SPEED READING
Skim or scan the following passages, and then decide on the best answer.

     When Wally Amos was little, his family was very poor. After his parents got divorced, Amos went to live with his Aunt Della in New York City. His aunt loved to cook and she made him special chocolate chip cookies.
     Wally dropped out of high school to join the army. After he completed his work in the army, he attended a secretarial school to learn shorthand, typing, and accounting skills.
     Wally began baking chocolate chip cookies using a recipe similar to his aunt's. He borrowed money from his friends and opened a small shop in California. The Famous Amos Cookie Company started. Soon he began to make money. Within the first two years, he was baking six tons of cookies a week and taking in over $4,000,000 in sales each year.
     He sold his company to the Bass Brothers of Fort Worth, Texas, and his cookies were soon found in grocery stores and vending machines all across the United States.
     In 1992, Wally started a new cookie company called The Uncle Noname Cookie Company that made five different kinds of cookies. Each bag of cookies also had a recipe for lemonade on the bag. He added this recipe to the cookie bag because Wally wanted his customers to know that, “...if life hands them a lemon, they can turn it into lemonade". This expression means that if things happen that seem not to be so good at the time, later they can actually turn into something good.
     Then Wally Amos rejoined the first cookie company to work on sales. He wanted the company to return to the market. He also wanted it to sell some new flavors of cookies besides the popular chocolate chip cookie, to add graphics(图样)to the packaging, and to work on new national advertising to attract more customers.
     Wally has spent time as a literacy volunteer of America and he has given money to a special program called "Cities in Schools" which helps students stay in school. He also took time off in 1983 to write his autobiography, The Famous Amos Story: The Man Who Launched a Thousand Chips. In the meantime, Famous Amos had new shops popping up on the West Coast and franchised stores(特许商店) opening in Japan and its Asian neighbors.
     Wally Amos is best known for his enjoyment in making cookies and for making so many possibilities out of his life.

SPEED READING
Skim or scan the following passages, and then decide on the best answer. 

     Early in World War II, the representatives of nine European governments fled to London. Nazi Germany had conquered much of Europe and had driven these leaders from their homelands. Representatives of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth nations met in London with the leaders of nine European nations. On June 12, 1941, all these nations signed a declaration pledging to work for a free world, where people could live in peace and security. This pledge, usually called the Inter-Allied Declaration, was the first step toward building the UN. 
     On October 30, 1943, representatives of the United Kingdom, China, the Soviet Union, and the United States signed the Moscow Declaration on General Security. This declaration approved the idea of establishing an international organization for preserving world peace. 
     From August to October 1944, representatives of the United Kingdom, China, the Soviet Union, and the United States held a series of meetings at the Dumbarton Oaks estate in Washington D. C. The four nations succeeded in drawing up a basic plan, though they could not agree on some important questions. The plan’s main feature was a Security Council on which the United Kingdom, China, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States would be permanently represented. 
     In February 1945, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met at Yalta in the Crimea. The three leaders announced that a conference of United Nations would open in San Francisco on April 25, 1945. This conference would use the plan worked out at the Dumbarton Oaks Conference to help prepare a charter for the UN. 
     Delegates from 50 nations met in San Francisco for the United Nations Conference on International Organization. The conference opened on April 25, 1945, 13 days after the death of Roosevelt and 12 days before the surrender of Germany. Victory over Japan Was still four months away. 
     At the conference, some major disagreements arose between the Big Three (the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and the United States) and the smaller, less powerful nations. The Big Three believed they could guarantee future peace only if they continued to cooperate as they had during the war. They insisted that the Charter of the United Nations should give them the power to veto actions of the Security Council. The smaller nations opposed the veto power but failed to defeat it. 
     On June 26, 1945, all 50 nations present at the conference voted to accept the charter. Poland had been unable to attend but later signed the charter as an original member. The charter then had to be approved by the governments of the five permanent members of the Security Council and of a majority of the other nations that signed it. It went into effect on October 24, 1945, a date celebrated every year as United Nations Day.

Reading Comprehension
Directions: Read the following passage. Choose the best answer from the four choices marked A, B, C and D for each question.

