3 . A few years ago, a young woman at Facebook came to my desk and asked if she could speak privately. We headed into a conference room, where she began firing off questions about how I balance work and family. As the questions came faster and faster, I started to wonder about her urgency. I interrupted to ask if she had a child. She said no, but she liked to plan ahead. I inquired if she and her partner were considering having a child. She replied that she did not have a husband, then added with a little laugh, “Actually, I don’t even have a boyfriend.”

It seemed to me that she was jumping the gun but I understood why. From an early age, girls get the message that they will have to choose between succeeding at work and being a good mother. By the time they are in college, women are already thinking about the trade-offs they will make between professional and personal goals! When asked to choose between marriage and career, female college students are twice as likely to choose marriage as their male classmates. And this concern can start even younger. Peggy Orenstein, the author of Cinderella Ate My Daughter, related the story of a five-year-old girl who came home distraught from her after-school program and told her mother that both she and the boy she had a crush on wanted to be astronauts.When her mother asked why that was a problem, the little girl replied, “When we go into space together,who will watch out kids?” At five,she thought the most challenging aspect of space travel would be dependable childcare.

As I’ve mentioned, I’m a big believe in thoughtful preparation. Everywhere I go, I carry a little notebook with my to-do list. But when it comes to integrating career and family, planning too far in advance can close doors rather than open them. I have seen this happen over and over. Women rarely make one big decision to leave the workforce. Instead, they make a lot of small decision along the way, making accommodations and sacrifices that they believe will be required to have a family. Of all the ways women hold themselves back, perhaps the most pervasive is that they leave before they leave.

1. What does the underlined sentence in paragraph two “she was jumping the gun” mean in the passage?

A．She was taking action before everyone else did.

B．She was making preparations earlier than she was supposed to.

C．She was reluctant to make the decisions all by herself.

D．She was wondering how to balance work and family.

2. What is paragraph two mainly about?

A．After-school programs in primary schools encourage children to picture their future life.

B．Domestic life is preventing women nowadays from pursuing higher goals in workplaces.

C．Females nowadays start to weigh their choice between family and career at an even earlier age.

D．Female college students are more willing to assume domestic responsibilities than their male classmates.

3. What does the underlined word “distraught” in paragraph two mean?

A．upset

B．delighted

C．satisfied

D．excited

4. Which of the following statements would the author probably agree with?

A．Females are advised to make life-decisions after thoughtful preparation.

B．It’s better for girls to plan for leaving the workplace step by step.

C．Women usually make up the their mind to quit their job in a very short period of time.

D．Planning too early for balancing career and family is hindering females from promotion in the workplace.

5 . The concept of planning entire communities before their construction is an ancient one. In fact, one of the earliest such cities on record is Miletus, Greece, which was built in the 4th century BC. Throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance various planned communities (both theoretical and actual) were conceived (构思). Leonardo da Vinci designed several cities that were never constructed. Following the Great Fire of London in 1666, the architect Christopher Wren created a new master plan for the city, combining park land and urban space. Several 18th century cities, including Washington D.C., New York City, and St Petersburg, Russia, were built according to comprehensive planning.

One of the most important planned city concepts, the Garden City Movement, arose in the latter part of the 19th century as a reaction to the pollution and crowding of the Industrial Revolution. In 1898, Ebenezer Howard published the book To-Morrow: A Peaceful Path for Real Reform in which he laid out his ideas concerning the creation of new economically sustainable towns. Howard believed that these towns should be limited in size and density, and surrounded with a belt of undeveloped land. The idea gained enough attention and financial backing to lead to the creation of Letchworth, in Hertfordshire, England. This was the first such 'Garden City'. After the First World War, the second town built following Howard's ideas, Welwvn Garden City, was constructed.

