, to tell you the truth, until that moment I really hadn't," Rushdie said.

"My archive is so voluminous that I don't have room in my house for it and it's in an outside storage facility. I was worried about that and wanted to feel it was in a safe place." The papers will be open for scholars to study with one key exception: the "fatwa" diaries that Rushdie wrote under threat of death from Islamic extremists for writing The Satanic Verses. He spent a decade in hiding under the protection of Scotland Yard after Ayatollah Khomeini, then leader of Iran, called the book "blasphemous against Islam" in 1989.

The author may use the diaries as the basis for a book: "I wouldn't want them out in the open, 1 want to be the first person to have a go at the material, whether as a serious autobiography or as a memoir." He was ambivalent about the idea of scholars studying his papers. "The whole thing is very bizarre, you know, it's like imagining someone going through your underwear."

The two unpublished novels—The Antagonist, influenced by Thomas Pynchon, the American writer, and The Book of Peer—were written by Rushdie in the 1970s: "The Antagonist was a contemporary London novel, set around Ladbroke Grove where I was living at the time. I think it was embarrassingly Pynchonesque."

Chris Smith, the former culture minister who chairs the UK Literary Heritage Working Group, said: "It is a very sad day for British literature and scholarship. Our literary heritage is arguably our greatest contribution to culture and we should be taking special care to protect that." Andrew Motion, the poet laureate, last week called for the government to remove Vat from unbound papers, which increases the cost of purchases in this country. Stephen Enniss, of Emory University, said: "There is worldwide interest in Rushdie. We are catering for the long-term care of the archive and will welcome scholars from all over the world."

11.  It can be learned from the passage that the British author Salman Rushdie ______.

      (A) lived in hiding under the protection of Scotland Yard for a decade

      (B) had spent the decade living in Scotland Yard until 1998

      (C) lived in hiding in New York for one decade

      (D) had moved from place to place since the publication of The Satanic Verses

12.  According to the passage, the British Library ______.

      (A) is going to buy back Rushdie's personal archive from Amory University

      (B) opposes the American universities' acquisition of archives from British literary people

      (C) has discussed with Salman Rushdie about the acquisition of his personal archive

      (D) has expressed much concern over foreign buyers' acquisition of Britain's literary heritage

13.  It can be concluded from the passage that the Emory University has collected the rchives of all the following British poets EXCEPT ______.

      (A) Ted Hughes

      (B) Andrew Motion

      (C) W B Yeats

      (D) Seamus Heaney

14.  According to the passage, the "fatwa" diaries (para.7) ______.

      (A) were not included in the archive sold to the Emory University

      (B) will not be open to the public in the near future

      (C) were all about the writing of The Satanic Verses

      (D) will soon be published to expose the persecution of Islamic extremists

15.  Why was Salman Rushdie ambivalent about the idea of scholars studying his papers?

      (A) He was afraid that he would be pursued by Islamic extremists again.

      (B) The scholars might use the papers to write a biography about him.

      (C) He felt that his privacy might be easily exposed to the public.

      (D) He could not imagine what kind of consequences would be following.

At the tail end of the 19th century, Friedrich Nietzsche suggested that natural history—which he saw as a war against fear and superstition—ought to be narrated "in such a way that everyone who hears it is irresistibly inspired to strive after spiritual and bodily health and vigour," and he grumbled that artists had yet to discover the right language to do this.

"None the less," Nietzsche admitted, "the English have taken admirable steps in the direction of that ideal ... the reason is that they [natural history books] are written by their most distinguished scholars—whole, complete and fulfilling natures."

The English language tradition of nature writing and narrating natural history is gloriously rich, and although it may not make any bold claims to improving health and wellbeing, it does a good job—for readers and the subjects of the writing. Where the insights of field naturalists meet the legacy of poets such as Clare, Wordsworth, Hughes and Heaney, there emerges a language as vivid as any cultural achievement.

That this language is still alive and kicking and read every day in a newspaper is astounding. So to hold a century's worth of country diaries is, for an interloper like me, both an inspiring and humbling experience. But is this the best way of representing nature, or is it a cultural default? Will the next century of writers want to shake loose from this tradition? What happens next?

