1 . Next week California will try to take cell phones from the hands of drivers， telling everyone from millionaires to workers that conversations behind the wheel must be on an earphone．
Californians interviewed by Reuters mostly supported the law requiring hands﹣free phones in cars and banning cell phones entirely for drivers under 18， which will take effect on Tuesday， though they were puzzled by a loophole（漏洞） that allows seemingly more dangerous text messaging． Some were doubtful about lawmakers， who they blamed for failing to build more freeways or public transportation in the face of increasingly crowded roads in the nation's most populous state and said hands﹣free conversations were not safer．
KFI﹣AM radio talk﹣show host John Kobylt told Reuters． "It's stupid because we've one over about seven different studies and each one of them says it's the conversation that distracts you， not holding the phone．"
State Senator Joe Simitian， who introduced the bill， said keeping both hands on the wheel was always safer． He expected his law to save hundreds of lives． The Democratic lawmaker was considering introducing a new law to ban text messaging in the car， which he said wasn't an issue when he began working on the first one in 2001．
Connecticut， New Jersey and New York have already banned drivers from talking on hand﹣held cell phones． In New Jersey， police have issued 35，000 tickets for using a hand﹣held phone or texting while driving since the law went into effect on March 1．
But Californians interviewed by Reuters expressed ambivalence．"On the one hand I don't want to see people crash into each other， but I'm not going to get an ear thing．" 38﹣year﹣old bank employee Jason Fischer said in Los Angeles．
1. We can infer from Paragraph 2 that ．| A．most Californians hate to use an earphone while making a call in the car |
| B．public transportation in California isn't developed enough |
| C．in New Jersey few people use a hand﹣held phone |
| D．most of Californians are probably against the new law |
| A．all the lawmakers are stupid |
| B．holding the phone is safer than using an earphone |
| C．it isn't dangerous to make a phone call while driving |
| D．it is the phone conversation while driving that is really dangerous |
| A．He will suggest a law to forbid text messaging while driving |
| B．He will conduct a new survey among Californians |
| C．He will suggest building more roads in California |
| D．He will suggest a law to completely ban cell phones while driving |
| A．a positive attitude |
| B．a negative attitude |
| C．a confused feeling |
| D．an excited feeling |
2 . When I was 13, my bedroom walls were covered with posters of the Monkees and Beatles. I wrote fan letters and daydreamed about meeting the objects of my affections. I begged my parents to attend every rock concert and watch every TV show featuring my favorite celebrities; my friends and I discussed for hours all the things we would say and do when we met our favourite movie stars and pop singers. I drove my mother crazy ! But after a few years, my obsession stars faded as I matured and gained the confidence to socialize with “real” boys.
In the 35 years since I was a teenager, celebrity worship (崇拜) has increased among teens due to the explosion of television celebrity gossip shows, and instant access to celebrity news on the Internet. It’s no wonder that many teens are obsessed with stars when news programs are often filled with entertainment stories and the lives of celebrities.
Celebrity worship syndrome (综合征) is now considered a personality disorder. While it is normal for teenagers to follow the lives of their favorite stars, parents should try to monitor everything their child finds interesting. Parents should take action if they suspect a teen is too obsessed with celebrities and showing little interest in school or withdrawing from the family. When teens talk a lot about celebrities and view them as just means of entertainment, this is considered normal celebrity worship. However, when a teenager is obsessed with a star and often expresses a desire to have a close personal relationship with a celebrity or feels they have a special connection to a star, this may be the time for concern. Recent studies have shown that teens who develop an unhealthy obsession with celebrities often suffer from low self confidence and depression. Teens who are overly obsessed with stars often have damaged relationships with their parents.
1. The first paragraph is intended to tell us________.| A．parents needn’t worry about celebrity worship |
| B．celebrity worship can cause serious problems |
| C．it’s normal for a teen to have celebrity worship |
| D．celebrity worship only exists among teens |
| A．the media greatly contributes to celebrity worship today |
| B．the author is surprised at celebrity worship |
| C．teens today are not so obsessed with celebrities |
| D．celebrities expose their lives too much |
| A．talk a lot about celebrities with others |
| B．put up celebrity posters in their bedrooms |
| C．ask to go to their favourite star’s concert |
| D．desire a close personal relationship with their favorite star |
| A．The harm of celebrity worship syndrome. |
| B．More signs of celebrity worship syndrome. |
| C．What to do with children’s celebrity worship syndrome? |
| D．Who will suffer most from celebrity worship syndrome? |
3 . My grandmother Rosalind Einhorn was born exactly fifty-two years before I was, on August 28, 1917. Like many poor Jewish families in New York City, hers lived in a small, crowded apartment close to their relatives. Her parents, aunts and uncles addressed her male cousins by their given names, but she and her sister were referred to only as “Girlie”.
