1 . Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once.

A. positive   B. relationship C. obviously D. aged AB. improve AC. performance AD. significant BC. similarly BD. electronic CD. greet

Being able to multitask-- doing several things at the same time is considered a welcome skill by most people. But if we consider the situation of the young people    1    from eight to eighteen, we should think again.

What we often see nowadays is that young people juggle (玩）an ever larger number of     2     devices as they study. While working, they also surf on the Internet, send out emails, answer the telephone and listen to music on their ipads. In a sense, they spend a     3     amount of time in fruitless efforts as they multitask.

Multitasking is even changing the     4     between family members. As young people pay so much attention to their own worlds, they seem to have no time to spend with the other people around them. They can no longer     5     family members when they enter the house, nor can they eat at the family table.

Multitasking also affects young people's    6     at university and in the workplace. When asked about their opinion of the effect of modern gadgets(器具)on their performance of tasks, many young people gave a     7     response. However, the response from the worlds of education and business was not quite as positive. Educators feel that multitasking by children has a serious effect on later development of study skills. They believe that many college students now need help to     8     their study skills;     9    , employers feel that young people entering the job market need to be taught all over again, as modern gadgets have made it unnecessary for them to learn special skills to do their work.

2 . Nothing seems more inevitable than aging and death ---- not even taxes. Every plant, animal and person you have ever seen will _________ die. But some recent research suggests that aging as we know it may not be inevitable. Indeed, as our _________ of it grows, aging can be viewed not as an unchangeable reality from which there is no escape, but as the product of biological processes that we may be able to _________ someday.

We already know that some animals do not seem to age. Many cold-water ocean fish and some amphibians (两栖动物) never _________ a fixed size; they continue to grow bigger, to be able to reproduce and to live until something kills them. What these _________ seem to be telling us is that something in their genes ---- and possibly in ours ---- controls the _________ of aging, and that aging is not the fate of every living thing.

_________ the history of life on earth, one of the most common difficulties that animals (and their cells) have faced has been a lack of food. About 70 years ago, scientists discovered that when animals are forced to live on 30 to 40 percent fewer calories than they would _________ eat, something unusual happens: they become _________ to most age-related diseases ---- cancer, heart disease, diabetes (糖尿病) ---- and live 30 to 50 percent longer. Restricting calories __________ aging. But what are the __________ genes that preserve vitality( 生命力 ) and starve off（抑制） diseases?

About 15 years ago, armed with powerful new molecular-research techniques, a few scientists began to __________ these genetic phenomena. They have discovered that a gene called Sir2 ---- which is present in all animals, including humans ---- is __________ for the health benefits of calorie restriction, perhaps by repairing our DNA. But if we had to restrict our calorie intake by 30 to 40 percent, would it be of any __________ use? Few of us would be capable of restricting our diets so severely that we were constantly __________ : whether or not it made life longer, it would surely make life feel longer.

1.

A．suddenly

B．eventually

C．generally

D．unexpectedly

2.

A．desire

B．feeling

C．understanding

D．dream

3.

A．develop

B．design

C．control

D．solve

4.

A．reach

B．acquire

C．require

D．indicate

5.

A．objects

B．samples

C．items

D．creatures

6.

A．nature

B．system

C．speed

D．condition

7.

A．Through

B．Throughout

C．Beyond

D．Across

8.

A．rarely

B．occasionally

C．normally

D．mainly

9.

A．resistant

B．similar

C．essential

D．accessible

10.

A．quickens

B．slows

C．avoids

D．overcomes

11.

A．horrible

B．extra

C．specific

D．original

12.

A．investigate

B．illustrate

C．record

D．prove

13.

A．famous

B．generous

C．responsible

D．convenient

14.

A．fashionable

B．practical

C．immediate

D．daily

15.

A．happy

B．depressed

C．hungry

D．scared

3 .

A．The woman enjoyed the movie very much.

B．The woman didn’t sleep well because of the movie.

C．The man asked the woman to be careful at night.

D．The man invited the woman to go to the theatre together.

