SECTION 1: LISTENING TEST (30 minutes) Part A: Spot Dictation
Directions: 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 word or 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.
You probably know that asthma can cause breathing problems. So can kids with asthma play sports? ________(1)! Being active and playing sports is an especially good idea if you have asthma. Why? Because it can _______(2), so they work better.
Some athletes with asthma have done more than develop stronger lungs. They've
played _______(3), and they've even won medals at the Olympic Games! Some sports are less likely to bother a person's asthma. _________(4) are less likely to trigger flare-ups, and so are sports like baseball, football, and gymnastics.
In some sports, you need to ________(5). These activities may be harder for people with asthma. They __________(6)cycling, long-distance running, soccer, basketball, cross-country skiing, _________(7). But that doesn't mean you can't play these sports if ________(8). In fact, many athletes with asthma have found that with the _________(9), they can do any sport they choose. But before playing sports, it's important that your asthma is _________(10). That means you aren't having lots of _________(11). To make this happen, it's very important that you _________(12) just as your doctor tells you to, even when __________(13).
Your doctor will also tell you some other things you can do to avoid flare-ups. This may mean _________(14) when there is lots of pollen in the air, wearing ________(15) when you play outside during the winter, or making sure you always have time for __________(16).
Make sure your coach and teammates know about your asthma. That way, they will understand if you _________(17) because of breathing trouble. It's also helpful if your coach ________(18) if you have a flare-up. Listen to your body and ________(19) your doctor gave you for handling breathing problems. And if you keep your asthma in good control, you'll be in the game and ________(20)!
Part B: Listening Comprehension
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.
Questions 6 to 10 are based on the following news.
6. (A) Mr. Gordon Brown‟s proposal was announced at the conference in Copenhagen. (B) The fund would be available to the poorest and most vulnerable countries alone. (C) The proposed fund is intended to help poorer countries deal with climate change. (D) The total fund would be 10 billion British pounds in total over three years.
7. (A) 0.1 %. (B) 0.4 %. (C) 1.2 %. (D) 3 %.
8. (A) To ask for a suspension of its massive debt repayments. (B) To restore confidence of Western investors across the Gulf. (C) To carefully plan a six-month delay on payments on Dubai World. (D) To turn to Asian countries for help in the global financial crisis.
9. (A) To demonstrate their support for the Doha Round of global trade negotiations. (B) To ask to review all the activities of the world trade body in recent years. (C) To accuse multinational companies of neglecting the interests of the poor. (D) To protest against a WTO ministerial conference starting on Monday.
10. (A) At least 27 passengers dead. (B) 26 killed and scores injured. (C) Hundreds of people dead. (D) Casualty figures yet unknown.
Questions 11 to 15 are based on the following interview.
11. (A) Making people live in harmony and balance with nature. (B) Keeping evil spirits out of people‟s life.
(C) Ordering buildings, rooms and corridors conveniently. (D) Making a home or office look clean and orderly.
12. (A) Scandinavian. (B) Irish. (C) Norwegian. (D) British.
13. (A) Scandinavia. (B) The US. (C) Asia. (D) Southern Europe.
14. (A) Asking a seismologist for advice before starting a building project. (B) Building a house that would stay up in the earthquake. (C) Having a one-way street sign removed.
(D) Pointing a road sign toward a house.
15. (A) He chose to buy his home because of feng-shui (风水). (B) He arranged his office at home according to feng-shui. (C) He made sure that his rooms have great views out the window. (D) He had a feng-shui master put the furniture in his home.
SECTION 2: READING TEST (30 miniutes)
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.
Question 1-5
On the worst days, Chris Keehn used to go 24 hours without seeing his daughter with her eyes open. A soft-spoken tax accountant in Deloitte‟s downtown Chicago office, he hated saying no when she asked for a ride to preschool. By November, he‟d had enough. “I realized that I can have control of this,” he says with a small shrug. Keehn, 33, met with two of the firm‟s partners and his senior manager, telling them he needed a change. They went for it. In January, Keehn started telecommuting four days a week, and when Kathryn, 4, starts T-ball this summer, he will be sitting along the baseline.
In this economy, Keehn‟s move might sound like hopping onto the mommy track—or off the career track. But he‟s actually making a shrewd move. More and more, companies are searching for creative ways to save—by experimenting with reduced hours or unpaid furloughs or asking employees to move laterally. The up-or-out model, in which employees have to keep getting
promoted quickly or get lost, may be growing outmoded. The changing expectations could persist after the economy reheats. Companies are increasingly supporting more natural growth, letting employees wend their way upward like climbing vines. It‟s a shift, in other words, from a
corporate ladder to the career-path metaphor long preferred by Deloitte vice chair Cathy Benko: a lattice.