During the Depression, my grandmother was pulled out of Morris High School to help support the household by sewing fabric flowers onto undergarments that her mother could resell for a tiny profit. No one in the community would have considered taking a boy out of school. A boy’s education was the family’s hope to move up the financial and social ladder. Education for girls, however, was less significant both financially, since they were unlikely to contribute to the family’s income, and culturally, since boys were expected to study the Torah while girls were expected to run a “proper home”. Luckily for my grandmother, a local teacher insisted that her parents put her back into school. She went on not only to finish high school but to graduate from U.C. Berkeley.
After college, “Girlie” worked selling pocketbooks and accessories at David’s Fifth Avenue. When she left her job to marry my grandfather, David’s had to hire four people to replace her. Years later, when my grandfather’s paint business was struggling, she jumped in and took some of the hard steps he was unwilling to take, helping to save the family from financial ruin. She displayed her business ability again in her forties. After being diagnosed（诊断）with breast cancer, she beat it and then devoted herself to raising money for the clinic that treated her by selling some watches. Girlie ended up with a profit that Apple would envy. I have never met anyone with more energy and determination than my grandmother.
When my grandmother had children of her own — my mother and her two brothers — she emphasized education for all of them. My mother attended the University of Pennsylvania. When she graduated in 1965 with a degree in French literature, she surveyed a workforce that she believed consisted of two career options for women: teaching or nursing. She chose teaching. She began a Ph. D. programme, got married, and then dropped out when she became pregnant with me. It was thought to be a sign of weakness if a husband needed his wife’s help to support their family, so my mother became a stay-at-home parent and an active volunteer. The centuries-old division of labor stood.
Even though I grew up in a traditional home, my parents had the same expectations for me, my sister, and my brother. All the three of us were encouraged to do well in school, do equal routine tasks, and participate in after-school activities. We were all supposed to be athletic too. My brother and sister joined sports teams, but I was the kid who got picked last in gym, despite my athletic shortcomings. I was raised to believe that girls could do anything boys could do and that all career paths were open to me.
When I arrived at college in the fall of 1987, my classmates of both genders seemed equally focused on academics. I don’t remember thinking about my future career differently from the male students. I also don’t remember any conversations about someday balancing work and children. My friends and I assumed that we would have both. Men and women competed openly and aggressively with one another in classes, activities，and job interviews. Just two generations removed from my grandmother, the playing field seemed to be level.
But more than twenty years after my college graduation, the world has not evolved nearly as much as I believed it would. Almost all of my male classmates work in professional settings. Some of my female classmates work full-time or part-time outside the home and just as many are stay-at-home mothers and volunteers like my mom. This mirrors the national trend. In comparison to their male counterparts（相同能力者）, highly trained women are scaling back and dropping out of the workforce in high numbers.
1. Why were the writer’s grandma and her sisters called “Girlie”?| A．They had not yet got their given names. |
| B．They were highly valued by their elders. |
| C．They shared apparent similarities in many ways. |
| D．They were regarded as less important than boys. |
| A．She was an extraordinarily able and tough woman. |
| B．She was full of ideas for solving various problems. |
| C．She benefited greatly from her family background. |
| D．She had special ways of teaching her own children. |
| A．the necessity of women’s education |
| B．the importance of women’s liberation |
| C．the existence of gender discrimination |
| D．the lives of three generations of women |
Psychometric testing—personality testing—has been very popular nowadays as studies show their results to be three times more accurate in predicting your job performance. These tests are now included in almost all graduate recruitment (招聘) and are widely used in the selection of managers.
The most popular of these personality tests is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). It is based on the theory that we are born with a tendency to one personality type which stays more or less fixed throughout life. You answer 88 questions and are then given your “type”, such as Outgoing or Quiet, Feeling or Thinking.
Critics of personality testing raise doubts about “social engineering”. Psychologist Dr. Colin Gill warns that the “popular” personality traits (特性) have their disadvantages. “People who are extremely open to new experiences can be butterflies, going from one idea to the next without mastering any of them.” However, the psychometric test is here to stay, which may be why a whole sub-industry on cheating personality tests has sprung up. “It’s possible to cheat,” admits Gill, “but having to pretend to be the person you are at work will be tiring and unhappy and probably short-lived.”
