1. Learning from the letter, we clearly know the four parts of a letter:____________, ___________, _____________, ______________.

Directions: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D . Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1.

According to the latest research in the United States of America, men and women talk such different languages that it is like people from two different cultures trying to communicate. Professor Deborah Tannen of Georgetown University, has noticed differences in the style. of boys' and girls' conversations from an early age. She says that little girls' conversation is less definite than boys' and expresses more doubts. Little boys’ and conversation to establish status with their listeners.

These differences continue into adult life, she says In public conversations, men talk most and interrupt other speakers more. In private conversations, men and women speak in equal amounts—although they say things in a different style. Professor Tannen. believes that. for women, private talking is a way to establish and test intimacy. For men, private talking is a way to explore the power structure of a relationship.

Teaching is one job where the differences between men's and women's ways of talking show. When a man teaches a woman, says Professor Tannen. he wants to show that he has more knowledge, and hence more power in conversation. When a woman teaches another woman, however, she is more likely to take a sharing approach and to encourage her student to join in.

But Professor Tannen does not believe that women are naturally more helpful. She says women feel they achieve power by being able to help others. Although the research suggests men talk and interrupt people more than women, Professor Tannen says, women actually encourage this to happen because they believe it will lead to more intimacy and help to establish a relationship.

Some scientists who are studying speech think that the brain is pre-programmed for language. As we are usually taught to speak by women, it seems likely that the brain must have a sexual bias in its programming, otherwise male speech patterns would not arise at all.

There are ______ in little girls' conversations than in boys' according To the research.

A．less definition

B．less status

C．more doubts

D．less uncertainties

Directions: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D . Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1.

According to the latest research in the United States of America, men and women talk such different languages that it is like people from two different cultures trying to communicate. Professor Deborah Tannen of Georgetown University, has noticed differences in the style. of boys' and girls' conversations from an early age. She says that little girls' conversation is less definite than boys' and expresses more doubts. Little boys’ and conversation to establish status with their listeners.

These differences continue into adult life, she says In public conversations, men talk most and interrupt other speakers more. In private conversations, men and women speak in equal amounts—although they say things in a different style. Professor Tannen. believes that. for women, private talking is a way to establish and test intimacy. For men, private talking is a way to explore the power structure of a relationship.

Teaching is one job where the differences between men's and women's ways of talking show. When a man teaches a woman, says Professor Tannen. he wants to show that he has more knowledge, and hence more power in conversation. When a woman teaches another woman, however, she is more likely to take a sharing approach and to encourage her student to join in.

But Professor Tannen does not believe that women are naturally more helpful. She says women feel they achieve power by being able to help others. Although the research suggests men talk and interrupt people more than women, Professor Tannen says, women actually encourage this to happen because they believe it will lead to more intimacy and help to establish a relationship.

Some scientists who are studying speech think that the brain is pre-programmed for language. As we are usually taught to speak by women, it seems likely that the brain must have a sexual bias in its programming, otherwise male speech patterns would not arise at all.

There are ______ in little girls' conversations than in boys' according To the research.

A．less definition

B．less status

C．more doubts

D．less uncertainties

Directions: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D . Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1.

Heroin addictions today is found chiefly among young men of minority groups in ghetto (犹太人区) areas. Of the more than 60 000 known addicts, more than half live in New York State. Most of them live in New York City. Recent figures show that more than half of the addicts are under 30 years of age. Narcotic addiction in the United States is not limited to heroin users. Some middle-aged and older people who take narcotic drugs regularly to relieve pain can also become addicted. So do some people who can get drags easily, such as doctors, nurses, and pharmacists. Studies show that this type of addict has personality and emotional problems very similar to those of other regular narcotic users.

Many addicts admit that getting a continued supply is the main object of their lives. An addict's concentration on getting drugs often prevents continuing an education or working at a job. His health is often poor. He may be sick one day from the effects of withdrawal and sick the next day from an overdose. Statistics show that an addict's life span may be shortened by 15 to 20 years. The addict is usually in trouble with the family and almost always in trouble with the law.

Some studies suggest that many of the known narcotic addicts had some trouble with the law before they became addicted. Once addicted, they may become even more involved with crime because it costs so much to support the heroin habit. Most authorities agree that the addict's involvement with crime is not a direct effect of the drug itself. Turning to crime is usually the only way to get that much money. The addicts' crimes are nearly always thefts or other crimes against property.