At Deloitte, each employee‟s lattice is nailed together during twice-a-year evaluations focused not just on career targets but also on larger life goals. An employee can request to do more or less travel or client service, say, or to move laterally into a new role—changes that may or may not come with a pay cut. Deloitte‟s data from 2008 suggest that about 10% of employees choose to “dial up” or “dial down” at any given time. Deloitte‟s Mass Career Customization (MCC)
program began as a way to keep talented women in the workforce, but it has quickly become clear that women are not the only ones seeking flexibility. Responding to millennials demanding better work-life balance, young parents needing time to share child-care duties and boomers looking to ease gradually toward retirement, Deloitte is scheduled to roll out MCC to all 42,000 U.S.
employees by May 2010. Deloitte executives are in talks with more than 80 companies working on similar programs.
Not everyone is on board. A 33-year-old Deloitte senior manager in a southeastern office, who works half-days on Mondays and Fridays for health reasons and requested anonymity because she was not authorized to speak on the record, says one “old school” manager insisted on scheduling meetings when she wouldn‟t be in the office. “He was like, „Yeah, I know we have the program,‟ “she recalls, “„but I don‟t really care.‟”
Deloitte CEO Barry Salzberg admits he‟s still struggling to convert “nonbelievers,” but says they are the exceptions. The recession provides an incentive for companies to design more
lattice-oriented careers. Studies show telecommuting, for instance, can help businesses cut real estate costs 20% and payroll 10%. What‟s more, creating a flexible workforce to meet staffing
needs in a changing economy ensures that a company will still have legs when the market recovers. Redeploying some workers from one division to another—or reducing their salaries—is a whole lot less expensive than laying everyone off and starting from scratch.
Young employees who dial down now and later become managers may reinforce the idea that moving sideways on the lattice doesn‟t mean getting sidelined. “When I saw other people doing it,” says Keehn, “I thought I could try.” As the compelling financial incentives for flexibility grow clearer, more firms will be forced to give employees that chance. Turns out all Keehn had to do was ask.
1. The author used the example of Chris Keehn _____. (A) to show how much he loved his daughter and the family (B) to tell how busy he was working as a tax accountant
(C) to introduce how telecommuting changed the traditional way of working (D) to explore how the partners of a company could negotiate and cooperate smoothly
2. What is the major purpose of shifting from a corporate ladder to the career path of lattice? (A) To take both career targets and larger life goals of employees into consideration. (B) To find better ways to develop one‟s career in response to economic crisis. (C) To establish expectations which could persist after the economy reheats. (D) To create ways to keep both talented women and men in the workforce.
3. The expression “on board” in the sentence “Not everyone is on board.” (para. 4) means _____.
(A) going to insist on old schedules (B) concerned about work-life balance (C) ready to accept the flexible working system (D) accustomed to the changing working arrangement
4. Which of the following is NOT the possible benefit of lattice-oriented careers for businesses?
(A) reducing the costs on real estate. (B) cutting the salaries of employees.
(C) forming a flexible workforce to meet needs in a changing economy. (D) keeping a workforce at the minimal level.
5. According to the passage, the idea that “moving sideways on the lattice doesn‟t mean getting sidelined”______.
(A) would discourage employees from choosing telecommuting (B) might encourage more employees to apply for flexible work hours (C) would give employees more chances for their professional promotion (D) could provide young employees with more financial incentives
Questions 6-10
Right now, there‟s little that makes a typical American taxpayer more resentful than the huge bonuses being dispersed at Wall Street firms. The feeling that something went terribly wrong in the way the financial sector is run—and paid—is widespread. It‟s worth recalling that the
incentive structures now governing executive pay in much of the corporate world were hailed as a miracle of human engineering a generation ago when they focused once-complacent ECOs with laser precision on steering companies toward the brightest possible futures.
So now there‟s a lot of talk about making incentives smarter. That may improve the way
companies or banks are run, but only temporarily. The inescapable flaw in incentives, as 35 years of research shows, is that they get you exactly what you pay for, but it never turns out to be what you want. The mechanics of why this happens are pretty simple: Out of necessity, incentives are often based on an index of the thing you care about—like sound corporate leadership—that is easily measured. Share price is such an index of performance. Before long, however, people
whose livelihoods are based on an index will figure out how to manipulate it—which soon makes the index a much less reliable barometer. Once share price determines the pay of smart people, they‟ll find a way to move it up without improving—and in some cases by jeopardizing—their company.
Incentives don‟t just fail; they often backfire. Swiss economists Bruno Frey (University of Zurich) and Felix Oberholzer-Gee (Harvard Business School) have shown that when Swiss citizens are offered a substantial cash incentive for agreeing to have a toxic waste dump in their community, their willingness to accept the facility falls by half. Uri Gneezy (U.C. San Diego‟s Rady School of Management) and Aldo Rustichini (University of Minnesota) observed that when Israeli day-care centers fine parents who pick up their kids late, lateness increases. And James Heyman
(University of St. Thomas) and Dan Ariely (Duke‟s Fuqua School of Business) showed that when people offer passers-by a token payment for help lifting a couch from a van, they are less likely to lend a hand than if they are offered nothing.
