单项选择题
1、 Questions are based on the following passage．
A New Zealand man who was asked by scientists to agree with everything his wifesaid had to call off the experiment after 12 days because it was proved so harmful to hismental health.
The study was set up to examine the old marriage advice about whether it's moreimportant to be happy or to be right. Couples therapists sometimes suggest that in abid to avoid constant arguments, spouses weigh up whether pressing the point is worththe misery of marital discord. The researchers, who are doctors and professors at theUniversity of Auckland, noticed that many of their patients were adding stress to theirlives by insisting on being right, even when it worked against their well-being.
So they found a couple who were willing to record their quality of life on a scale of1 to 10. They told the man, who wanted to be happy more than right, about the purposeof the study and asked him to agree with every opinion and request his wife had withoutcomplaint, even when he profoundly didn't agree. The wife was not informed of thepurpose of the study and just asked to record her quality of life.
Things went rapidly downhill for the couple. The man's quality-of-life scores fell,from 7 to 3, over the course of the experiment. The wife's scores rose modestly, from 8to 8.5, before she became hostile to the idea of recording the scores. Rather than causingharmony, the husband's agreeableness led to the wife becoming increasingly critical ofwhat he did and said (in the husband's opinion). After 12 days he broke down and thestudy was called off because of"severe adverse outcomes".
The researchers concluded, shockingly, that humans need to be right andacknowledged as right, at least some of the time, to be happy. In politics, people oftennote that there can be no peace without justice, and that's true of the domestic sphere aswell. The researchers also noted that this was further proof that if given too much power,humans tend to "assume the alpha ( 首要的) position and, as with chimpanzees, theybecome very aggressive and dangerous."
Obviously the results are to be taken with extreme caution, since this was just onecouple with who-knows-what underlying issues beforehand. But the study's chief author,Dr. Burce, maintains that the question of happiness vs. rightness, theoretically, couldbe settled by scientific inquiry with a wider sample. "This would include a randomizedcontrolled trial," he says. "However we would be reluctant to do the definitive studybecause of the concern about divorce or homicide ( 杀人 ) ."
What's the purpose of the study in the passage?
A．To illustrate how to live a happier life.
B．To test an old piece of advice on marriage.
C．To find out the best advice for couples.
D．To see if people are happy in marriage.