Federal penalties for illegal narcotics usage were established under the Harris on Act of 1914. The Act provides that illegal possession of narcotics is punishable by fines and/or imprisonment. Sentences can range from 2 to 10 years for the first offense, 5 to 20 years for the second, and 10 to 20 years for further offends.

Illegal sale of narcotics can mean a fine of $ 20 000 and a sentence from 20 to 40 years for later offenses. A person who sells narcotics to someone under 18 is refused parole and probation, even for the first offense. If the drug is heroin, he can be sentenced to life imprisonment or to death.

What is the topic of this passage?

A．How to cure a drug addict.

B．Heroin and narcotic.

C．The harm of the drags and the anti-drug measures taken by the government.

D．The American laws.

Directions: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D . Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1.

Heroin addictions today is found chiefly among young men of minority groups in ghetto(犹太人区)areas. Of the more than 60,000 known addicts, more than half live in New York State. Most of them live in New York City. Recent figures show that more than half of the addicts are under 30 years of age.

Narcotic addiction in the United States is not limited to heroin users. Some middle-aged and older people who take narcotic drugs regularly to relieve pain can also become addicted. So do some people who can get drugs easily, such as doctors, nurses, and pharmacists. Studies show that this type of addict has personality and emotional problems very similar to those of other regular narcotic users.

Many addicts admit that getting a continued supply is the main object of their lives. An addict' s concentration on getting drugs often prevents continuing an education or working at a job. His health is often poor. He may be sick one day from the effects of withdrawal and sick the next day from an overdose. Statistics show that an addict's life span may be shortened by 15 to 20 years. The addict is usually in trouble with the family and almost always in trouble with the law.

Some studies suggest that many of the known narcotic addicts had some trouble with the law be fore they became addicted. Once addicted, they may become even more involved with crime because it costs so much to support the heroin habit.

Most authorities agree that the addict' s involvement with crime is not a direct effect of the drug itself. Turning to crime is usually the only way to get that much money. The addicts' crimes are nearly always thefts or other crimes against property. Federal penalties for illegal narcotics usage were established under the Harris on Act of 1914. The Act provides that illegal possession of narcotics is punishable by fines and/or imprisonment. Sentences can range from 2 to 10 years for the first of fense,5 to 20 years for the second, and 10 to 20 years for further offenses. Illegal sale of narcotics can mean a fine of $ 20,000 and a sentence from 20 to 40 years for later offenses. A person who sells narcotics to someone under 18 is refused parole and probation, even for the first offense. If the drag is heroin, he can be sentenced to life imprisonment or to death.

What is the topic of this passage?

A．How to cure a drug addict.

B．Heroin and narcotic.

C．The harm of the drugs and the anti drug measures taken by the government.

D．The American laws.

Directions: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D . Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1.

With the development of science and technology, we know much of glaciers. For all their great diversity of shapes and sizes, glaciers consist of two essential types: valley glaciers, which flow downhill from mountains and are shaped by the constraints of topography, and ice sheets, which flow outward in all directions from domelike centers of accumulated ice to cover vast expanses of terrain. Whatever their types, most glaciers are remnants of great shrouds of ice that covered the earth eons ago. In a few of these glaciers the oldest ice is very ancient indeed: the age of parts of tile Antarctic sheet may be over 500,000 years.

Glaciers are born in rocky wombs above the snow line, where there is sufficient winter snowfall and summer cold for snow to survive the annual melting. The long gestation period of a glacier begins with the accumulation and gradual transformation of snowflakes. Soon after they come to the ground, complex snowflakes are reduced to compact, roughly spherical ice crystals, the basic components of a glacier. As new layer of snow and firn, snow that survives the melting of the previous summer, accumulate, they squeeze out most of the air bubbles trapped within and between the crystals below. This process of recrystallization continues throughout the life of the glacier.

The length of time required for the formation of glacier ice depends mainly upon the temperature and the rate of snowfall. In Iceland, where snowfall is heavy and summer temperature is high enough to produce plenty of melt water, glacier ice may come into being in a relatively short time—for example, ten years. In parts of Antarctica, where snowfall is scant and the ice remains well below its melting temperature year-round, the process may require hundreds of years.

The ice does not become a glacier until it moves under its own weight, and it can not move significantly until it reaches a critical thickness—the point at which the weight of the piled-up layers overcomes the internal strength of the ice and the friction between the ice and the ground. This critical thickness is about 60 feet. The fastest moving glaciers have been gauged at not much more than two and a half-mile per year, and some cover less than 1/100 inch in that same amount of time. But no matter how infinitely small the flow, movement is what distinguishes a glacier from a mere mass of ice.