Over the years, nature writers and country diarists have developed an increasingly sophisticated ecological literacy of the world around them through the naming of things and an understanding of the relationships between them. They find ways of linking simple observations to bigger issues by remaining in the present, the particular. For writers of my generation, a nostalgia for lost wildlife and habitats and the business of bearing witness to a war of attrition in the countryside colours what we're about. The anxieties of future generations may not be the same.

Articulating the "wild" as a qualitative character of nature and context for the more quantitative notion of biodiversity will, I believe, become a more dynamic cultural project. The re-wilding of lands and seas, coupled with a re-wilding of experience and language, offers fertile ground for writers. A response to the anxieties springing from climate change, and a general fear of nature answering our continued environmental injustices with violence, will need a reassessment of our feelings for the nature we like—cultural landscapes, continuity, native species—as well as the nature we don't like—rising seas, droughts, "invasive" species.

Whether future writers take their sensibilities for a walk and, like a pack of wayward dogs unleashed, let them loose in hills and woods to sniff out some fugitive truth hiding in the undergrowth, or choose to honestly recount the this-is-where-I-am, this-is-what-I-see approach, they will be hitched to the values implicit in the language they use. They should challenge these.

Perhaps they will see our natural history as a contributor to the commodification of nature and the obsessive managerialism of our times. Perhaps they will see our romanticism as a blanket thrown over the traumatised victim of the countryside. But maybe they will follow threads we found in the writings of others and find their own way to wonder.

16.  The major theme of the passage is about ______.

      (A) the 19th century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche

      (B) the development of the discipline of natural history

      (C) the English language tradition of nature writing

      (D) the style of nature writing and country diaries

17.  In writing the essay, the author seems to be directly talking to the "future generations" and "future writers" probably because ______.

      (A) they will carry forward the tradition of nature writing

      (B) they will confront a changing environment and have their own perspective of natural history

      (C) they will study the causes of climate change and promote the notion and significance of biodiversity

      (D) they will value more the sophisticated ecological literacy of the nature writers and country diarists

18.  The author says that our feelings for the nature we like (as well as the nature we don't like) will need a "reassessment" probably because ______.

      (A) we should not like the cultural landscapes, continuity and native species

      (B) we should not hate the rising seas, droughts, and "invasive" species

      (C) our feelings are often irrational and subjective

      (D) our feelings are always focusing on ourselves

19.  It can be concluded that the tone of the passage is basically ______.

      (A) assertive and radical

      (B) explicit and straightforward

      (C) neutral and impartial

      (D) implicit and explorative

20.  Which of the following statements is NOT in agreement with the author's view?

      (A) The English tradition of nature writing should be reflected and reconsidered.

      (B) The values implicit in the language of natural history should be challenged.

      (C) The re-wilding of human experience and language will greatly benefit us.

      (D) The re-wilding of lands and seas will bring us more disasters.

 

Direction: Translate the following passage into Chinese and write your version in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET.

 

Well before his death, Peter Drucker had already become a legend. Over his 95 prolific years, he had been a true Renaissance man, and teacher of religion, philosophy and political science. But his most important contribution, clearly, is in business. What John Keynes is to economics, Druckers is to management.

In the 1980s Peter Druckers began to have grave doubts about business and even capitalism itself. He no longer saw the corporation as the ideal space to create community. In fact, he saw nearly the opposite: a place where self-interest had triumphed over the egalitarian principles he long championed. In both his writings and speeches, Druckers emerged as one of Corporate America's most important critics. When conglomerates were the rage, he preached against reckless mergers and acquisitions. When executives were engaged in empire-building, he argued against excess staff and the inefficiencies of numerous "assistants to".

In a 1984 essay he persuasively argued that CEO pay had rocketed out of control and implored boards to hold CEO compensation to no more than 20 times what the rank and file made. He maintained that multi-million-dollar severance packages had perverted management's ability to look out anything but itself. What particularly enraged him was the tendency of corporate managers to reap massive earnings while firing thousands of their workers. "This is morally and socially unforgivable," wrote Druckers, "and we will pay a heavy price for it."