What these studies show is that incentives tend to remove the moral dimension from
decision-making. The day-care parents know they ought to arrive on time, but they come to view the fines as a fee for a service. Once a payoff enters the picture, the Swiss citizens and passersby ask, “What‟s in my best interest?” The question they ask themselves when money isn‟t part of the equation is quite different: “What are my responsibilities to my country and to other people?” Despite our abiding faith in incentives as a way to influence behavior. in a positive way, they consistently do the reverse.
Some might say banking has no moral dimension to take away. Bankers have always been
interested in making money, and they probably always will be, but they‟ve traditionally been well aware of their responsibilities, too. Bankers worried about helping farmers get this year‟s seed into the ground. They worried about helping a new business get off to a strong start or a thriving one to expand. They worried about a couple in their 50s having enough to retire on, and about one in their 30s taking on too big a mortgage. These bankers weren‟t saints, but they served the dual masters of profitability and community service.
In case you think this style. of banking belongs to a horse-and-buggy past, consider credit unions and community development banks. Many have subprime mortgage portfolios that remain healthy to this day. In large part, that‟s because they approve loans they intend to keep on their books rather than securitizing and selling them to drive up revenue, which would in turn boost annual bonuses. And help bring the world economy to its knees.
At the Group of 20 gathering in September, France and Germany proposed strict limits on
executive pay. The U.S. Now has a pay czar, who just knocked down by half the compensation of 136 executives. But the absolute amounts executives are paid may be inconsequential. Most
people want to do right. They want their work to improve the lives of others. As Washington turns its sights on reforms for the financial sector, it just might consider nudging the industry‟s major players away from the time-dishonored tradition of incentives and toward compensation structures that don‟t strip the moral dimension away from the people making big decisions.
6. According to the passage, the incentive structures governing today‟s executive pay in the corporate world _____.
(A) are perfect and shall be continued
(B) have gone wrong somewhere and should be remedied (C) are with inescapable flaws and must be stopped (D) have fundamentally improved the corporate management
7. Which of the following best paraphrases the sentence “Incentives don‟t just fail; they often backfire.” (para. 3)?
(A) Incentives cannot promote the management of companies and banks; they often lead to corporate bankruptcy.
(B) Incentives are only material stimulation, they can be used to destroy human morality. (C) Incentives do not achieve desired results, moreover, they often produce negative effect. (D) Incentives do not treat everything in terms of money and they are often used to change human mentality.
8. According to the passage, with the current incentive structures, the rising of share prices _____.
(A) is surely the reliable barometer of a company‟s performances (B) will endanger the company and do harm to the share holders (C) is often driven up by corporate managers to boost their bonuses (D) proves the necessity of reforms for the financial sector
9. The author introduced the “dual masters of profitability and community service” of the traditional bankers _____.
(A) to support the view that “banking has no moral dimension” (B) to prove that bankers have always been interested in making money (C) to display that the traditional banking is healthier and more successful (D) to argue that bankers could be saints so long as they serve the community
10. Which of the following can be the major conclusion of the author? (A) Strict limits should be imposed by the government on executive pay.
(B) The time-dishonored tradition of incentive structures could jeopardize companies. (C) The financial sector could be reformed on the basis of compensation structures. (D) The moral dimension should be separated from incentive structures.
Questions 11-15
Quick quiz: Who has a more vitriolic relationship with the US? The French or the British. If you guessed the French, consider this: Paris newspaper polls show that 72 percent of the French hold a favorable impression of the United States. Yet UK polls over the past decade show a lower percentage of the British have a favorable impression of the United States.
Britain‟s highbrow newspaper, The Guardian, sets the UK‟s intellectual tone. On any given day you can easily read a handful of stories sniping at the US and things American. The BBC‟s Radio 4, which is a domestic news and talk radio station, regularly laments Britain‟s social warts and follows them up with something that has become the national mantra, “Well, at least we‟re not as bad as the Americans.”
This isn‟t a new trend: British abhorrence of America antedates George W. Bush and the invasion of Iraq. On 9/11 as the second plane was slamming into the World Trade Center towers my wife was on the phone with an English friend of many years. In the background she heard her friend‟s teenage son shout in front of the TV, “Yeah! The Americans are finally getting theirs.” The animosity may be unfathomable to those raised to think of Britain as “the mother country” for whom we fought two world wars and with whom we won the cold war. So what‟s it all about?
I often asked that during the years I lived in London. One of the best answers came from an Englishwoman with whom I shared a table for coffee. She said, “It‟s because we used to be big and important and we aren‟t any more. Now it‟s America that‟s big and important and we can never forgive you for that.” A detestation of things American has become as dependable as the tides on the Thames rising and falling four times a day. It feeds a flagging British sense of national self-importance.