In the early 1920s, American architects Clarence Stein and Henry Wright, inspired by Howard's ideas and the success of Letchworth and Welwyn, created the city of Radbum, New Jersey. Conceived as a community which would be safe for children, Radbum was intentionally designed so that the residents would not require automobiles. Several urban planning designs were pioneered at Radbum that would influence later planned communities, including the separation of pedestrians and vehicles, and the use of 'superblocks', each of which shared 23 acres of commonly held parkland.

In America, following the stock market crash of 1929, there was great demand for both affordable housing and employment for workers who had lost their jobs. In direct response to this, in 1935 President Roosevelt created the Resettlement Administration, which brought about a total of three greenbelt towns: Greenbelt, Maryland; Greenhills, Ohio; and Greendale, Wisconsin. These towns contained many of the elements of the Garden City Movement developments, including the use of superblocks and a 'green belt' of undeveloped land surrounding the community.

1. The first paragraph talks mainly about ________.

A．famous urban planners	B．the history of urban planning
C．the future examples of urban planning	D．problem associated with urban planning

2. What can be learned about the Garden City Movement from the second paragraph?

A．It came just before the Industrial Revolution.

B．It was held back by a war and a lack of funds.

C．It resulted in cities that were larger than they had been before.

D．It was designed to address problems caused by modernization.

3. What was one aim in designing the city of Radbum?

A．To reduce the danger for families living in the area.

B．To create something totally different from cities elsewhere.

C．To make sure people could park their cars close to their home.

D．To increase green spaces by designing houses with gardens.

4. What do the towns of Greenbelt, Greenhills and Greendale all have in common?

A．Their residents were affected by the stock market collapse.

B．They were built for the wealthiest people in America.

C．They were each surrounded by natural parkland.

D．They were all constructed in the same year.

6 . Directions: Read the following passage. Summarize the main idea and the main point(s) of the passage in no more than 60 words. Use your own words as far as possible.

Soft Skills—Soft or Not?

Rapidly advancing technology and its impact on education have been a subject of much debate. How can schools equip students with the skills to succeed in a changing job market? Since technology is driving many social changes, there is an opinion that governments should keep focusing on STEM subjects. These are often referred to as “hard skills”, which are prioritized in primary schools and right through to university level.

However, research from Harvard University on the global job market has shown that STEM-related careers grew strongly between 1989 and 2000 but have slowed ever since. In contrast, jobs in the creative industries, which are probably most associated with the need for soft skills, are growing rapidly. A study by Deloitte Access Economics predicts that “soft skill-intensive occupations will account for two-thirds of all jobs by 2030”.

With the rapid evolution of technology, a focus on hard skills leaves people delicate when facing change, as these skills often have a limited shelf life. According to a survey, more than one in four adults reported a mismatch between their skills and those needed for their job role. Fortunately, soft skills can solve the problem, enabling people to adapt to change more easily in their chosen field. Additionally, interpersonal interactions in the modern workplace require some level of soft skills. At a company they might be negotiating to win a new contract or networking for a new job. People use soft skills every day at work and developing them will help things in the job go smoothly.

Many universities have begun to emphasize soft skills such as critical thinking alongside hard skills. But the issue goes much deeper. Soft skills need to be handled across the entire education system so that by the time students reach university level, they are already armed with the qualities needed to further develop these skills.

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9 . Who is to blame for the shapes of our noses?

If you are not satisfied with the shape of your nose, blame it on climate, not your parents or grandparents. In a study published this week in the journal PLOS Genetics, researchers from the Pennsylvania State University found that human noses may have been shaped, in part, by a long process of adaptation to local climate conditions.     1    .

The findings were based on an examination of the size and shape of noses on people with West African, South Asian, East Asian, or Northern European ancestry. It showed that the width of the nostrils is strongly related to temperature and absolute humidity (绝对湿度), but not the result of genetic drift (遗传漂变).

One purpose of the nose is to condition the air we breathe, to ensure that it is warm and moist when it reaches the lungs, which helps to prevent infections.     2    which was probably more essential to have this trait in cold and dry climates, it said.