4 . Travelling, at least travelling any considerable distance, means dealing with airports. I've seen my share of airports. They come in several _______. The smallest I have been through was in the African town of Hoedspruit where the main waiting area was smaller than many school classrooms, security and ticket checking were both _______ by one person who was also controlling the gate onto the airfield and you had to walk out to the plane and climb the stairs to get in. It was even smaller than Canada's Moncton airport where the person taking the tickets was also one of the two _______ on our flight.

At the other extreme are the _______, modern airports in the world's major cities. LAX, in Los Angeles has two parallel runways and provides the unusual opportunity to watch out the window of your landing aircraft as another one lands right beside you. Some, such as Beijing's Capital International Airport, SeaTac in Seattle and the International Airport in San Francisco, like those in Hong Kong and Shanghai, have _______ terminals connected by different buses or underground trains. Finding a connecting flight often means changing terminals, which can be a little _______.

Heathrow airport in London, England, _______ that bigger is not always better. Heathrow consists of terminals used by various _______ and is centered around an area that contains stores and restaurants. At Heathrow the tired traveller gets the _______ that they want you to spend your time in the stores because they won't announce the gate from which your flight will leave until about an hour before flight time. Given that they start to get people onto the planes half an hour before takeoff that leaves just 30 minutes to find and ________ your gate, some of which are a 15-minute walk from the store area. There is absolutely no ________ for this because the airport authorities know even before the day begins how many flights are arriving and departing and where they plan to put them. If I have just come off one long flight and I'm waiting for another, what I want is a quiet place, not an area ________ bright lights and noisy shoppers.

Travel, for me, is interesting but when I have to fly, getting there is ________ not half the fun. Airplanes are very efficient way to move people long distances and airports are a(n) ________ part of the process. Most airport do their best to provide a good travelling experience but they are to be ________, not really enjoyed.

1.

A．types

B．cities

C．areas

D．sizes

2.

A．identified

B．handled

C．promoted

D．processed

3.

A．guards

B．astronauts

C．pilots

D．passengers

4.

A．tremendous

B．crowded

C．international

D．fashionable

5.

A．flexible

B．multiple

C．available

D．irregular

6.

A．exciting

B．astonishing

C．confusing

D．encouraging

7.

A．regulates

B．emphasizes

C．encounters

D．demonstrates

8.

A．functions

B．departments

C．airlines

D．authorities

9.

A．recreation

B．presentation

C．announcement

D．impression

10.

A．look for

B．get to

C．meet at

D．check out

11.

A．exception

B．doubt

C．apology

D．excuse

12.

A．filled with

B．dominated by

C．decorated with

D．recognized by

13.

A．increasingly

B．permanently

C．attentively

D．definitely

14.

A．effective

B．optional

C．necessary

D．suitable

15.

A．simplified

B．endured

C．declared

D．paralleled

5 . Directions: Read the following three passages. 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.

Singapore's Information Technology Strategy

Singapore's information technology strategy rests on two major legs. The first leg is world-class basic facilities. Being a city-state, it is relatively easy to connect every home, office and hotel room. Our objective is to provide broad-band everywhere, either wired or wireless. We will make it a readily available utility like water, electricity, gas and telephone. We are well on our way there. We now require, by regulation, every new home to be equipped with broad-band in the same way as it is required to have water and electricity.

The second leg is the education of our entire population in IT (information technology). Like reading, writing and arithmetic, computers are best learnt when we are young. Today's children can click the mouse faster than we can blink. In many countries, children of middle-class families have no difficulty with this new technology. But, without special effort, there is a danger that children of poorer families will miss out on the opportunity to learn IT. Like the piano and violin, one can still learn the computer as an adult. But rarely does one acquire the same facility. The strategy in Singapore is therefore to teach information technology to every child regardless of his family background. The Education Ministry now has a multi-billion dollar programme to provide one computer for every 2 schoolchildren in Singapore from first grade onwards. Every teacher will have a notebook.