 

Direction: In this part of the test you will hear a short talk. You will hear the talk ONLY ONCE. While listening to the talk, you may take notes on the important points so that you can have enough information to complete a gap-filling task on a separate ANSWER BOOKLET. You will not get your TEST BOOK and ANSWER BOOKLET until after you have listened to the talk.

 

Americans' ________ (1) impulses keep generating surprises. Charitable giving plays an even larger role in the ________ (2). Demand for nonprofit services gets proportionately bigger as a locality's ________ (3) rises. The philanthropy of the wealthy may not hinge on tax ________ (4) to the degree many believe. The US _________ (5) the world in levels of charitable activity. Some experts see charity as a ________ (6) trait of the US, more than ________ (7) or business. But those forces may be________ (8), as many nonprofits—from healthcare to classical music—are selling________ (9) in a marketplace alongside for-profit ________ (10). Charity is no mere ________ (11) activity. It pays off for society in ways that may ________ (12) the rates of return on many traditional investments. Charity not only helps those on the ________ (13) end but also strengthens the ________ (14) of society at large. Moreover, it appears to make the givers themselves more_________ (15). The pattern that conservatives are better givers than ________ (16) is less about politics than about charity-linked ________ (17) most common to conservatives: religious commitment, marriage and children, and entrepreneurship. The main point is that more Americans, regardless of ideology, embrace giving as a tool for ________ (18). The urge to make a difference, and to take ________ (19) in it, outweighs ________ (20) considerations.

Directions: In this part of the test, you will hear 5 English sentences. You will hear the sentences ONLY ONCE. After you have heard each sentence, translate it into Chinese and write your version in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET.

(1)

 

(2)

 

(3)

 

(4)

 

(5)

 

Directions: In this part of the test, you will hear 2 English passages. You will hear the passage ONLY ONCE. After you have heard each passage, translate it into Chinese and write your version in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET. You may take note while you are listening.

(1)

 

 

 

 

(2)

 

 

 

 

 

Direction: Read the following passage and then answer IN COMPLETE SENTENCES the questions which follow each passage. Use only information from the passage you have just read and write your answer in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET.

America's population hit the 300 million mark yesterday—at 7:46 a.m. Eastern time, according to Census Bureau estimates. Nobody knows exactly who became America's 300 millionth citizen. But demographers are summing up the milestone as a turning point that signals several trends to watch as the US—in contrast with Europe and Japan—deals with a steadily growing population.

Politically and demographically, experts say, the shifts will begin to have an impact on regions of the country not yet used to the new diversity provided by the influx of Hispanics and Asians, which has already transformed California, Arizona, Texas, Florida, and New York.

In coming years, Midwesterners, those in the Great Plains, rural areas, and small towns everywhere will begin to deal with the challenges of new ethnic and racial residents, says William Frey, a population expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington. And the country as a whole will begin to be more dominated by a young/old divide than the current liberal/conservative model that dominates political discourse.

"This means we are going to transform the current, red/blue political dichotomy to one where the nation is separated by age ... young vs. old," says Mr. Frey. "The issues of younger generations dealing with children and opportunities for minorities will clash with those of the aging baby boomers whose voters are concerned with issues of aging and Social Security and Medicare," he adds. "Both parties will have to adjust to this new dichotomy."

The new milestone hasn't generated much hoopla. That's in sharp contrast to 1967, when President Johnson hailed the 200 millionth American, and Life magazine dispatched a cadre of photographers to find a baby born at the exact moment. One reason is that population growth has become controversial, especially in an election year when immigration is a hot-button issue and politicians are wary.

Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez says the Bush administration is not playing down the milestone, though he had no plans for Tuesday. "I would hate to think that we are going to be low-key about this," he says, since growth helps the economy.

While it's hard to prove that population growth spurs economic growth, the two often go hand in hand, according to experts quoted in the Monitor's recently published series: "US population: 300 million." For example: a nation with a rising population can support its retirees far more easily than one with a declining population. That's an advantage for the US, which is virtually the only developed nation expected to grow this century.

But population growth has less rosy implications, the Monitor series points out. Some experts worry that the land can't sustain the extra 100 million people expected by 2043. Another challenge is sprawl, the dominant model of development, which gobbles up forest and prairie.