People with narrower nostrils probably had better and had more offspring than people with wider nostrils, in colder climates.    3    . The nose has had a complex evolutionary history, however, and researchers suspected that additional factors, such as cultural preferences when picking a mate, have also pl played a role in shaping the nose.     4    . Studies of human adaptation are essential to our understanding of disease and yield insights into why certain conditions, such as skin cancer, are more common in certain populations.

The researchers said that it may be worth investigating whether the shape of the nose impacts ones risk of contracting breathing diseases when living in a climate that is different from one's ancestors.

A．This leads to a gradual decrease in nose width in populations living far away from the equator (赤道)

B．Wider nostrils (鼻孔) seem to warm and humidify the inside of nose better to protect us from being infected

C．Narrower nostrils seem to alter the airflow so that noses can humidify and warm the air more efficiently

D．Generally, wider noses are more common in warm and humid climates, while narrower noses are more common in cold and dry climate

E．This can clearly explain why our ancestors aren’t to blame for the nose shapes and sizes

F．Investigations into nose shape evolution and climate adaptation may have medical implications as well

10 . Science may never know what memories play on the mind of the California sea hare, a foot-long marine snail, when it eats algae — a sea plant — in the tide pools of the Pacific coast.

But in a new study, researchers claim to have made headway in understanding the simplest kind of memory a creature might form.

David Glanzman, a neurobiologist at the University of California, believes the kinds of memories that trigger a defensive reaction in the snail are encoded not in the connections between brain cells, as many scientists would argue, but in RNA molecules (分子) that form part of an organism’s genetic machinery.

In an experiment to test the idea, Glanzman implanted wire into the tails of California sea hares, and gave them a series of electrical shocks. The procedure sensitized the animals so that when they were prodded (戳) in a fleshy spout called a siphon, they contracted their gills (鳃状呼吸器官) in a strong defensive action.

After sensitizing the sea snails, Glanzman extracted RNA from the animals and injected it into other sea snails to see what happened. He found the recipient sea snails became sensitized, suggesting the “memory” of the electrical shocks had been transplanted. When Glanzman repeated the experiment with RNA from sea snails that had been hooked up to wires but not shocked, the reaction behavior did not transfer.

Despite the result, the work has not found widespread acceptance. “Obviously further work needs to be carried out to determine whether these changes can happen without failure in a wide range of conditions,” said Prof Sherilynn Vann, who studies memory at Cardiff University. “While the sea hare is a fantastic model for studying basic neuroscience, we must be very cautious in drawing comparisons to human memory processes.”

Tomas Ryan, who studies memory at Trinity College Dublin, is firmly unconvinced. “It’s interesting, but I don’t think they’ve transferred a memory,” he said. “This work tells me that maybe the most basic behavioral responses involve some kind of switch in the animal and there is something in the liquid that Glanzman extracts that is hitting that switch.”

But Ryan added that different thinking about memory was badly needed: “In a field like this which is so full of accepted beliefs, we need as many new ideas as possible. This work takes us down an interesting road, but I have a huge amount of skepticism about it.”

1. Why were the sea hares given electrical shocks?

A．To rob them of their memory.

B．To see how they defend themselves.

C．To break the connection between nerves.

D．To make them sensitive to external stimulations.

2. What conclusion may Glanzman draw from the experiment?

A．Memory can be encoded and changed by people.

B．Only with strong stimulation can sea snails form reaction.

C．The memory giving rise to sea snail’s sensitization is held in RNA.

D．The sea snail’s defense is probably enabled by connectivity of brain cells.

3. According to the passage, the limitations of Glanzman’s experiment involve the following EXCEPT ________.

A．The recipient sea snail’s response may require further confirmation.

B．Variables (变量) in the experiments may not have remained the same.

C．Something else other than RNA in the extract may lead to the recipient’s reaction.

D．The sea snail “memory transplant” may not apply to more complex memory process.

4. The underlined word “skepticism” in the last paragraph is closest in meaning to ________.

A．criticism

B．doubt

C．relief

D．optimism