2、
A.At Feltonville School of Arts and Sciences, a middle school in a poor neighborhoodof Philadelphia, the school year began chaotically as budget cuts took effect. Lines ofkids snaked out the door while a single school secretary tried to ensure the 600 or sostudents attending were registered. Classrooms were packed to their limit of 33;someeven spilled over.
B. This year, with the cuts meaning no school nurse or counselor, teachers fill the gaps,disrupting lessons to help students in distress. And the problems are not small: Aboy was stabbed in the head with a pencil by a fellow student; a girl reported sexualassault by an uncle; another refused to speak after the brutal murder of a parent. Andthat was just the start of the school year.
C."I had a kid in class today who threatened to slash her wrists with a broken ruler," saidAmy Roat, a teacher at Feltonville, "Most of us can't even prepare lessons becausewe're using all our time counseling kids." To make matters worse, budget cuts arehurting essential academic programs. Feltonville eliminated two math teachers andtwo science teachers this year. Now many students who used to get 90 minutes ofmath instruction a day, only get half that.
D. Across the United States, whether it's schools, health care or entry-level jobs, theyoung are feeling the impact of government cutbacks. With debt and public spendingat the top of the Republican agenda, with Grand Old Party members promising not toraise revenue through taxes in any circumstances, there has never been a worse timeto need help from the government.
E.Not long ago, the young and vulnerable especially have been hit hard through federalspending cuts to programs like Head Start, nutrition assistance, and child welfare.Financial crises in cities like Philadelphia and Detroit have meant another wave ofschool budget cutbacks. And the weak job market is hurting the youngest workersmost, with youth unemployment more than double the national jobless rate.
F. This is not just an American problem. In Europe, too, austerity budgets ( 紧缩预算 ) arepinching even basic education and health needs. A decrease in the amount of moneyfor fundamental social programs that have been in operation since World War II iswidespread across the developed world. As governments try to cover budget shortfallsand calm debt fears, the young are losing out. "We're underinvesting ( 投资不足 )in our children," said Julia Isaacs, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute and a childpolicy expert. "Looking at future budget trends and the fact that Congress doesn'twant to raise taxes, I can see children's programs continuing to be squeezed."
That has implications for long-term economic growth. Cutting back on the youngis like eating the seed corn: satisfying a momentary need but leaving no way to grow a prosperous future. The debate on Capitol Hill, fired by Americans who have become skeptical of the value of federal spending, is all big-picture economics. It is a principled debate about where government starts and ends.
But is America overspending on its young? Public spending in the U.S. on children came to $12,164 per child in 2008, in current dollars, according to Kids' Share, an annual report published by the Urban Institute. Of that total, about a third came from the federal government and two thirds from state and local governments.
I.Compare that to what we spend on the elderly, which primarily comes from the federal government. According to the Urban Institute, public outlays on the elderly, in current dollars, was $27,117 per person in 2008, more than double the spending on children. The trend is the same across the developed world. Julia Lynch, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania, studied 20 countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development between 1985 and 2000 and found each spent more public funds on the elderly than on the young.
J.But there were large differences among them. She found the most youth-oriented welfare states were the Netherlands, Canada, Australia, and in Scandinavia, while the most elderly-oriented were Japan, Italy, Greece, the U.S., Spain, and Austria. Somewhere in the middle were Germany, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Portugal. For all the talk about needing to cut spending to save our children and grandchildren from paying off our debt, in practice we are already ignoring our children so we may remain comfortable deep into old age.
K. Since the 1960s, federal spending on kids in the U.S. had been rising. That trend ended in 2011, when it dropped by $2 billion to $377 billion. A year later the figureplunged even more--by $28 billion, or a 7 percent decline. And spending on kids isprojected to shrink further over the next decade. The Urban Institute has forecast that federal spending on kids will decrease from 10 percent of the federal budget today to 8 percent by 2023.
L. That decline will occur even as federal spending is expected to increase by $1 trillion over the same period. In other words, kids are not expected to benefit much, if at all, from a big jump in federal spending forecast over the next decade. "There'sconcern about the growing gap between the rich and the poor," said LaurenceKotlikoff, a professor of economics at Boston University and co-author of The Coming Generational Storm, "But we've got another big problem: the growing gap inspending on the young versus the old."
M.Federal spending has increased dramatically for the elderly--but not for the young.According to the Urban Institute, while the children's share of the domestic federalbudget has declined 23 percent during the past 50 years, non-children spending on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid has more than doubled. Today, an elderlyperson gets about seven federal dollars for every one dollar given to a child. Andwhile the elderly population is roughly half the size of all children in the U.S.,taxpayers spend three times as much for them as they do on the young.
N. So, what is the federal government spending on? The budget can be roughly divided in the following way: 41 percent goes to the elderly and disabled portions of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid; 20 percent to defense; 10 percent to children;6 percent to interest payments on the debt; and 23 percent to all other governmentfunctions. So if spending on kids does fall to 8 percent of the federal budget, andif interest payments rise along with higher interest rates over the same period, thefederal government soon will be spending more on interest payments on the debt thanon children.
O. Such cutbacks hurt low-income kids the most. That's because federal spending onkids tends to target those in need with programs like Medicaid and food stamps,while state and local spending focuses on education. Isaacs has calculated thatdisadvantaged children get about twice as much per capita as those who are better off.
 So cutbacks on kids are exacerbating ( 加剧 ) the gap between rich and poor, andthe two issues are now firmly intertwined.
P. What's driving government cutbacks? Much can be tied to fears of rising nationaldebt. Paradoxically, advocates of debt reduction and fiscal austerity claim they areacting in the interest of the young; our debts seem be too onerous (繁重的 ) for thenext generation. But in a hypercompetitive global economy, nations investing today inthe well-being and education of the young are writing the success stories of tomorrow.
It's very difficult for young people to find a job now, and young people's unemploymentrate is more than twice that of the whole nation.