（1）In the 1760s, Mathurin Roze opened a series of shops that boasted（享有）a special meat soup called consomme. Although the main attraction was the soup, Roze's chain shops also set a new standard for dining out, which helped to establish Roze as the inventor of the modern restaurant.
（2）Today, scholars have generated large amounts of instructive research about restaurants. Take visual hints that influence what we eat: diners served themselves about 20 percent more pasta（意大利面食）when their plates matched their food.  When a dark-colored cake was served on a black plate rather than a white one, customers recognized it as sweeter and more tasty.
（3）Lighting matters, too. When Berlin restaurant customers ate in darkness, they couldn't tell how much they'd had: those given extra-large shares ate more than everyone else, but were none the wiser—they didn't feel fuller, and they were just as ready for dessert.
（4）Time is money, but that principle means different things for different types of restaurants. Unlike fast-food places, fine dining shops prefer customers to stay longer and spend. One way to encourage customers to stay and order that extra round: put on some Mozart（莫扎特）.When classical, rather than pop, music was playing, diners spent more. Fast music hurried diners out. Particular scents also have an effect: diners who got the scent of lavender（薰衣草）stayed longer and spent more than those who smelled lemon, or no scent.
（5）Meanwhile, things that you might expect to discourage spending — "bad" tables, crowding, high prices — don't necessarily. Diners at bad tables — next to the kitchen door, say — spent nearly as much as others but soon fled. It can be concluded that restaurant keepers need not "be overly concerned about 'bad' tables," given that they're profitable. As for crowds, a Hong Kong study found that they increased a restaurant's reputation, suggesting great food at fair prices. And doubling a buffet's price led customers to say that its pizza was 11 percent tastier.   

SPEED READING
Complete the following sentence with the proper form of the word in the bracket.

     Late one Sunday afternoon in September 1999, Oseola McCarty, an elderly cleaning lady passed away in the little wooden frame house where she had lived and worked most of her life. It may seem like an ordinary end to a humble life, but there is something quite exceptional about this woman.
     In the summer of 1995, McCarty gave $150,000, most of the money she had saved throughout her life, to the University of Southern Mississippi in her hometown. The money was to help other African Americans through university. She started her saving habit as a young lady when she cleaned and ironed for money. She led a simple, frugal life, never spending on anything but her most basic needs. Some banks also advised her on investing her hard-earned savings. When she retired, she decided that she wanted to use the money to give children of limited means the opportunity to go to university. She had wanted to become a nurse, but had to leave school to look after her sick relatives and work. When asked why she had given her life savings away, she replied, "I'm giving it away so that children won't have to work so hard, like I did." After the news of her donation hit the media, over 600 donations were made to the scholarship fund. One was given by media executive, Ted Turner, who reputedly gave a billion dollars.
     She didn't want any fuss made over her gift, but the news got out and she was invited all over the United States to talk to people. Wherever she went, people would come up to her to say a few words or to just touch her. She met the ordinary and the famous, President Clinton included. In the last few years of her life, before she died of cancer, McCarty was given over 300 awards: she was Despite having no real education, she found herself with two honorary doctorates: one from the University of Southern Mississippi and the other from Harvard University. Her generosity is clearly an inspiration to many and proves that true selflessness does exist.

Careful Reading

Read the following passages carefully. Decide on the best answer.

     A number of different aspects of life can influence mental health. In a mid-1970s study of people living in the United States, researchers identified critical areas that influence one’s mental health. These areas are working life, family life, and the social role that one occupies in the community. Negative experiences in these areas, such as an unreasonable boss or a turbulent family life, can reduce one’s overall sense of well-being. 
     Another important influence on mental health is stress. In general, people experience stress when the demands placed on them exceed the resources they have available to meet those demands. Significant sources of stress include major life events, such as divorce, death of a spouse, loss of a job, and illness in the family. These events can overwhelm a person’s ability to cope and function effectively. In addition, one source of stress may lead to another, as when financial hardship follows job loss. People who experience unusually traumatic events, such as rape and natural disasters, may develop post-traumatic stress disorder. 
     People may experience chronic stress when confronted with a continuing set of demands that reduce their ability to function. Examples of such demands include working long hours under difficult circumstances and caring for a chronically ill relative. Economic hardship, unemployment, and poverty can also produce chronic stress and undermine mental health. 
     Some studies suggest that genetic factors may partly determine one’s level of happiness and mental health. People seem to display a characteristic level of well-being, with some people usually feeling happy and others typically feeling sad or unhappy. Researchers have found that although people’s moods change in response to both positive and negative events, the effect wears off over time. For example, people who win the lottery or receive an unexpected promotion may feel happier at first, but over time they return to their former characteristic level of mental health. Research suggests that one’s genetic background—that is, the genes inherited from one’s parents—explains more than half of the differences in people’s characteristic mood levels. Genes may also partly determine the range of ups and downs that people feel, including whether people have large mood swings or remain stable from day to day.