Which will be the best title for the passage?

A．How Glaciers Come into Being.

B．How Glaciers Move Around.

C．The Classification of Glaciers.

D．The Volume and Shape of Glaciers.

Directions: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D . Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1.

The big identity-theft bust last week was just a taste of what's to come. Here's how to protect your good name.

HERE'S THE SCARY THING about the identity-theft ring that the Feds cracked last week: there was nothing any of its estimated 40, 000 victims could have done to prevent it from happening. This was an inside job, according to court documents. A lowly help-desk worker at Teledata Communications, a software firm that helps banks access credit reports online, allegedly stole passwords for those reports and sold them to a group of 20 thieves at $ 60 a pop. That allowed the gang to cherry-pick consumers with good credit and apply for all kinds of accounts in their names. Cost to the victims: $3 million and rising.

Even scarier is that this, the largest identity-theft bust to date, is just a drop in the bit bucket. More than 700, 000 Americans have their credit hijacked every year. It's one of crime's biggest growth markets. A name, address and Social Security number—which can often be found on the Web—is all anybody needs to apply for a bogus line of credit. Credit companies make $1.3 trillion annually and lose less than 2% of that revenue to fraud, so there's little financial incentive for them to make the application process more secure. As it stands now, it's up to you to protect your identity.

The good news is that there are plenty of steps you can take. Most credit thieves are opportunists , not well-organized gangs. A lot of them go Dumpster diving for those millions of " pre-approved" credit-card mailings that go out every day. Others steal wallets and return them, taking only a Social Security number. Shredding your junk mail and leaving your Social Security card at home can save a lot of agony later.

But the most effective way to keep your identity clean is to check your credit reports once or twice a year. There are three major credit-report outfits: Equifax (at equifax. com), Trans-Union (www.transunion.com) and Experian (experian. com). All allow you to order reports online, which is a lot better than wading through voice-mail hell on their 800 lines. Of the three, I found Trans-Union's website to be the cheapest and most comprehensive—laying out state-by-state prices, rights and tips for consumers in easy-to-read fashion.

If you're lucky enough to live in Colorado, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey or Vermont, you are entitled to one free report a year by law. Otherwise it's going to cost $8 to $ 14 each time. Avoid services that offer to monitor your reports year-round for about $ 70; that's $ 10 more than the going rate among thieves. If you think you're a victim of identity theft, you can ask for fraud alerts to be put on file at each of the three credit-report companies. You can also download a theft-report form. at www. consumer, gov/idtheft, which, along with a local police report, should help when irate creditors come knocking. Just don't expect justice. That audacious help-desk worker was one of the fewer than 2% of identity thieves who are ever caught.

What is the trend of credit-theft crime?

A．Tightly suppressed.

B．More frightening.

C．Rapidly increasing.

D．loosely controlled.

Directions: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. (40 points)

In 1957 a doctor in Singapore noticed that hospitals were treating an unusual number of influenza-like cases. Influenza is sometimes called “flu” or a “bad cold”. He took samples from the throats of patients in his hospital and was able to find the virus of this influenza.

There are three main types of the influenza virus. The most important of these are types A and B, each of them having several sub-groups. With the instruments at the hospital the doctor recognized that the outbreak was due to a virus group A, but he did not know the sub-group. He reported the outbreak to the World Health Organization in Geneva. W. H.O. published the important news alongside reports of a similar outbreak in Hong Kong, where about 15%—20% of the population had become ill.

As soon as the London doctors received the package of throat samples, they began the standard tests. They found that by reproducing itself at very high speed, the virus had multiplied more than a million times within two days. Continuing their careful tests, the doctors checked the effect of drugs used against all the known sub-groups of virus type A. None of them gave any protection. This then, was something new: a new influenza virus against which the people of the world had no ready help whatsoever. Having isolated the virus they were working with, the two doctors now dropped it into the noses of some specially selected animals, which contact influenza in the same way as human beings do. In a short time the usual signs of the disease appeared. These experiments revealed that the new virus spread easily, but that it was not a killer. Scientists, like the general public, called it simply “Asian” flu.

The first discovery of the virus, however, was made in China before the disease had appeared in other countries. Various reports showed that the influenza outbreak started in China, probably in February of 1957. By the middle of March it had spread all over China. The virus was found by Chinese doctors early in March. But China was not a member of the World Health Organization and therefore did not report outbreaks of disease to it. Not until two months later, when travelers carried the virus into Hong Kong, from where it spread to Singapore, did the news of the outbreak reach the rest of the world. By this time it was started on its way around the world.