A new book documenting the virulence of more than 30 years of corrosive British animosity reveals how deeply rooted it has become in the UK‟s national psyche. “[T]here is no reasoning with people who have come to believe America is now a „police state‟ and the USA is a „disgrace across most of the world,‟” writes Carol Gould, an American expatriate novelist and journalist, in her book “Don‟t Tread on Me.”
A brief experience shortly after George W. Bush‟s invasion of Iraq illustrates that. An American I know was speaking on the street in London one morning. Upon hearing his accent, a British man yelled, “Take your tanks and bombers and go back to America.” Then the British thug punched him repeatedly. No wonder other American friends of mine took to telling locals they were from Canada. The local police recommended prosecution. But upon learning the victim was an American, crown prosecutors dropped the case even though the perpetrator had a history of assaulting foreigners.
The examples of this bitterness continue:
I recall my wife and I having coffee with a member of our church. The woman, who worked at Buckingham Palace, launched a conversation with, “Have you heard the latest dumb American joke?” which incidentally turned out to be a racial slur against blacks. It‟s common to hear Brits routinely dismiss Americans as racists (even with an African-American president), religious nuts, global polluters, warmongers, cultural philistines, and as intellectual Untermenschen.
The United Kingdom‟s counterintelligence and security agency has identified some 5,000 Muslim extremists in the UK but not even they are denounced with the venom directed at Americans. A British office manager at CNN once informed me that any English high school diploma was equal to an American university degree. This predilection for seeing evil in all things American defies
intellect and reason. By themselves, these instances might be able to be brushed off, but combined they amount to British bigotry.
Oscar Wilde once wrote, “The English mind is always in a rage.” But the energy required to maintain that British rage might be better channeled into paring back what the Economist (a
British news magazine) calls “an overreaching, and inefficient state with unaffordable aspirations around the world.” The biggest problem is that, as with all hatred, it tends to be self-destructive. The danger is that as such, it perverts future generations.
The UK public‟s animosity doesn‟t hurt the United States if Americans don‟t react in kind. This bigotry does hurt the United Kingdom, however, because there is something sad about a society that must denigrate and malign others to feed its own self-esteem. What Britain needs to
understand is that this ill will has poisoned the enormous reservoir of good will Britain used to enjoy in America. And unless the British tweak their attitude, they stand to become increasingly irrelevant to the American people.
11. Which of the following is NOT the example given by the author to show the British abhorrence of America?
(A) A boy shouted “The Americans are finally getting theirs.” when watching TV on 9/11. (B) A woman working at Buckingham Palace told an American joke against blacks. (C) An American speaking on a London street was punched and no prosecution followed. (D) An English author once wrote, “the English mind is always in a rage.”
12. The word “animosity” used in the passage can best be replaced by _____. (A) strong hatred (B) total indifference (C) great sympathy (D) sheer irrelevance
13. The author quoted from the American novelist Carol Gould‟s book _____. (A) to reveal how America has become a police state (B) to expand on the British attitude to America
(C) to explain the changing course of British mentality to America
(D) to document the past 30 years of relationship between Britain and America
14. The author argues that the UK public opinion about America will _____. (A) undermine the relations between the UK and the US (B) be self-destructive to Great Britain
(C) destroy the self-esteem of both the UK and the US (D) hurt the United States except the United Kingdom
15. What is the best title for the passage?
(A) “Police state”: America in the eyes of the UK public
(B) “The mother country”: Britain and America fought two world wars
(C) The British national psyche of self-importance (D) The ally the British love to hate
Questions 16-20
History may soon become extinct in our secondary schools, only less missed and less lamented than before. A new study by the Historical Association found that 3 out of 10 comprehensives no longer bother to teach the subject, which isn‟t part of the core curriculum after the age of 13. Only 30 per cent do GCSE history. The researchers interviewed 700 history teachers. Most British kids can name every contestant appearing in The X Factor, but a substantial number don‟t know about the Battle of Trafalgar, 20 per cent believe the Germans, Spanish or Americans once occupied Britain and some think Winston Churchill was the first man to walk on the moon.
And who were the dunces who decided to make this subject optional? Why the Tories when last they ruled over us. That was then. Today‟s Tories are ardent History Boys, eager to return to the days when the past was hammered into the heads of the young, or embellished tales of glory to give British children an inheritance of innate superiority. Michael Gove, Shadow Schools
Secretary for Children, has been banging on about this for a while and earlier this year the Tory Andrew Rosindell raised the issue in parliament, but regrettably turned a serious debate into brassy, right-wing patriotism: “The peoples of these magnificent British Isles...have a rich and proud history like no other”. Really, sir? So Fat Henry and his sorry wives or Churchill only have to stand up to blank out the histories of Egypt, Turkey, Mexico, Austria, Greece, India, France, Iran and other old lands?
Many of us who long passionately for the reinstatement of history as a core GCSE subject are now concerned about the substance and purpose behind the Tory plans to do just that. They have a
burning desire to use history as a feelgood hallucinogen, get its band of revisionist stars to head up the cavalry, to lead us back to the future. As this prospect approaches, at times I think the current state of ignorance may prove to be less harmful. When politicians exploit these and turn them into propaganda, the results can be lethal.