Careful Reading

Read the following passage carefully. Decide on the best answers. 

     People have thought very differently about children in different historical eras. In ancient Rome and throughout the Middle Ages, for example, childhood was brief: A boy or girl was considered an “infant” until the age of six, but soon afterward worked alongside adults in the fields, in the workshops, or at home. Children were thought to be born in a state of sin and were viewed as the property of their fathers. Such beliefs contributed to strict discipline of children and neglect of their special needs. 
     These harsh attitudes softened during the Renaissance and Enlightenment as the humanistic spirit of the times caused a rediscovery of the special qualities of childhood. In paintings, for example, young children were depicted as playing and doing other childish things, rather than being shown as miniature adults. The importance of childhood as a unique period of development was understood more fully in the 17th and 18th centuries, as reflected in the writings of two important European thinkers: the English philosopher John Locke and the French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau. John Locke argued that the newborn infant comes into the world with no inherited predispositions (天性), but rather with a mind as a “blank slate” that is gradually filled with ideas, concepts, and knowledge from experiences in the world. He concluded that the quality of early experiences, particularly how children are raised and educated, shapes the direction of a child’s life. Later, Jean Jacques Rousseau claimed that children at birth are innately good rather than evil, and that their natural tendencies should be protected against the corrupting influences of society. Rousseau’s attitude had an important influence on society, and inspired, for example, the novelists Charles Dickens and Victor Hugo, who decried(揭露)the exploitation of child labor and highlighted the need for educational and social reform.

SPEED READING

Complete the following sentence with the proper form of the word in the bracket.

     When she was twelve, Maria made her first important decision about the course of her life. She decided that she wanted to continue her education. Most girls from middle-class families chose to stay home after primary school, though some attended private Catholic "finishing" schools. There they learned a little about music, art, needlework, and how to make polite conversations. This was not the sort of education that interested Maria—or her mother. By this time, she had begun to take her studies more seriously. She read constantly and brought her books everywhere. One time she even brought her math book to the theater and tried to study in the dark.
     Maria knew that she wanted to go on learning in a serious way. That meant attending the public high school, something that very few girls did. In Italy at the time, there were two types of high schools: the "classical" schools and the "technical" schools. In the classical schools, the students followed a very traditional program of studies, with courses in Latin and Greek language and literature, and Italian literature and history. The few girls who continued studying after primary school usually chose these schools.
     Maria, however, wanted to attend a technical school. The technical schools were more modern than the classical schools and they offered courses in modern languages, mathematics, science, and accounting. Most people — including Maria's father — believed that girls would never be able to understand these subjects. Furthermore, they did not think it was proper for girls to study them. Maria did not care if it was proper or not. Math and science were the subjects that interested her most. But before she could sign up for the technical school, she had to win her father's approval. She finally did, with her mother's help, though for many years after, there was tension in the family. Maria's father continued to oppose her plans, while her mother helped her.
     In 1883, at age thirteen, Maria entered the "Regia Scuola Tecnica Michelangelo Buonarroti" in Rome. Though the courses included modern subjects, the teaching methods were very traditional. Learning consisted of memorizing long lists of facts and repeating them back to the teacher. Students were not supposed to ask questions or think for themselves in any way. Teachers were very demanding, discipline in the classroom was strict, and punishment was severe for those who failed to achieve or were disobedient.

SPEED READING
Skim or scan the following passages and then decide on the best answer.