3、Questions are based on the following passage.
President Obama signed a legislation to provide twenty-six billion dollars to the States for education and healthcare．The measures include ten billion dollars for education and sixteen billion for Medicaid, the jointstate-federal government medical program for the poor．The legislation will help one hundred and sixty thousand teachers and one hundred and fifty thousand police and public service workers keep their jobs．Thus,
the measures are good news for them.
The House of Representatives has approved the bill．House members had already begun a six-week holiday when the Senate approved the measure last week．Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, took the rare step of calling House lawmakers back to Washington to vote on the bill and send it to President Obama without delay．It is obvious that the House of Representatives are also very concerned with the progress.
President Obama has stressed the importance of education for all Americans．He said this is necessary for the "country to compete among some of the world's fastest growing economies．In a speech given at the University of Texas, the president talked about the decrease in college graduation rates in the United States.
"In a single generation, we've fallen from first place to twelfth place in college graduation rates for young adults．That is unacceptable, but it is not irreversible．We can retake the lead． President Obama said educational success and economic well-being are linked, especially in a world economy driven by information and technology,His goal is to increase the percentage of college graduates from forty percent to sixty percent by the year 2020．The president said the federal government has already
reformed the student loan system and increased tax credits for families struggling to pay college education costs．It is hoped that those measures would be effective.
Democrats in Congress say spending for the new bill will not add to the federal budget deficit．But some Republican lawmakers criticized the measure．House Republican leader John Boehner dismissed the emergency jobs measure as more wasteful spending aimed at pleasing the Democrats' traditional union allies.
"The American people are screaming at the top of their lungs, ' Stop! ' And Washington continues to spend, spend, spend．"
Hours before the vote, President Obama told reporters at the White House that education and the safety of communities should not be a political party issue."Those interests are widely shared throughout this country．A challenge that affects parents, children and citizens in almost every community in America should not be a Democratic problem or a Republican problem．It is an American problem．
Which of the following would NOT benefit from the new legislation?
A．Teachers.
B．Policemen.
C．Public service workers．
D．Doctors.


4、Petroleum Resources
A) Petroleum, consisting of crude oil and natural gas, seems to originate from organic matter in marine sed iment．Microscopic organisms settle to the seafloor and accumulate in marine mud．The organic matter may partially decompose, using up the dissolved oxygen in the sediment．As soon as the oxygen is gone, decay stops and the remaining organic matter is preserved.
B) Continued sedimentationthe process of deposits' settling on the sea bottom buries the organic matter and subjects it to higher temperatures and pressures, which convert the organic matter to oil and gas.
As muddy sediments are pressed together, the gas and small droplets of oil may be squeezed out of the mud and may move into sandy layers nearby．Over long periods of time ( millions of years), accumulations of gas and oil can collect in the sandy layers．Both oil and gas are less dense than water, so they generally tend to rise upward through water-saturated ro~ck and sediment,
C) oil pools.are valuable underground accumulations of oil, and oil fields are regions-underlain by one or more oil pools.．When an oil pool or field has been discovered, wells are drilled into the grrund Permanent towers called derricks, used to-be built to handle the long sections of drilling pipe．Now portable,drilling machines .are set up ane are then dismantled and remOved．When the well reaches a pool, oil usually rises up the well because of its density difference with water beneath it or because of the pressure of expanding gas trapped above it．Although this rise of oil is almost always carefully controlled today, spouts of oil, or gushers, were common in the past．Gas pressure gradually dies out．and oil is pumped from the well．Water or steam may be pumped down adjacent wells to help push the oil out．At a refinery, the crude oil from underground is separated into natural gas, gasoline, kerosene, and various oils．Petrochemicals such as dyes, fertilizer, and plastic are also manufactured from the petroleum.
D) As oil becomes increasingly difficult to find, the search for it is extended into more hostile environments．The development of the oil field on the North Slope of Alaska and the construction of the Alaska pipeline are examples of the great expense and difficulty involved in new oil discoveries．Offshore drilling platforms extend the search for oil to the ocean's continental shelvesthose gently sloping submarine
regions at the edges of the continents．More than one-quarter of the world's oil and almost one-fifth of the world's natural gas come from offshore, even though offshore drilling is six to seven times more expensive than drilling on land．A significant part of this oil and gas comes from under the North Sea between Great Britain and Norway.
E) Of course, there is far more oil underground than can be recovered．It may be in a pool too small or too far from a potential market to justify the expense of drilling．Some oil lies under regions where drilling is forbidden, such as national parks or other public lands．Even given the best extraction techniques, only about 30 to 40 percent of the oil in a given pool can be brought to the surface．The rest is far too difficult to extract and has to remain underground.
F) Moreover, getting petroleum out of the ground and from under the sea and to the consumer can create environmental problems anywhere along the line．Pipelines carrying oil can be broken by faults or landslides, causing serious oil spillageSpillage from huge oil-carrying cargo ships, called tankers, involved in collisions or accidental groundings ( such as the one off Alaska in 1989) can create oil slicks at sea.
Offshore platforms may also lose oil, creating oil- slicks that drift: ashore and foul the beaches, harming the environment．Sometimes, the ground at an oil field may subside as oil is removed．The Wilmington field near Long Beach, California, has subsided nine meters in 50 years; protective barriers have had to be built to prevent seawater from flooding the area．Finally, the refining and burning of petroleum and its products can cause air pollution．Advancing technology and strict laws, however, are helping control some of these adverse environmental effects.
G) Natural gas is a naturally occurring hydrocarbon gas mixture consisting primarily of methane, but commonly includes varying amounts of other higher alkanes and even a lesser percentage of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and hydrogen sulfide．Natural gas is an energy source often used for heating, cooking, and electricity generation．It is also used as fuel for vehicles and as a chemical feedstock in the manufacture
of 151astics and other commercially important organic chemicals．"
H) Natural gas is found in deep underground rock formations or associated with other hydrocarbon reservoirs in coal bedsand as methane clathrates．Petroleum is also another resource found in proximity to and with natural gas.
I) Most natural gas was created over time by two mechanisms: biogenic and thermogenic．Biogenic gas is created by methanogenic organisms in marshes, bogs, landfills, and shallow sediments．Deeper in the earth, at greater temperature and pressure, thermogenic gas is created from buried organic material.
J) Before natural gas can be used as a fuel, it must undergo processing to remove impurities, including water, to meet the specifications of marketable natural gas.
K) The by-products of processing include ethane, propane, butanes, pentanes, and higher molecular weight hydrocarbons, hydrogen sulfide (which may be converted into pure sulfur), carbon dioxide, water vapor, and sometimes helium and nitrogen.
L) Natural gas is often informally referred to simply as gas, especially when compared to other energy sources such as oil or coal.
M ) However, it is not to be confused with gasoline, especially in North America, where the term gasoline is often shortened in colloquial usage to gas.
N) In the 19th century, natural gas was usually obtained as a by-product of producing oil, since the small,light gas carbon chains came out of solution as the extracted fluids underwent pressure reduction from the reservoir to the surface, similar to uncapping a bottle of soda where the carbon dioxide effervesces.
O) Unwanted natural gas was a disposal problem in the active oil fields．If there was not a market for natural gas near the wellhead it was virtually valueless since it had to be piped to the end user.
According to the analysis, there are two main parts in the petroleum, namely the crude oil and naturalgas.


