Languages are remarkably complex and wonderfully complicated organs of culture. They cont

Languages are remarkably complex and wonderfully complicated organs of culture. They contain the quickest and the most efficient means of communicating within their respective cultures. To learn a foreign language is to learn another culture. In the words of a poet and philosopher, "As many languages as one speaks, so many lives one lives." A culture and its language are as necessary as brain and body; while one is a part of the other, neither can function without the other. In learning a foreign language, the best beginning would be starting with the nonlanguage elements of the language: its gestures, its body language, etc. Eye contact is extremely important in English. Direct eye contact leads to understanding, or, as the English saying goes, seeing eye-to-eye. We can never see eye-to-eye with a native speaker of English until we have learned to look directly into his eyes.

The best title for this passage is______.

A．Organs of Culture

B．Brain and Body

C．Looking into His Eyes

D．Language and Culture

Passage 1

Questions 1 to 5 are based on the following passage:

Languages are remarkably complex and wonderfully complicated organs of culture. (76) They contain the quickest and the most efficient means of communicating within their respective culture. To learn a foreign language is to learn another culture. In the words of a poet and philosopher, “As many languages as one speaks, so many lives one lives.” A culture and its language are as necessary as brain and body; while one is a part of the other, neither can function without the other. In learning a foreign language, the best beginning would be starting with the non-language elements of the language: its gestures, its body language, etc. Eye contact is extremely important in English. Direct eye contact leads to understanding, or, as the English saying goes, seeing eye-to-eye. We can never see eye-to-eye with a native speaker of English until we have learned to look directly into his eyes.

1. The best title for this passage is

A. Organs of Culture B. Brain and Body

C. Looking into his eyes D. Language and Culture

The sad truth is that ecosystems are______fragile and intensely complicated.

A．inherently

B．humbly

C．cautiously

D．industriously

Coral reefs are one of the most fragile, biologically

complex, and diverse marine ecosystem on Earth. This

ecosystem is one of the fascinating paradoxes of the bio-

sphere: how do clear, and thus nutrient-poor, waters sup-

(5) port such prolific and productive communities? Part of the

answer lies within the tissues of the corals themselves.

Symbiotic cells of algae known as zooxanthellae carry out

photosynthesis using the metabolic wastes of the coral

thereby producing food for themselves, for their corals,

(10) hosts, and even for other members of the reef community.

This symbiotic process allows organisms in the reef com-

munity to use sparse nutrient resources efficiently.

Unfortunately for coral reefs, however, a variety of

human activities are causing worldwide degradation of

(15) shallow marine habitats by adding nutrients to the (water.

Agriculture, slash-and-burn land clearing, sewage disposal

and manufacturing that creates waste by-products all

increase nutrient loads in these waters. Typical symptoms

of reef decline are destabilized herbivore populations and

(20)an increasing abundance of algae and filter-feeding

animals.

Declines in reef communities are consistent with observa-

tions that nutrient input is increasing in direct proportion to

growing human populations, thereby threatening reef com-

(25) munities sensitive to subtle changes in nutrient input to

their waters.

The passage is primarily concerned with______

A．describing the effects of human activities on algae in coral reefs

B．explaining how human activities are posing a threat to coral reef communities

C．discussing the process by which coral reefs deteriorate in nutrient-poor waters

D．explaining how coral reefs produce food for themselves

E．describing the abundance of algae and filter-feeding animals in coral reef areas

According to the first paragraph, the task of education is fairly complicated because ______.

A．the current public school system is too complicated to be understood

B．the public school system has no choice of what to teach

C．it is difficult to decide whether elementary science should be taught in public schools

D．the educators have to take care of both ordinary and gifted students

Imagine you found out that ideas invented by a computer were rated higher by independent experts than ideas created by a group of humans asked to perform. the same task. Would you praise the designer of the "creative computer" for a great achievement or would you question why human talent -- usually so potent in coping with complex cognitive challenges -- created such poor ideas? Or maybe you would question your view of the notion of creativity. In fact, such a scenario was played out when we used a simple computerized routine to generate ideas and compared them as superior to human ideas when they performed the same task?

Creativity is considered the ultimate human activity, a highly complex process, difficult to formalize and to control. Although there is a general agreement regarding the distinctive nature of the creative product(idea, painting, poem, and so on). there is a controversy over the nature of the creative process. Some researchers hold that the creative thinking process is qualitatively different from "ordinary" day-to-day thinking, and involves a leap that cannot be formulated, analyzed, or reconstructed -- the creative spark. Others adopt a reductionism view that creative products and the outcome of ordinary thinking, only quantitatively different from everyday thinking.

Because creative ideas are different from those that normally arise, people often believe that such ideas require conditions dramatically different from the usual. The notion goes that, in order to overcome mental barriers and reach creative ideas, total freedom is necessary -- no directional guidance, constraints, criticism, of thinking within bounded scope. Then ideas can be drawn and contemplated from an infinite space during the creativity process. This view prompted the emergence of various idea-generating methods: brainstorming, synectics, lateral thinking, random stimulation, and so on, all of which consist of withholding judgement and relying on analogies from other members in the group of on randomly selected analogies. This family of methods relies on the assumption that enhancing randomness, breaking rules and paradigms, and generating anarchy of thought increase the probability of creative idea emergence.

Do these methods work? A number of researchers indicate that they do not. Ideas suggested by individuals working alone are superior to ideas suggested in brainstorming sessions and the performance of problem solvers instructed to "break the roles, get out of the square, and change paradigms" was not better than that of individuals who were not given any instruction at all.

The failure of these methods to improve creative outcomes has been explained by the unstructured nature of the task. Reitman observed that many problems that lack a structuring framework are ill-defined in that the representations of one or more of the basic components -- the initial state, the operators and constraints, and the goal -- are seriously incomplete, and the search space is exceedingly large. Indeed, many ill-defined problems seem difficult, not because we are swamped by the enormous number of alternative possibilities, but because we have trouble thinking even of one idea worth pursuing.

According to this passage, ideas invented by a computer ______.

A．are never superior to human ideas

B．tend to be superior to human ideas

C．are not necessarily superior to human ideas

D．can no doubt to be invented by human subjects

It will be emphasized that commercial space operations are inherently complex, long-term, capital-hungry, and set by a variety of risks.

A．beset by

B．inset by

C．preset by

D．reset by

It will be emphasized that commercial space operations are inherently complex, long-term, capital-hungry, and set by a variety of risks.

A．beset by

B．inset by

C．preset by

D．reset by