1.   Why does the author say that the nation's reaction to the new milestone of 300 million is "in sharp contrast to 1967" (para.5)?

2.   Introduce briefly population expert William Frey's comment on the challenges from the growth of America's population.

3.   Why does the Monitor say that "population growth has less rosy implications" (para.8)?

 

British police forces are reviewing more than 450 unsolved crimes in a push to capitalise on dramatic advances in DNA forensic science. The advent of new ways to collect DNA from items at crime scenes, coupled with powerful analytical tools, has made it possible to obtain DNA profiles of suspects from undetected crimes or cold cases committed nearly 20 years ago, according to a Home Office spokeswoman. The operation has already identified 42 suspects.

The reviews focus on serious, often sexual offences and encompass at least 451 crimes committed between 1989 and 1995. Forensic scientists are returning to items of evidence stored at the time, from scraps of clothing to microscope slides holding just a few cells obtained from victims.

This week, scientists at the Forensic Science Service, which manages the police national DNA database, used the pioneering technique of familial searching to help convict James Lloyd, a shoe fetishist who pleaded guilty to six sexual assaults at Sheffield crown court.

The conviction came after scientists recovered DNA from a 20-year-old sperm sample held on a micropscope slide. While the DNA did not match anyone on the DNA database, scientists searched again for similar DNA profiles and found a close match with his sister.

The high-profile success follows the first use of a new intelligence tool known as pendulum list searching (PLS) which led to the conviction last month of Duncan Turner for a sexual assault in Birmingham in August 2005. Scientists working on the case found a mixture of DNA from different people on a pair of sunglasses found at the crime scene. They used PLS to generate a list of theoretical DNA profiles that could make up the mix. Some 500 pairs of theoretical DNA fingerprints were entered into the database, and one matched Turner. The FSS ploughed a further £6m into research last year and more powerful and precise techniques are in the pipeline.

Part of the push to review cold cases of sexual assaults comes from the development of a technique called Fish, or Fluorescent In Situ Hybridisation, which allows forensic experts to identify and pluck just a few male cells from a swab of female cells taken from the victim. The technique identifies male cells by dyeing green only those carrying the male Y chromosome. Once they are stained, another new tool, laser microdissection, is used to cut them out and collect them, so a full profile can be obtained.

Jim Fraser, a forensic scientist who served as an expert witness in the case of Michael Stone, who was convicted of a double murder in Kent in 1996, said advances in DNA science had already led to suspects being identified beyond the grave and would continue to become more powerful. "The long arm of the law is getting considerably longer—there's really no hiding place now," he said.

According to Cathy Turner, a consultant forensic scientist at the FSS, the rapid advances in DNA technology have transformed the role of forensic scientists. "We've gone beyond corroborating allegations to using DNA and other techniques to provide fresh intelligence," she said. The swelling of the police national DNA database, which now holds profiles for 3.5m people, has in the last five years quadrupled the number of cases in which DNA is used. It provides police with some 3,000 matches to suspects every month.

The national DNA database has been criticised by privacy groups, who fear the privatised database could potentially be misused, but for police forces it is an invaluable resource, said Dr Fraser. "None of this evidence is infallible, irrefutable or unarguable. But it's pretty much the best evidence that'll ever be presented to the criminal justice system by some considerable way," he said.

 

4.   What is the function of PLS? Illustrate the use of PLS by scientists.

5.   Explain the sentence "The long arm of the law is getting considerably longer". (para.7)

6.   What is the controversy over the use of the national DNA database?

 

The new SAT scores are out, and buried in them is a sign of hope for American education. True, the scores are actually a bit lower than last year's; the combined average for the SAT's math and reading sections fell 7 points, to 1021, the biggest decrease since 1975, when the score dropped 16 points, to 1010. But statistically speaking, a 7-point decline (out of a possible 1600 on those two sections) isn't much. It's less than the value of a single question, which is about 10 points. Also, the SAT was radically changed last year. The College Board made it longer and added Algebra II, more grammar and an essay. Fewer kids wanted to take the new 3-hr. 45-min. test more than once, so fewer had an opportunity to improve their performance. Scores were bound to slide.