Most Singaporeans now understand the importance of IT, if not for themselves, at least for their children and grandchildren. Over 40% of households in Singapore now own PCs. Over one-third of households in Singapore already enjoy access to Internet. What we want is for every Singaporean to be computer literate so that he can function effectively in any bank, factory or restaurant, just as one would expect an employee to be able to read, write and count. An employer in Singapore in the future should not have to worry that his employee does not now how to use a computer or the Internet.

6 . Up-skilling is the future - but it must work for everyone

Automation and job replacement will be one of the most significant challenges for the global economy of the coming decades. A 2017 Mckinsey report established that 375 million workers will need to switch occupational categories by 2030. The World Economic Forum suggests that by 2022, automation will replace 75 million jobs globally - but create 133 million new ones.

Research into the likelihood that a job will be impacted by digitization has largely focused on the "auto-matability" of the role and the following economic regional and political effects of this. What this research doesn't take into account is something more important for the millions of taxi drivers and retail workers across the globe: their likelihood of being able to change to another job that isn't automatable. Recent research suggests that the answer to this may be that the skills that enable workers to move up the ladder to more complex roles within their current areas might be less important than broader skills that will enable workers to change across divisions.

In July, Amazon announced that it would spend $700 million retraining around 30% of its 300,000 US workforce. While praiseworthy, it will be interesting to see the outcome. In the UK, the National Retraining Scheme has largely been led by employers, meaning that those on zero-hours contracts and part-time workers - often low-skilled --- will miss out. Governance will be a crucial element of ensuring that such schemes focus on individuals and life-long learning, rather than upskilling workers into roles that will soon also face automation.

According to the Mckinsey report, "growing awareness of the scale of the task ahead has yet to translate into action. Public spending on labour-force training and support has fallen for years in most member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development," which impacts more than just the low-skilled.

The global impact of automation is also put into relief by research demonstrating that, between 1988 and 2015, income inequality increased throughout the world. Billions of people do not have the essentials of life as defined by the UN Sustainable Development goals.

Alongside climate change, automation is arguably tech's biggest challenge. As with globalization, governments and employers -- and us workers -- ignore its potential consequences at risk to ourselves.

1. It can be known from Paragraph 2 that ________.

A．recent research has found ways to face automation

B．broad skills are of great significance in changing jobs

C．regional economy can affect the automatability of a job

D．it is even harder for workers to move up the social ladder

2. What is the author's attitude towards retraining programs?

A．Supportive.

B．Critical

C．Doubtful

D．Sympathetic

3. According to the author, what is one consequence of automation?

A．Less spending on training	B．A slowdown of globalization
C．Social unrest and instability.	D．An increase in income inequality

4. The passage is written to ________

A．argue the urgency of creating new jobs

B．compare globalization with automation

C．analyze the automatability of certain jobs

D．stress the important of upskilling workers

7 . A sensational new scientific discovery in the ocean near Australia may explain the most massive extinction of living things in Earth’s history. For years, scholars have been frustrated in trying to analyze why 90 to 95 percent of sea life and 75 percent of and life vanished about 250 million years ago. The extinctions were so enormous that they are called The Great Dying. To date, some authorities on ancient life thought that a volcanic eruption or a sudden change in the environment affected all life on Earth. Other specialists have doubted these theories, maintaining that it was not plausible that a solo volcano could bring about such chaos. From the outset, critics believed these claims were exaggerated.

By contrast, there is wide acceptance of the idea that a meteor (流星)which hit Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula 65 million years ago was the primary cause of the dinosaurs’ extinction. Nevertheless, until now they had no evidence of an intense meteor impact 185 mill on years earlier. Now they do.

American geologists have been examining rock samples from a deep sea crater (火山口)near the northwest coast of Australia. The samples were initially collected and preserved by petroleum technicians seeking oil. Now the geologists and their colleagues believe that the precise splits in the rock’s structure show a typical pattern for meteors. There is a clear distinction from volcanic patterns. In fact, a spokesperson went so far as to say that these rocks completely revise the way scientists perceive the mass extinctions from the ancient era. Academics say that the meteor’s crater s the size of Mount Qomolangma, the highest mountain on Earth! Literally, the meteor made a mark on Earth as it drowned in the sea. The Earth could not absorb such a harsh blow without sustaining global devastation. Things must have come to a standstill. Evidently, the blow was fatal for many forms of life.