We are not immune. Thousands of Britons today swallow the BNP‟s message and vote for racist views, thus betraying the legacy of their iconic war against Nazism and the millions of Indians, Africans, Chinese, Caribbeans and others who fought with this country in both world wars. When the BBC hosts these blackguards on its most prestigious programmes and uses democracy as an excuse, it too is guilty of treacherous historical amnesia. Arguably, the lack of good historical education makes our citizens more open to neo-Nazi brain-washers. Young Muslims too, are easily plucked off by charismatic Islamicists who weave fictionalised accounts of splendiferous Islamic epochs when they did no wrong and brought paradise to earth.
There is another disconcerting trend. Britain is deeply conservative and these days looks back longingly to the Tudors, Georgians, Victorians, Edwardians, wartime Britons, and now the Sixties. Showman historians provide our public with an entertaining and comforting view of what has gone before. Audiences are never really forced to question things or feel troubled. If we are to reinstate history as a key subject in secondary schools, we must do so with a better understanding of its impact, and design the syllabus to tell as full a story as possible of this complicated nation and its connections to the world. Few in power have the imagination to take up this challenge because that would be too tricky. Yet our children have a right to learn about British fascism as well as the battles and ultimate victory over Hitler; they need to be taught about how this country set up the endless conflict in Palestine, and the mistakes made by the British government when Zimbabwe was created. Hardly anyone over 20 in Britain knows this. The coming generations surely must, if only to understand the games played during the bitter Cold War, particularly as we may be returning to those days.
The long neglected positive aspects of our history also need to be exhumed. As left-wing
historians often point out, the hard-won democratic rights we enjoy were not bestowed by kings and the landed gentry, but were wrested by oppressed peasants, industrial working classes and the abject poor. Most black, Asian and Arab British children do not know about the many white
anti-Imperialist MPs and an alarming number are woefully ignorant of the erudite Arabists who loved the Middle East and its many cultures. If we had known better the history of Iraq and
Afghanistan, our government might have avoided the foolhardy and disastrous interventions that have left us with no credit. I write here as one of the ignoramuses. I was not taught anything about Afghanistan and have only now started to understand a little more about the people and the places. Oscar Wilde wrote: “The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it”. And having rewritten it as honestly as possible, to teach it to those who will inherit our land.
16. When the author says “today‟s Tories are ardent History Boys” (para. 2), he implies that _____.
(A) the Tories should be responsible for having made the subject of history optional (B) the Tories have realised the mistakes they made in the past
(C) the Tories plan to resume the course of history in secondary education (D) the Tories want to use history to gain back the ruling power of the country
17. Which of the following is true?
(A) Winston Churchill was a statesman in the 20th century British history. (B) The Germans, Spanish or Americans once occupied Britain.
(C) British fascism led to the ultimate victory over Hitler in World War II. (D) The Battle of Trafalgar was fought in the Trafalgar Square in London.
18. The passage mentions the histories of Egypt, Turkey, Mexico, Austria, Greece, India, France, Iran and other old lands _____.
(A) to support the right-wing patriotism of the Tory Andrew Rosindell (B) to show the proud history of Great Britain over the past centuries (C) to question the right-wing patriotism of the Tory Andrew Rosindell (D) to agree with the Tories on the interpretation of the British history
19. Which of the following is not the author‟s major concern about the reinstatement of history as a core GCSE subject?
(A) The history of the Tudors, Georgians, Victorians, Edwardians, wartime Britons. (B) The Tory‟s purpose in planning to reintroduce history as a GCSE subject. (C) The possible use of history as simple propaganda for political purposes. (D) The negative aspects of the British history and the lessons to be learned.
20. The basic tone of the passage can be described as ______. (A) indifferent and sarcastic (B) persuasive and appreciative (C) nostalgic and retrospective
(D) critical and argumentative
SECTION 3: TRANSLATION TEST (30 minutes)
Directions: Translate the following passage into Chinese and write your version in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET.
So many of the productions currently to be seen on the london stage are concerned with the more violent aspects of life that it is surprising to meet a play about ordinary people caught up in
ordinary events. Thomson Sackville's The Visitor is just such a play——at least, on the surface. It seems to stand well outside the mainstream of recent British drama. In fact the surface is so bland that attention is constantly focused on the care with which the play has been put together, and the clarity with hich its argument develops; it seems natural to discuss it in terms of the notion of “the well-wrought play.” the story is about an unremarkable family evening in middle-class suburbia.
The Husband and wife have invited a friend to dinner. the friend turns up in due course and they talk about their respective lives and interests. During this conversion, in which the author shows a remarkble talent for writing dialogue which is entertaining and witty without being so sparkling as to draw too much attention to itself; the characters are carefully fleshed out and provided with a set of credible——if unremarkable——movies. Through innumerable delicate touches in the
writing they emerge：pleasant, humorous, ordinary， and ineffectual. and if they are never made vibrantly alive in terms of the real world, one feels that this is deliberate; that the author is content to give them a theatrical existence of their own, and leave it at that.