But tucked into the reams of data the College Board included with the new scores was some wonderful news: 1 was wrong. In 2003 I spent six months tracking the development of the new SAT. I sat through hours of test-development sessions and even learned how to grade SAT essays. TIME ran my resulting story on its cover that October.

The story did make some predictions that turned out to be right. For instance, the new test favors girls more than the old one did. It is a long-standing tenet of testmaking that girls outperform boys on writing exams. For reasons I am not foolish enough to speculate about in print, girls are better than boys at fixing grammar and constructing essays, so the addition of a third SAT section, on writing, was almost certain to shrink the male-female score gap. It did. Girls trounced boys on the new writing section, 502 to 491. Boys still outscored girls overall, thanks largely to boys' 536 average on the math section, compared with girls' 502. But boys now lead on the reading section by just 3 points, 505 to 502; the gap was 8 points last year. What changed? The new test has no analogies ("bird is to nest" as "dog is to doghouse"), and boys usually clobbered girls on analogies.

My story also predicted that the addition of the writing section would damage the SAT'S reliability. Reliability is a measure of how similar a test's results are from one sitting to the next. The pre-2005 SAT had a standard error of measurement of about 30 points per section. In other words, if you got a 500 on the math section, your "true" score was anywhere between 470 and 530. But the new writing section, which includes not only a multiple-choice grammar segment but also the subjective essay, has a standard error of measurement of 40 points. That means a kid who gets a 760 in writing may actually be a perfect 800—or a clever-but-no-genius 720. In short, the College Board sacrificed some reliability in order to include writing.

Finally, I was right about one other thing: that the graders would reward formulaic, colorless writing over sharp young voices. The average essay score for kids who wrote in the first person was 6.9, compared with 7.2 for those who didn't. (A 1 -to-12 scale is used to grade essays. That score is then combined with the score on the grammar questions and translated into the familiar 200 to 800 points.) As my editors know well, first-person writing can flop. But the College Board is now distributing a guide called "20 Outstanding SAT Essays"—all of them perfect scores—and many are unbearably mechanical and cliched.

Still, there's good news. The central contention of my 2003 story was that the SAT'S shift from an abstract-reasoning test to a test of classroom material like Algebra 11 would hurt kids from failing schools. I was worried that the most vulnerable students would struggle on the new version. Instead, the very poorest children—those from families earning less than $20,000 a year—improved their SAT performance this year. It was a modest improvement (just 3 points) but significant, given the overall slump in scores. And noncitizen residents and refugees saw their scores rise an impressive 13 points. It was middleclass and rich kids who account for the much reported decline.

What explains those wonderfully unpredictable findings? The College Board has no firm answers, but its top researcher, Wayne Camara, suggests a (somewhat self-serving) theory: the new SAT is less coachable. When designing the new test, the board banned analogies and "quantitative comparisons". "1 think those items disadvantaged students who did not have the resources, the motivation, the awareness to figure out how to approach them," says Camara. "By eliminating those, the test becomes much less about strategy." Because it focuses more on what high schools teach and less on tricky reasoning questions, the SAT is now more, not less, egalitarian.

Sometimes it's nice to be wrong.

7.   What are some of the "right" predictions the author made about the new SAT a few years ago?

8.   Why does the author say that the addition of the writing section would "damage the SAT's reliability" (para.4)?

9.   What is the "good news" (para.6) about the SAT according to the passage?

10.  What does Wayne Camara mean by saying that "the new SAT is less coachable" (para. 7)?

 

Directions: Translate the following passage into English and write your version in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET.

中国政府高度重视保护环境，认为保护环境关系到国家现代化建设的全局和长远发展，是造福当代、惠及子孙的事业。中国政府将环境保护确立为一项基本国策，在推进经济发展的同时，采取一系列措施加强保护环境。特别是近年来，中国政府坚持预防为主、综合治理、全面推进、重点突破，着力解决危害人民群众健康的突出环境问题；坚持创新体制机制，领先科学进步，强化环境法治，发挥社会各方面的积极性。 经过努力，环境污染和生态破坏加剧的趋势减缓，部分流域污染治理初见成效，部分城市和地区环境质量有所改善，全社会保护环境意识进一步增强。

 

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