So can we change our personality? “Your basic personality is fixed by the time you’re 21,”says Gill,“ but it can be affected by motivation and intelligence. If you didn’t have the personality type to be a doctor but desperately wanted to be one and were intelligent enough to master the skills, you could still go ahead. But trying to go too much against type for too long requires much energy and is actually to be suffered for long. I think it’s why we’re seeing this trend for downshifting—too many people trying to fit in to a type that they aren’t really suited for.”
Our interest in personality now exists in every part of our lives. If you ask an expert for advice on anything, you’ll probably be quizzed about your personality. But if personality tests have any value to us, perhaps it is to free us from the idea that all of us are full of potential, and remind us of what we are. As they say in one test when they ask for your age: pick the one you are, not the one you wish you were.
1. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is based on the belief that ______.
| A．certain personality traits are common |
| B．personality is largely decided from birth |
| C．some personality types are better than others |
| D．personality traits are various from time to time |
| A．Employers often find the results unclear. |
| B．They may have a negative effect on takers. |
| C．People can easily lie about their true abilities. |
| D．The results could be opposite to what employers want. |
| A．It’s possible in your adult life. |
| B．It’s easy if you have great motivation. |
| C．It’s difficult before the age of 21. |
| D．It’s unlikely because it requires much energy. |
| A．They are not really worth doing. |
| B．They may encourage greater realism. |
| C．They are of doubtful value to employers. |
| D．They can strengthen the idea we have of our abilities. |
5 . The death of languages is not a new phenomenon. Languages usually have a relatively short life span as well as a very high death rate. Only a few, including Egyptian, Chinese, Greek, Latin, have lasted more than 2,000 years.
What is new, however, is the speed at which they are dying out. Europe's colonial conquests caused a sharp decline in linguistic diversity, eliminating at least 15 percent of all languages spoken at the time. Over the last 300 years, Europe has lost a dozen, and Australia has only 20 left of the 250 spoken at the end of the 18th century.
The rise of nation-states has also been decisive in selecting and consolidating national languages and sidelining others. By making great efforts to establish an official language in education, the media and the civil service, national governments have deliberately tried to eliminate minority languages.
This process of linguistic standardization has been boosted by industrialization and scientific progress, which have imposed new methods of communication that are swift, straightforward and practical. Language diversity came to be seen as an obstacle to trade and the spread of knowledge. Monolingualism became an ideal.
More recently, the internationalization of financial markets, the spread of information by electronic media and other aspects of globalization have intensified the threat to “small” languages. A language not on the Internet is a language that “no longer exists'' in the modern world. It is out of the game.
The serious effects of the death of languages are evident. First of all, it is possible that if we all ended up speaking the same language, our brains would lose some of their natural capacity for linguistic inventiveness. We would never be able to figure out the origins of human language or resolve the mystery of "the first language". As each language dies, a chapter of human history closes.
Multilingualism is the most accurate reflection of multiculturalism. The destruction of the first will inevitably lead to the loss of the second. Imposing a language without any links to a people's culture and way of life stifles the expression of their collective genius. A language is not only used for the main instrument of human communication. It also expresses the world vision of those who speak it, their ways of using knowledge. To safeguard languages is an urgent matter.
1. Which of the following does not contribute to the death of languages?| A．Colonial conquests of Europe |
| B．The boom of human population |
| C．Advances in science and industrialization |
| D．The rise of nation-states |
| A．boosts | B．fuels |
| C．imposes | D．kills |
| A．People would fail to understand how languages originated |
| B．Language diversity would become an obstacle to globalization |
| C．Monolingualism would lead to the loss of multiculturalism |
| D．Human brains would become less creative linguistically |
| A．To explain the reasons why languages are dying out. |
| B．To warn people of the negative aspects of globalization. |
| C．To call people's attention to the urgency of language preservation. |
| D．To argue how important it is for people to speak more languages. |
6 . We humans love to make comparisons. On the market, we
A most disturbing
According to Kohn, research doesn't
So,
| A．see | B．touch | C．sell | D．compare |
| A．mature | B．new | C．model | D．overseas |
| A．get | B．use | C．share | D．explain |
| A．Therefore | B．However | C．Otherwise | D．Besides |
| A．harmful | B．superior | C．responsible | D．thankful |
| A．pressure | B．control | C．discussion | D．consideration |
| A．express | B．prove | C．satisfy | D．create |
| A．disappear | B．wait | C．resist | D．rest |
| A．cases | B．words | C．ways | D．nations |
| A．denying | B．deciding | C．predicting | D．concluding |
| A．honest | B．good | C．patient | D．polite |
| A．process | B．consequence | C．purpose | D．method |
| A．traditional | B．scientific | C．political | D．competitive |
| A．defeat | B．accept | C．recognize | D．choose |
| A．test | B．challenge | C．support | D．change |
| A．since | B．until | C．when | D．unless |
| A．losing | B．processing | C．showing | D．reducing |
| A．apart form | B．because of | C．as for | D．instead of |
| A．shouting at | B．laughing at | C．looking at | D．striking at |
| A．guide | B．force | C．invite | D．expect |
7 . Many independent Chinese women like to earn their own bread, even if their husbands are already bringing home the bacon. But a recent survey suggests that such women find more joy from relationships, rather than successful careers.
