1 . Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. disapproved        B. negative        C. national        D. appreciation        E. socially F. tendency        G. approach        H. fitted        I. enhanced        J. unpopular K. namely

What are the things that first come to your mind when you think of the UK? Are they nonstop rain, polite manners, boring food and tea drinking?

Some of the UK’s     1     stereotypes are true, a new survey has found. For example, British people do have a (n)     2     to drink lots of tea.

The research polled 1, 402 foreigners living in the UK on their opinions about the British way of life. Unsurprisingly, the majority of them, almost 70 percent, said they enjoyed living in the country—good manners, especially UK people’s extraordinary ability to queue, are the main reasons for foreigners’     3    . More than one-third said they liked British people’s restrained     4     to emotion.

However, there are aspects of British culture that are     5     of. The heavy alcohol drinking culture ranked as the least favorite trait, followed by the British sense of humor and the country’s bad weather.

It may not be too hard to understand why heavy drinking and bad weather are     6    , but what’s wrong with the British sense of humor?

British humor is known for being dry and satirical (讽刺的), so it is generally more     7    . When it comes to making the British laugh, there is nothing more effective than a     8     inappropriate joke, noted the BBC. “Britons are more comfortable with life’s losers,” wrote English actor Ricky Gervais in an article published in Time magazine.

“The majority of nationalities have stereotypes     9     around them and Britons don’t escape this,” said Liam Clifford, the founder of Global Visas, the website that conducted the research. “People probably come here with a stereotype-based preconception of what to expect. It’s good to see from our survey, though, that, in the majority of cases, this reputation is actually     10     upon living here.”

2 . Directions: Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box. Each word can be used only once. Note that there is one word more than you need.

A. double          B. intense          C. pressures       D. stock          E. agriculture       F. trapped G. withdrawal     H. availability   I. drive             J. expanding     K. rising

Throughout history, people have fought bitter wars over political ideology, national sovereignty and religious expression. How much more     1     will these conflicts be when people fight over the Earth’s most indispensable resource water? We may find out in the not-too-distant future if projections about the     2     of water in the Middle East and other regions prove correct.

Less than three percent of the planet’s     3     is fresh water, and almost two-thirds of this amount is     4     in ice caps, glaciers, and underground aquifers too deep or too remote to access. In her book, Pillars of Sand-Can the Irrigation Miracle Last, Sandra Postel outlines three forces that     5     tension and conflict over freshwater. Using up the water “resource pie”. In India, the world’s second-most populous nation, with over 1 billion inhabitants, the rate of groundwater     6     is twice that of recharge, a deficit higher than in any other country. Although water is a renewable resource, it is not a(n)     7     one. The freshwater available today for more than 6 billion people is no greater than it was 2,000 years ago, when global population was approximately 200 million. (The current U.S. population is 287 million.)

Global     8     accounts for about 70% of all freshwater use. In five of the world’s most water-stressed, controversial areas the Aral Sea region, the Ganges, the Jordan, the Nileland and Tigris-Euphrates population increases of up to 75% are projected by 2025. With the fastest rate of growth in the world, the population of Palestinian territory will more than     9     over the next generation. Most experts agree that, because of geography, population     10     and politics, water wars are most likely to break out in the Middle East, a region where the amount of available freshwater per capita will decrease by about 50% over the next generation.