Bear in mind that all this was long before mammals---including humans--emerged in Earth’s history. Still, we would be wise to pay attention to the damage a meteor can cause. Fortunately, meteor strikes on Earth are few and far between.

1. The word “plausible” (paragraph 1) is closest in meaning to “______”.

A．available	B．incredible
C．reasonable	D．ridiculous

2. Why didn’t the meteor affect human beings?

A．Because they were very resistant	B．Because there weren’t any then
C．Because they lived in isolated areas	D．Because they hid themselves in the caves

3. Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?

A．Scholars agreed that a single volcano caused The Great Dying

B．75 percent of land life continued 250 million years ago

C．Volcanic rocks and meteors have different patterns

D．When the meteor hit land Mount Qomolangma sprang up.

4. What is the best title for the passage?

A．The Dinosaurs’ End	B．Crater on Qomolangma
C．Contradictory Claims	D．A Meteor’s Impact

8 . More than a decade ago, cognitive scientists John Bransford and Daniel Schwartz, both then at Vanderbilt University, found that what distinguished young adults from children was not the ability to retain facts or apply prior knowledge to a new situation but a quality they called “preparation for future learning.” The researchers asked fifth graders and college students to create a recovery plan to protect bald eagles from extinction. Shockingly, the two groups came up with plans of similar quality (although the college students had better spelling skills). From the standpoint of a traditional educator, this outcome indicated that schooling had failed to help students think about ecosystems and extinction, major scientific ideas.

The researchers decided to go deeper, however. They asked both groups to generate questions about important issues needed to create recovery plans. On this task, they found large differences. College students focused on critical issues of interdependence between eagles and their habitats. Fifth graders tended to focus on features of individual eagles (“How big are they?” and “What do they eat?”). The college students had cultivated the ability to ask questions, the cornerstone (最重 要部分)of critical thinking. They had learned how to learn.

Museums and other institutions of informal learning may be better suited to teach this skill than elementary and secondary schools. At the Exploratorium in San Francisco, we recently studied how learning to ask good questions can affect the quality of people's scientific inquiry. We found that when we taught participants to ask “What if?” and “How can?” questions that nobody present would know the answer to and that would spark exploration，they engaged in better inquiry at the next exhibit-asking more questions, performing more experiments and making better interpretations of their results. Specifically, their questions became more comprehensive at the new exhibit. Rather than merely asking about something they wanted to try，they tended to include both cause and effect in their question. Asking juicy questions appears to be a transferable skill for deepening collaborative inquiry into the science content found in exhibits.

This type of learning is not confined to museums or institutional settings. Informal learning environments tolerate failure better than schools. Perhaps many teachers have too little time to allow students to form and pursue their own questions and too much ground to cover in the curriculum. But people must acquire this skill somewhere, Our society depends on them being able to make critical decisions about their own medical treatment, say, or what we must do about global energy needs and demands. For that, we have an informal learning system that gives no grades, takes all comers，and is available even on holidays and weekends.

1. What is traditional educators interpretation of the research outcome mentioned in the first paragraph?

A．Students are not able to apply prior knowledge to new problems.

B．College students are no better than fifth grader in memorizing facts.

C．Education has not paid enough attention to major environmental issues.

D．Education has failed to lead students to think about major scientific ideas.

2. College students are different from children in that_____ ?

A．they have learned to think critically.

B．they are concerned about social issues.

C．they are curious about specific features.

D．they have learned to work independently.

3. What is the benefit of asking questions with no ready answers?

A．It arouses students’ interest in things around them.

B．It cultivates students’ ability to make scientific inquiries.

C．It trains students’ ability to design scientific experiments.

D．It helps students realize not every question has an answer.

4. At the end of the passage the author seems to encourage educators to ____.

A．train students to think about global issues

B．design more interactive classroom activities

C．make full use of informal learning resources

D．include collaborative inquiry in the curriculum