About 73 percent of the 7,000 women surveyed in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou said they would choose to work even if their husbands earned enough for the family. The survey also found that 77 percent define happiness as “enjoying a relationship”.
But striking a balance between career and family can bring challenges to the woman’s career advancement.
“In my company, women usually have an equal or even a higher starting salary than men,”said Li Hua, general manager of Beijing Chuangjiashe Book Circulation Company. “However, as they begin to climb up the career ladder, women often meet problems along the way, while men can climb the ladder more easily.”
Both physical and emotional differences can prevent some women from taking tough positions, Li said. But family life is often the main difficulty for Chinese career women.
Despite these challenges, however, some experts believe it’s reasonable for some women to want to be breadwinners.
“In this way, the roles of a family are decided by the parents’ abilities rather than their gender (性别),” said Gu Donghui, a sociology professor at Fudan University.
Gu says women should have the freedom to decide if they want to stay at home or work to support the family. “Everyone has a different interpretation (解释)of what it means to find self-worth”.
Wang Haibin, an economic expert from Renmin University shares that view: “Traditionally, we tend to regard the family as the cell unit of society. Some members have always been expected to make sacrifices for it. But, it really doesn’t matter who earns more. Economic independence and personal choice is essential for both sexes in the family.”
1. What brings career women more joy and happiness according to the passage?| A．Relationships | B．Money |
| C．Challenges | D．Successful careers |
| A．Physical difference | B．Tough positions |
| C．Family life | D．The career ladder |
| A．their families are poor | B．they have a lot of children |
| C．their husbands do not work | D．they want to show their self-worth |
| A．The wife | B．Either of them |
| C．The husband | D．Neither of them |
8 . Can you touch your belly button (肚脐) by reaching behind your back and around your waist?
A new social trend has started in China, with thousands of netizens facing the challenge and uploading photographs of themselves to show off their bodies. Popular among many young female users on Weibo, the top, which translate as “reaching your belly button from behind to show your good figure,” was mentioned more than130 million times among Weibo users.
It not only spawned over 104,000 active discussions, but also led to concern about what means a healthy body image. “Look! It has taken me more than four hours but I’ve finally reached my belly button,” said Weibo user GayleRabbit. Another user Lucky said, “Why does my belly button suddenly look and feel completely new?”
While the trend was popular with many female users on Weibo, a photo uploaded by a male blogger caught people’s eye. “Is this pose (姿势) really that difficult? I don’t think so,” Said Weibo user Sough Sa. His photo showing he was trying to touch his belly button was shared more than 8,452 times. It also drew over 2,000 comments from other users on Weibo. “Show the skinny girls how it’s done,” said one user.
Weibo user MedicalCream Tang Zhao said, “Now you did it! So you don’t have to lose weight and please stay the same.”
“I always support failures. Now I don’t feel so bad about not being able to touch my belly button,” said another user Jacket.
“Do we need to have flexible arms or a skinny waist to pull this off?” asked Weibo user Chantilly623.
But some experts argued that China’s new belly button trend was actually distorting (歪曲) society’s standards of beauty. “These poses and pictures can be fun but sometimes they also become an expression of competitiveness,” said Jolene Tan, Programmes and Communications Senior Manager in Singapore championing women’s rights. She also told the BBC that the trend seemed to be a way of examining women’s bodies to see whether they are good enough. However, experienced body trainers say the new trend is about flexibility of the arm and the size of the waist, rather than a good figure. A skinny person with fewer muscles has a better chance of achieving the pose.
1. The underlined word “spawned” in Paragraph 4 probably means “_____________”.| A．brought about | B．put off |
| C．commented on | D．resulted from |
| A．Boys show no interest in this new trend. |
| B．GayleRabbit reached her belly button on her first try. |
| C．Sough Sa’s photo of reaching his belly button was popular online. |
| D．Jacket felt sorry for not being able to touch his belly button. |
| A．Disbelieving. | B．Uncaring. |
| C．Doubtful. | D．Worried. |