SECTION 4: LISTENING TEST (30 minutes)
Part A: Note-taking and Gap-filling
Directions: 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.
Crime is fundamentally _______ (1). The “broken windows” theory explains the rise and fall of crime: If there is a car sitting on the street with a broken window, it is an _______ (2) to vandalize the car. Because a broken window on a car shows that no one cares about the car. No one‟s in _______ (3).
This is a fundamentally different idea about _______ (4). We have been repeatedly told that crime is the result of _______ (5) failure, of something deep and _______ (6) within the hearts and souls and brains of _______ (7). But this theory holds that a criminal is like all of us, someone who is acutely _______ (8) to what‟s going on in the _______ (9), and by making _______ (10) changes in the environment, you can encourage and _______ (11) much more socially _______ (12) behavior.
Take the New York subway as an example. In the early 1980s the subway was a complete
_______ (13); crime rates were going through the _______ (14). In order to clean up the subway, they do three things: pick up all the _______ (15); clean up the _______ (16), and forbid turnstile _______ (17). The subway starts to come around _______ (18). All of a sudden, everyone gets the message that someone‟s in charge, and somebody _______ (19) about this. It‟s not a space that _______ (20) criminal behavior.
Part B: Listening and Translation
I. Sentence Translation
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) _________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________
II. Passage Translation
Directions: In this part of the test, you will hear 2 English passages. You will hear the passages 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 notes while you are listening.
(1) _________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________ (2) _________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________
SECTION 5: READING TEST (30 minutes)
Directions: Read the following passages 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. Questions 1-4
A former colleague relished telling me last week about two forthcoming new additions to the population. His wife is fit to pop with identical twin girls.
He and our sister publication, The Times, got me thinking: could the twins live to be 150? Times2 posed this very question alongside a photograph of a thumb-sucking newborn. Decrepitude is no longer inevitable, it said. Science will help us to stop the rot. There is, some scientists say, a real Dorian Gray among us—someone who, through a mixture of good genes, healthy lifestyle. and timely medical interventions, will give the impression of staying young throughout an extraordinarily long life.
I was still pondering the likelihood of living to 150 when I was presented with another big
question: just how did Derren Brown do it? In a television stunt, he claimed to have predicted the six winning Lotto numbers, sparking an online guessing game about how it was achieved. Indeed, “Derren Brown” and “lottery” were the two top searched-for keywords on the web that led users to timesonline.co.uk. Dozens of theories were offered—from camera trickery to simple sleight of hand.
Even actuaries were speaking about it. Clive Grimley, a partner at Barnett Waddingham, bought into the most popular theory. “According to someone on YouTube, he used split-screen
technology to give the impression that the balls were in the live shot, when in fact they were a static image,” he mused. “The left-hand side of the screen, which showed the numbered balls in a row, was a frozen image. In reality, an assistant was putting the balls in place during the 30-second delay between them being drawn and Brown revealing his numbers. Like Edward Norton in The Illusionist, it‟s all a trick.” Just as illusory, he says, are projections of retirement income. Pensioners today can expect to spend a third of their lives in retirement—a figure that could grow to half our life or more, as we all die later.
It may sound good in theory, but Grimley has some sobering views: the state pension age will have to rocket, a growing number of people will be forced to take “the glide path”—gradually winding down into retirement rather than stopping work altogether immediately—and the onus for funding our latter years will increasingly fall on our own shoulders. The NHS will crumble under the pressure, with 100-plus pensioners battering down the doors at doctors‟ surgeries.
Early evidence stacks up his argument. It is already proposed that the state pension age for women will rise to 65 by 2020, making it equal to that of men. For both sexes, it will rise to 68 by 2046. That will be far from sufficient, though. “Increases to state retirement age are going to have to be fairly radical—I don‟t think anyone wants to admit just how radical,” said Grimley.
When you reach the magic age—whatever that may be—you could be sorely disappointed. The Institute of Directors said last week that the government should freeze the state pension to help cut its growing budget deficit, and freezes—or cuts—could soon become the norm.
How much you stand to get from personal pension savings could be a shock, too. Annuity rates have dropped almost 10% since last summer, pushed down by the government‟s attempts to reflate the economy. It has pumped £175 billion into the financial system by buying up gilts. This has pushed gilt prices up and yields down by as much as 50 to 100 basis points, and it is these that determine annuity rates.
Moreover, the sort of income you can expect from your pension pot is also determined by life expectancy. Clearly, the longer you‟re expected to live, the lower the annuity rate. Three decades ago, in 1980, benchmark annuity rates for a 65-year-old man were almost 16%. Today, they‟re less than half that at 7%—knocking £9,000 a year off what you‟d get for a £100,000 pot. What if in another 30 years they‟re just 3%? That would knock off another £4,000, giving you a pitiful £3,000 a year for every £100,000 of pension savings. Never mind the twins. I‟d better get on with cracking the code for predicting the numbers of those Lotto balls.
