Section A

Directions: In this section, you will hear 8 short conversations and 2 long conversations. At the end of each conversation, one or more questions will be asked about what was said. Both the conversation and the questions will be spoken only once. After each question there will be a pause. During the pause, you must read the four choices marked A), B), C) and D), and decide which is the best answer. Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre.

11. A) They would rather travel around than stay at home.

B) They prefer to carry cash when traveling abroad.

C) They usually carry many things around with them.

D) They don’t like to spend much money on traveling.

12. A) The selection process was a little unfair.

B) He had long dreamed of the dean’s position.

C) Rod was eliminated in the selection process.

D) Rod was in charge of the admissions office.

13. A) Applause encourages the singer.

B) She regrets paying for the concert.

C) Almost everyone loves pop music.

D) The concert is very impressive.

14. A) They have known each other since their schooldays.

B) They were both chairpersons of the Students’ Union.

C) They have been in close touch by email.

D) They are going to hold a reunion party.

15. A) Cook their dinner.

B) Rest for a while.

C) Get their car fixed.

D) Stop for the night.

16. A) Newly-launched products.

B) Consumer preferences.

C) Survey results.

D) Survey methods.

17. A) He would rather the woman didn’t buy the blouse.

B) The woman needs blouses in the colors of a rainbow.

C) The information in the catalog is not always reliable.

D) He thinks the blue blouse is better than the red one.

18. A) The course is open to all next semester.

B) The notice may not be reliable.

C) The woman has not told the truth.

D) He will drop his course in marketing.

Questions 19 to 22 are based on the conversation you have just heard.

19. A) A director of a sales department.

B) A manager at a computer store.

C) A sales clerk at a shopping center.

D) An accountant of a computer firm.

20. A) Handling customer complaints.

B) Recruiting and training new staff.

C) Dispatching ordered goods on time.

D) Developing computer programs.

21. A) She likes something more challenging.

B) She likes to be nearer to her parents.

C) She wants to have a better-paid job.

D) She wants to be with her husband.

22. A) Right away.

B) In two months.

C) Early next month.

D) In a couple of days.

Questions 23 to 25 are based on the conversation you have just heard.

23. A) It will face challenges unprecedented in its history.

B) It is a resolute advocate of the anti-global movement.

C) It is bound to regain its full glory of a hundred years ago.

D) It will be a major economic power by the mid-21st century.

24. A) The lack of overall urban planning.

B) The huge gap between the haves and have-nots.

C) The inadequate supply of water and electricity.

D) The shortage of hi-tech personnel.

25. A) They attach great importance to education.

B) They are able to grasp growth opportunities.

C) They are good at learning from other nations.

D) They have made use of advanced technologies.

Section B

Directions: In this section, you will hear 3 short passages. At the end of each passage, you will hear some questions. Both the passage and the questions will be spoken only once. After you hear a question, you must choose the best answer from the four choices marked A), B), C) and D). Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre.

Passage One

Questions 26 to 29 are based on the passage you have just heard.

26. A) She taught chemistry and microbiology courses in a college.

B) She gave lectures on how to become a public speaker.

C) She helped families move away from industrial polluters.

D) She engaged in field research on environmental pollution.

27. A) The job restricted her from revealing her findings.

B) The job posed a potential threat to her health.

C) She found the working conditions frustrating.

D) She was offered a better job in a minority community.

28. A) Some giant industrial polluters have gone out of business.

B) More environmental organizations have appeared.

C) Many toxic sites in America have been cleaned up.

D) More branches of her company have been set up.

29. A) Her widespread influence among members of Congress.

B) Her ability to communicate through public speaking.

C) Her rigorous training in delivering eloquent speeches.

D) Her lifelong commitment to domestic and global issues.

Passage Two

Questions 30 to 32 are based on the passage you have just heard.

30. A) The fierce competition in the market.

B) The growing necessity of staff training.

C) The accelerated pace of globalisation.

D) The urgent need of a diverse workforce.

31. A) Gain a deep understanding of their own culture.

B) Take courses of foreign languages and cultures.

C) Share the experiences of people from other cultures.

D) Participate in international exchange programmes.

32. A) Reflective thinking is becoming critical.

B) Labor market is getting globalised.

C) Knowing a foreign language is essential.

D) Globalisation will eliminate many jobs.

Passage Three

Questions 33 to 35 are based on the passage you have just heard.

33. A) Red-haired women were regarded as more reliable.

B) Brown-haired women were rated as more capable.

C) Golden-haired women were considered attractive.

D) Black-haired women were judged to be intelligent.

34. A) They are smart and eloquent.

B) They are ambitious and arrogant.

C) They are shrewd and dishonest.

D) They are wealthy and industrious.

35. A) They force people to follow the cultural mainstream.

B) They exaggerate the roles of certain groups of people.

C) They emphasize diversity at the expense of uniformity.

D) They hinder our perception of individual differences.

Section C

Directions: In this section, you will hear a passage three times. When the passage is read for the first time, you should listen carefully for its general idea. When the passage is read for the second time, you are required to fill in the blanks numbered from 36 to 43 with the exact words you have just heard. For blanks numbered from 44 to 46 you are required to fill in the missing information. For these blanks, you can either use the exact words you have just heard or write down the main points in your own words. Finally, when the passage is read for the third time, you should check what you have written.

The ancient Greeks developed basic memory systems called mnemonics. The name is from their Goddess of memory “Mnemosyne”. In the ancient world, a trained memory was an asset, particularly in public life. There were no devices for taking notes, and early Greek orators(演說家) delivered long speeches with great because they learned the speeches using mnemonic systems.