Thereafter, WHO’s Weekly Reports described the steady spread of this virus outbreak, which within four months swept through every continent.

The Singapore doctor found the influenza was caused by

A．an influenza virus type BH

B．a sub-group of virus type A

C．a virus only existing in Asia.

D．a new type of influenza virus.

Directions: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. (40 points)

Extraordinary creative activity has been characterized as revolutionary, flying in the face of what is established and producing not what is acceptable but what will become accepted. According to this formulation, highly creative activity transcends the limits of an existing form. and establishes a new principle of organization. However, the idea that extraordinary creativity transcends established limits is misleading when it is applied to the arts, even though it may be valid for the sciences. Differences between highly creative art and highly creative science arise in part from differences in their goals. For the sciences, a new theory is the goal and end result of the creative act. Innovative science produces new propositions in terms of which diverse phenomena can be related to one another in more coherent ways. Such phenomena as a brilliant diamond or a nesting bird are relegated to the r01e of data, serving as the means for formulating or testing a new theory. The goal of highly creative art is very different: the phenomenon itself becomes the direct product of the creative act. Shakespeare's Hamlet is not a tract about the behavior. of indecisive princes or the uses of political power, nor is Picasso's painting Guernica primarily a propositional statement about the Spanish Civil War or the evils of fascism. What highly creative artistic activity produces is not a new generalization theft transcends established limits, but rather an aesthetic particular. Aesthetic particulars produced by the highly creative artist extend or exploit, in an innovative way, the limits of an existing form, rather than transcend that form.

This is not to deny that a highly creative artist sometimes establishes a new principle of organization in the history of an artistic field: the composer Monteverdi, who created music of the highest aesthetic value, comes to mind. More generally, however, whether or not a composition establishes a new principle in the history of music has little bearing on its aesthetic worth. Because they embody a new principle of organization, some musical works, such as the operas of the Florentine Camerata, are of signal historical importance, but few listeners or musicologists would include these among the great works of music. On the other hand, Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro is surely among the masterpieces of music even though its modest innovations are confined to extending existing means. It has been said of Beethoven that he toppled the rules and freed music from the stifling confines of convention. But a close study of his compositions reveals that Beethoven overturned no fundamental rules. Rather, he was an incomparable strategist who exploited limits—the rules, forms, and conventions that he inherited from predecessors such as Haydn and Mozart, Handel and Bach—in strikingly original ways.

The author considers a new theory that coherently relates diverse phenomena to one another to be the______

A．basis for reaffirming a well-established scientific formulation

B．byproduct of an aesthetic experience

C．tool used by a scientist to discover a new particular

D．result of highly creative scientific activity

Directions: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. (40 points)

Addiction is such a harmful behavior, in fact, that evolution should have long ago weeded it out of the population: if it's hard to drive safely under the influence, imagine trying to run from a saber-toothed tiger or catch a squirrel for lunch, And yet, says Dr. Nora Volkow, director of NIDA and a pioneer in the use of imaging to understand addiction, "the use of drugs has been recorded since the beginning of civilization. Humans in my view will always want to experiment with things to make them feel good".

That's because drugs of abuse co-opt the very brain functions that allowed our distant ancestors to survive in a hostile world. Our minds are programmed to pay extra attention to what neurologists call salience—that is, special relevance. Threats, for example, are highly salient, which is why we instinctively try to get away from them. But so are food and sex because they help the individual and the species survive. Drugs of abuse capitalize on this ready-made programming. When exposed to drugs, our memory systems, reward circuits, decision-making skills and conditioning kick in—salience in overdrive—to create an all consuming pattern of uncontrollable craving. "Some people have a genetic predisposition to addiction", says Volkow. "But because it involves these basic brain functions, everyone will become an addict if sufficiently exposed to drugs or alcohol".

That can go for nonchemical addictions as well. Behaviors, from gambling to shopping to sex, may start out as habits but slide into addictions. Sometimes there might be a behavior-specific root of the problem. Volkow's research group, for example, has shown that pathologically obese people who are compulsive eaters exhibit hyperactivity in the areas of the brain that process food stimuli—including the mouth, lips and tongue. For them, activating these regions is like opening the floodgates to the pleasure center. Almost anything deeply enjoyable can turn into an addiction, though.