1. Why does the author introduce the topic of the likelihood of living to 150 at the beginning of the passage?
2. What is “the glide path” (para. 5)? What is the possible effect of taking “the glide path”? 3. Why does the author mention the prediction of Lotto numbers in the passage? 4. Give a brief summary of the issue of personal pension savings in the United Kingdom introduced in the passage.
Questions 5-7
For a keynote speaker at a conference on wilderness conservation, Pavan Sukhdev possessed a strange job title: banker. Sukhdev, a high-ranking executive of Deutsche Bank who helped build India‟s modern financial markets, had a fiscal message to deliver. The loss of forests is costing the global economy between $2.5 trillion and $4.5 trillion a year, he said. Many trillions more in costs arise from the loss of vegetation to filter water, bees to pollinate crops, microbes to break down toxins, and dozens of other “ecosystem services.”
For centuries, economies have risen and collapsed based on the market value of the products extracted from nature—timber, coal, metals, game. And yet the value of much of what nature supplies hasn‟t been reflected in the numbers. A new movement now seeks to put this right by attaching an economic value to the services nature provides. The idea is predicated on the notion that since a paper mill, say, needs water as well as trees, there should be some kind of economic mechanism whereby it pays to help keep the water flowing. The same is true for dozens of other ecosystem services across a wide range of industries. There‟s scarcely a business in the world that doesn‟t rely in some way on natural features that help control flooding, disseminate seeds, fend off pests, and hold soil in place. According to a study Sukhdev is conducting for the United Nations, protecting and restoring damaged ecosystems can deliver extraordinarily high rates of return on investment—40, 50, even 80 percent. “People need to start thinking of „ecological infrastructure‟ as something they can and should invest in,” Sukdhev said at the conference.
It sounds radical even to talk about nature in the language of finance, but it‟s quickly becoming a mainstream practice. One of the few tangible achievements expected from the climate talks in Copenhagen this month is agreement on a program called REDD, or Reducing Emissions From Deforestation and Forest Degradation, a complex set of regulations that would help developing countries keep their rainforests standing by turning their carbon-storing capacity into a source of income. Trees, after all, absorb carbon dioxide from the air, which can be seen as a service that offsets tailpipe and smokestack emissions. REDD would establish a market in which wealthy countries can pay countries with old-growth forests, such as Brazil, Indonesia, and Guyana, for their carbon stocks, thereby creating an economic incentive to preserve the jungle.
Carbon storage is only one of many services that could enter the global economy in the next few years. Watershed protection is already generating revenue. The Nature Conservancy, a
conservation group, has set up “water funds” in the Southwestern U.S. and parts of South America. Urban water utilities, hydroelectric-power providers, and other users that rely on regular flows of clean water downstream pay into the funds to finance watershed protection upstream. Elsewhere in the U.S., federal environmental laws have enabled thriving markets for wetland and
endangered-species habitat conservation. Under the Clean Water Act, developers who plan to drain or fill in wetlands must create an equal amount of wetlands within the same watershed to conform. to a policy of “no net loss.” For-profit companies like Wildlands, based in Rocklin, California, preserve, restore, or create wetlands that function as “mitigation banks,” in which developers purchase credits to offset destruction they cause. Conservation banks function in a similar way, preserving habitats for listed species. Mitigation banking alone has grown to a $3 billion-a-year industry.
The next step is to turn ecosystem services into a viable portfolio option for large investors—such as pension funds—and to generate the capital needed to carry out large-scale conservation efforts. Experts are looking into bundling different services together into financial instruments. One former bond trader is building a private exchange that would make it easier for investors to identify ecosystem projects and trade credits.
Not everyone thinks using market mechanisms is a good idea. Critics say that REDD, for instance, could protect one rainforest from clear-cutting merely by sending the logging trucks to a different forest. There‟s also a worry that carbon credits could easily be faked. In Papua New Guinea, government officials and foreign firms are already embroiled in a scandal involving duped locals and bogus projects.
The potential upside of markets, though, may be too significant to ignore. “There‟s this inherent feeling that there‟s something unethical about a market, that it‟s permission to pollute,” says Tom Lovejoy, biodiversity chair at the Heinz Center in Washington, D.C. “But at the moment there‟s nothing else on the table that deals with this at a big-enough scale.” Whole, functioning
ecosystems have never been worth as much as their disassembled parts. Turning that equation around may be the best hope for keeping ecosystems intact.
5. What are the “ecosystem services” (para. 1)? What is the “ecological infrastructure?” (para. 2) according to Sukhdev?
6. What are “water funds” (para. 4)? For what purposes are the “water funds” set up? 7. Why does the author say that “Not everyone thinks using market mechanisms is a good idea.” (para. 6)?