5、Questions are based on the passage you have just heard.
A． Content of speech is more important than tone of voice.
A．Voice quality has a strong effect on listeners.
B．Effective speakers must use visual aids.
C．A microphone is essential in large rooms.


填空题
6、 __________

简答题
7、中华民族的传统文化博大精深、源远流长。早在2000多年前，就产生了儒家学说(Confucianism)和道家学说(Taoism)，以及其他很多在中国思想史上有地位的学说流派(doctrine)，这就是有名的“诸子百家”(the Hundredi Schools of Thought)。从孔夫子到孙中山，中华民族传统文化有很多珍贵品质，许多人民性和民主性的好东西。比如强调“天下兴亡，匹夫有责”的爱国情操，“民为邦本”、“民贵君轻”的民本思想和“己所不欲，勿施于人”的待人之道。

8、中国将努力确保到2015年就业者接受过平均13．3年的教育。如果这一目标得以实现，今后大部分进入劳动力市场的人都须获得大学文凭。
在未来几年，中国将着力增加职业学院的招生人数；除了关注高等教育之外，还将寻找新的突破以确保教育制度更加公平。中国正在努力地利用教育资源，这样农村和欠发达地区将获得更多的支持。教育部还决定改善欠发达地区学生的营养，并为外来务工人员的子女提供在城市接受教育的同等机会。

9、

10、听材料，回答题
Adults are getting smarter about how smart babies are. Not long ago, researchers learned that4-day-olds could understand (36) __________and subtraction. Now, British research (37)__________ Graham Schafer has discovered that infants can learn words for uncommon things　long before they can speak. He found that 9-month-old infants could be taught through repeated　show-and-tell, to (38) __________the names of objects that were foreign to them, a result　that ( 39 )__________ in some ways the received (40) __________ that, apart from learning to(41) __________ things common to their daily lives, children don't begin to build vocabulary until　well into their second year."It's no secret that children learn words, but the words they tend to　know are words linked to (42)__________situations in the home," explains Schafer. "This is the　first demonstration that we can choose what words the children will learn and that they can (43)__________ them with an unfamiliar voice giving instructions in an unfamiliar setting."
Figuring out how humans acquire language may (44) __________ why some children learn to　read and write later than others, Schafer says, and could lead to better treatments for developmental　problems. What's more, the study of language acquisition offers direct insight into how humans learn.
"Language is a test case for human cognitive development," says Schafer. But parents eager to teach　their infants should take note: Even without being taught new words, a control group (45)__________ the other infants within a few months. "This is not about advancing development;" he　says. "It' s just about what children can do at an earlier age than what educators have often thought."
__________