Of course, not everyone becomes an addict. That's because we have other, more analytical regions that can evaluate consequences and override mere pleasure seeking. Brain imaging is showing exactly how that happens. Paulus, for example, looked at drug addicts enrolled in a VA hospital's intensive four-week rehabilitation program. Those who were more likely to relapse in the first year after completing the program were also less able to complete tasks involving cognitive skills and less able to adjust to new rules quickly. This suggested that those patients might also be less adept at using analytical areas of the brain while performing decision-making tasks. Sure enough, brain scans showed that there were reduced levels of activation in the prefrontal cortex, where rational thought can override impulsive behavior. It's impossible to say if the drugs might have damaged these abilities in the relapsers—an effect rather than a cause of the chemical abuse—but the fact that the cognitive deficit existed in only some of the drug users suggests that there was something innate that was unique to them. To his surprise, Paulus found that 80% to 90% of the time, he could accurately predict who would relapse within a year simply by examining the scans.

Another area of focus for researchers involves the brain's reward system, powered largely by the neurotransmitter dopamine. Investigators are looking specifically at the family of dopamine receptors that populate nerve cells and bind to the compound. The hope is that if you can reduce the effect of the brain chemical that carries the pleasurable signal, you can loosen the drug's hold.

According to Dr. Nora Volkow, the use, of drugs

A．is a very harmful behavior. that evolution failed to get rid of.

B．makes it hard for people to drive safely under its influence.

C．has to do with people's desire to achieve pleasant feelings.

D．is understandable behavior. because it dates back long ago.

Directions: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. (40 points)

Earlier this summer Arnold Schwarzenegger, California's governor, said that the state's penal system was "falling apart in front of our very eyes". Indeed so. Some 172,000 inmates are crowded into institutions—from the state's 33 prisons to its 12 "community correctional facilities"—that are meant to house fewer than 90,000. Drug abuse is rampant; so too are diseases such as HIV and hepatitis C. Race-based gangs pose the constant threat of violence, riot and even murder. And with more than 16,000 prisoners sleeping in prison gymnasiums and classrooms, rehabilitation programs are virtually non-existent—which helps to explain why two-thirds of California's convicts, the highest rate in the country, are back in prison within three years of being released.

Will the governor's summons of a special session of the state legislature, beginning this week, bring a remedy? The reason for the session is to discuss Mr. Schwarzenegger's request for almost $5.8 billion of public money to be pumped into the prison system. Bonds for $2 billion would finance ten 500-bed "re-entry facilities" for prisoners nearing the end of their sentences; another $2 billion would expand existing prisons; $1.2 billion would be earmarked for two new prisons; and $500m would go for new prison hospitals.

Money alone will provide neither an immediate solution nor a lasting one. The first problem is that California simply puts too many offenders in prison. The imprisonment rate, which has risen almost eight-fold since 1970 and is way ahead of any European country, has consistently meant overcrowding despite the construction of 22 new prisons in the past 20 years.

The 1994 "three-strikes" law, approved by voters in a referendum, means handing out 25-years-to-life sentences for often trivial third offences--and results in the growing presence in prison of elderly inmates who cost the taxpayer far more than the average of $34,000 a prisoner. Meanwhile, the practice of returning parole violators to prison, even for relatively trivial missteps such as missing a drugs test, also strains the system; some 11% of inmates are parole violators. Added to all these are more than 5,000 illegal immigrants being held on behalf of the federal government.

The second problem is that any attempt to reform. California's penal policy becomes hostage to politics. Two years ago, the governor was expressing optimism. He added the word "rehabilitation" to California's department of corrections, appointed Rod Hickman, a reform-minded former prison guard, to oversee the system and promised to lessen the power of the 31,000-strong prison guards' union, not least by breaking the "code of silence" that protects corrupt or violent guards. But that was then. The reality now is that Mr. Hickman resigned in March. Evidence indicates that the governor's office may have given the code of silence in California's prisons a new lease on life.

Many experts say that with no moderation in sentencing policies on the horizon, the prison population is expected to grow by another 21,000 over the next five years—enough to outpace any prison-building program. Thus, the dream of prison reforms will never touch the ground.

By quoting governor Schwarzenegger's remark, the author intends to

A．emphasize the fact that Schwarzenegger is still in his office.

B．show the fact that drug abuse is rampant in prisons.

C．point out that California has the highest convict rate in the US.

D．introduce the topic of overcrowding problem in California prisons.