Questions 8-10
Every fall the professors at Beloit College publish their Mindset List, a dictionary of all the deeply ingrained cultural references that will make no sense to the bright-eyed students of the incoming class. It‟s a kind of time travel, to remind us how far we‟ve come. This year‟s freshmen were typically born in 1991. That means, the authors explain, they have never used a card catalog to find a book; salsa has always outsold ketchup; women have always outnumbered men in college. There has always been blue Jell-O.
In 1991 we were fighting a war in Iraq, and still are; health care needed reforming, and still does. But before despairing that some things never change, consider how much has. In 1991 the world watched a black motorist named Rodney King be beaten by L.A. cops, all of whom were acquitted; a majority of whites still disapproved of interracial marriage. Ask yourself, Would the people we were then have voted for a mixed-race President and a black First Lady?
That year, apartheid was repealed, the Soviet Union collapsed, the Dow broke 3000. The next year, the first commercial text message was sent; now there are more transmitted every day than there are people on the planet. In the time it took for toddlers to turn into teenagers, we decoded the human genome and everyone got a cell phone, an iPod, a GPS and a DVR. As the head-spinning viral video “Did You Know” informs us, the top 10 jobs in demand in 2010 did not exist six years ago, so “we‟re preparing kids for jobs that don‟t yet exist using technologies we haven‟t yet invented.”
We have managed, rather gracefully, far more change than we predicted would come; it turns out that our past‟s vision of the future was not visionary enough. This is often the case: reality puts prophecy to shame. “Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote,” declared Grover
Cleveland in 1905. Harry Truman, in his 1950 State of the Union address to mark the midcentury, predicted that “our total national production 50 years from now will be four times as much as it is today.” It turned out to be more than 33 times as large. “It will be gone by June,” promised Variety in 1955—talking about rock‟n‟roll. “It will be years—not in my time—before a woman will become Prime Minister,” declared Margaret Thatcher in 1969.
Leaders rely on the future as a vaccine against the present. The Soviets have put a man in space? “I believe we should go to the moon,” President Kennedy announces. “I have a dream,” the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. declares as the world around him burns. Maybe the promise is realized, even surpassed; maybe it keeps receding, pulling us along. “The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time,” Abraham Lincoln supposedly observed. Which is true for those in charge of creating it but maybe not for the rest of us. When we pause and look back, we get to see the past‟s future, know how the story turned out. Did we rise to the occasion? Did we triumph? Did we blink?
The past‟s power comes from experience, the lessons it dares us to dismiss on the grounds that maybe things will be different this time. The future‟s power is born of experiment, and the endless grudge match between fear and hope. We are having a dozen simultaneous conversations right now about change: in our institutions, our culture, our treatment of the planet and of one another.
It‟s tempting to just stand stock-still and squeeze your eyes shut and wait for the moment to pass, or else hoard canned goods and assume the worst. This has been an awfully ugly summer of argument, and you‟d be forgiven for concluding that we‟ve lost our will to face or fix anything. We‟ll just dance with the devils we know, thank you. But if you look past Washington, past Wall Street, turn down the volume and go outside and walk around, you‟ll find the parcels of grace, of ingenuity and enterprise—people riding change like a skateboard, speeding off a ramp, twisting, flipping, somehow landing with a rush of a wind and wheels—and wonder that it somehow hasn‟t killed us yet.
When members of the freshman class of 2027 look back at our future, what‟s likely to surprise them most? Will they marvel that gays were once not allowed to marry—or that they ever were? That we waited while the planet warmed, or that we acted to save it? That we protected the poor, or empowered them, or ignored them? That we lived within our means, or beyond them? We‟ll make our choices one day at a time, but our kids will judge our generation for what we generate, and what we leave undone.
8. Why does the author introduce the Mindset List published by professors at Beloit College at the beginning of the passage?
9. What does the author mean by saying that “our past‟s vision of the future was not visionary enough” (para. 4)?
10. Explain the statement “Leaders rely on the future as a vaccine against the present.” (para. 5) Make your comment.
SECTION 6: TRANSLATION TEST (30 minutes)
Directions: Translate the following passage into English and write your version in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET.
年近古稀的我，应该说是饱经风霜、世事洞明了。但依然时而明白，时而懵懂。孔子曰：“七十而从心而欲，不逾矩。”大概已达到大彻大悟的思想境界了吧。吾辈凡夫，生存在功利社会，终日忙忙碌碌，为柴米油盐所困，酒色财气所惑，既有追求，又有烦恼，若想做到从心所欲，难矣哉！
老年人的从心所欲，不是说可以我行我素，倚老卖老，从心所欲，说白了，就是要有自己的的活法，在心灵深处构筑独自的“自由王国”。海空任鱼跃，天高任鸟飞，悠悠然自得其乐。这种自由，既是无限的，又是有限的，无限的从心所欲寓于有限的生活空间。我想，这大概就是孔夫子所说的“不逾矩”吧。
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