The Greeks discovered that human memory is an associative process—that it works by linking things together. For example, think of an apple. The your brain registers the word “apple”, it the shape, color, taste, smell and of that fruit. All these things are associated in your memory with the word “apple”.

. An example could be when you think about a lecture you have had. This could trigger a memory about what you’re talking about through that lecture, which can then trigger another memory.

. An example given on a website I was looking at follows: Do you remember the shape of Austria, Canada, Belgium, or Germany? Probably not. What about Italy, though? . You made an association with something already known, the shape of a boot, and Italy’s shape could not be forgotten once you had made the association.

PartⅣ Reading Comprehension(Reading in Depth)(25 minutes)

Section A

Directions: In this section, there is a short passage with 5 questions or incomplete statements. Read the passage carefully. Then answer the questions or complete the statements in the fewest possible words. Please write your answers on Answer Sheet 2.

Questions 47 to 51 are based on the following passage.

Many countries have made it illegal to chat into a hand-held mobile phone while driving. But the latest research further confirms that the danger lies less in what a motorist’s hands do when he takes a call than in what the conversation does to his brain. Even using a “hands-free” device can divert a driver’s attention to an alarming extent.

Melina Kunar of the University of Warwick, and Todd Horowitz of the Harvard Medical School ran a series of experiments in which two groups of volunteers had to pay attention and respond to a series of moving tasks on a computer screen that were reckoned equivalent in difficulty to driving. One group was left undistracted while the other had to engage in a conversation using a speakerphone. As Kunar and Horowitz report, those who were making the equivalent of a hands-free call had an average reaction time 212 milliseconds slower than those who were not. That, they calculate, would add 5.7 metres to the braking distance of a car travelling at 100kph. They also found that the group using the hands-free kit made 83% more errors in their tasks than those who were not talking.

To try to understand more about why this was, they tried two further tests. In one, members of a group were asked simply to repeat words spoken by the caller. In the other, they had to think of a word that began with the last letter of the word they had just heard. Those only repeating words performed the same as those with no distraction, but those with the more complicated task showed even worse reaction times—an average of 480 milliseconds extra delay. This shows that when people have to consider the information they hear carefully, it can impair their driving ability significantly.

Punishing people for using hand-held gadgets while driving is difficult enough, even though they can be seen from outside the car. Persuading people to switch their phones off altogether when they get behind the wheel might be the only answer. Who knows, they might even come to enjoy not having to take calls.

47. Carrying on a mobile phone conversation while one is driving is considered dangerous because it seriously distracts .

48. In the experiments, the two groups of volunteers were asked to handle a series of moving tasks which were considered .

49. Results of the experiments show that those who were making the equivalent of a hands-free call took to react than those who were not.

50. Further experiments reveal that participants tend to respond with extra delay if they are required to do .

51. The author believes persuasion, rather than , might be the only way to stop people from using mobile phones while driving.

Section B

Directions: There are 2 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A), B), C) and D). You should decide on the best choice and mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre.

Passage One

Questions 52 to 56 are based on the following passage.

There is nothing like the suggestion of a cancer risk to scare a parent, especially one of the over-educated, eco-conscious type. So you can imagine the reaction when a recent USA Today investigation of air quality around the nation’s schools singled out those in the smugly(自鳴得意的)green village of Berkeley, Calif., as being among the worst in the country. The city’s public high school, as well as a number of daycare centers, preschools, elementary and middle schools, fell in the lowest 10%. Industrial pollution in our town had supposedly turned students into living science experiments breathing in a laboratory’s worth of heavy metals like manganese, chromium and nickel each day. This in a city that requires school cafeterias to serve organic meals. Great, I thought, organic lunch, toxic campus.

Since December, when the report came out, the mayor, neighborhood activists(活躍分子)and various parent-teacher associations have engaged in a fierce battle over its validity: over the guilt of the steel-casting factory on the western edge of town, over union jobs versus children’s health and over what, if anything, ought to be done. With all sides presenting their own experts armed with conflicting scientific studies, whom should parents believe? Is there truly a threat here, we asked one another as we dropped off our kids, and if so, how great is it? And how does it compare with the other, seemingly perpetual health scares we confront, like panic over lead in synthetic athletic fields? Rather than just another weird episode in the town that brought you protesting environmentalists, this latest drama is a trial for how today’s parents perceive risk, how we try to keep our kids safe—whether it’s possible to keep them safe—in what feels like an increasingly threatening world. It raises the question of what, in our time, “safe” could even mean.

“There’s no way around the uncertainty,” says Kimberly Thompson, president of Kid Risk, a nonprofit group that studies children’s health. “That means your choices can matter, but it also means you aren’t going to know if they do.” A 2004 report in the journal Pediatrics explained that nervous parents have more to fear from fire, car accidents and drowning than from toxic chemical exposure. To which I say: Well, obviously. But such concrete hazards are beside the point. It’s the dangers parents can’t—and may never—quantify that occur all of sudden. That’s why I’ve rid my cupboard of microwave food packed in bags coated with a potential cancer-causing substance, but although I’ve lived blocks from a major fault line(地質(zhì)斷層) for more than 12 years, I still haven’t bolted our bookcases to the living room wall.

52. What does a recent investigation by USA Today reveal?

A) Heavy metals in lab tests threaten children’s health in Berkeley.

B) Berkeley residents are quite contented with their surroundings.

C) The air quality around Berkeley’s school campuses is poor.

D) Parents in Berkeley are over-sensitive to cancer risks their kids face.