     Mary has a huge smile on her face. The 18-year-old from Arlington has a lot of reasons to be happy. Her high school graduation is just days away. She goes to Guatemala in the summer to work there with her church. Then, in the fall, she will head to Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania.
     But that is not why she is smiling right now. Tonight, in a beautiful long dress, with her hair perfectly curled, she is excited to be going to prom. A prom is a formal dance for high school students that's usually at the end of the year.
     Born in the United States more than 100 years ago, prom has spread to other parts of the world. In America, it has become an industry similar to the wedding business. A study found that, on average, an American family spends more than 900 dollars on prom.
     Much of it is spent on what the young adults wear to the formal dance. And then there are costs linked to hair and makeup, flowers for prom dates, dinner and transportation. It adds up. But some students find ways to make the event more economical. "I borrowed my dress," says Maggie. Like Mary, Maggie is a senior at Yorktown High School in Arlington. She got her makeup done without cost by a friend.
     Mary also cuts costs. She bought her dress online for far less than she would have paid in the stores. She also did her own hair. Many girls choose to get ready for the prom with friends. They might get their hair done at a beauty shop together or hire a professional makeup artist to share the costs.
Probably the least costly thing about prom is the ticket to the dance. Yorktown held its event at a hotel in Arlington. The tickets were $45. Maggie and      Mary were among about 15 friends who spent the evening together. This is a common tradition. The kids will gather at a student's house, and then go to dinner together at a restaurant.
Asking someone to prom, however, is no small task in the United States. "Proposals, as they are called, are supposed to take time to plan. Sometimes a kid make a big poster to invite someone to prom. Some kids might buy a gift to present when they ask someone to prom. Some proposals can be far more elaborate but most proposals are simple and sweet. And sometimes getting the yes response is the best part of prom. 

​Reading Comprehension 

Directions: Read the following passage. Choose the best answer from the four choices marked A, B, C and D for each question.

    Children as young as ten are becoming dependent on social media for their sense of self-worth, a major study warned.
    It found many youngsters(少年）now measure their status by how much public approval they get online, often through "like". Some change their behavior in real life to improve their image on the web.
    The report into youngsters aged from 8 to 12 was carried out by Children's Commissioner（专员）Anne Longfield. She said social media firms were exposing children to major emotional risks, with some youngsters starting secondary school ill-equipped to cope with the tremendous pressure they faced online.
    Some social apps were popular among the children even though they supposedly require users to be at least 13.The youngsters admitted planning trips around potential photo-opportunities and then messaging friends — and friends of friends — to demand "likes" for their online posts.
    The report found that youngsters felt their friendships could be at risk if they did not respond to social media posts quickly, and around the clock.
    Children aged 8 to 10 were "starting to feel happy" when others liked their posts. However, those in the 10 to 12 age group were "concerned with how many people like their posts", suggesting a "need" for social recognition that gets stronger the older they become.
    Miss Longfield warned that a generation of children risked growing up "worried about their appearance and image as a result of the unrealistic lifestyles they follow on platforms, and increasingly anxious about switching off due to the constant demands of social media.
    She said: "Children are using social media with family and friends and to play games when they are in primary school. But what starts as fun usage of apps turns into tremendous pressure in real social media interaction at secondary school."
    As their world expanded, she said, children compared themselves to others online in a way that was "hugely damaging in terms of their self-identity, in terms of their confidence, but also in terms of their ability to develop themselves".
    Miss Longfield added: "Then there is this push to connect — if you go offline, will you miss something, will you miss out, will you show that you don't care about those people you are following, all of those come together in a huge way at once."
    "For children it is very, very difficult to cope with emotionally." The Children's Commissioner for England's study — life in Likes — found that children as young as 8 were using social media platforms largely for play.
    However, the research — involving eight groups of 32 children aged 8 to 12 — suggested that as they headed toward their teens, they became increasingly anxious online.
    By the time they started secondary school — at age 11 — children were already far more aware of their image online and felt under huge pressure to ensure their posts were popular, the report found.
    However, they still did not know how to cope with mean-spirited jokes, or the sense of incompetence they might feel if they compared themselves to celebrities（名人）or more brilliant friends online. The report said they also faced pressure to respond to messages at all hours of the day — especially at secondary school when more youngsters have mobile phones.
    The Children's Commissioner said schools and parents must now do more to prepare children for the emotional minefield（雷区）they faced online. And she said social media companies must also "take more responsibility". They should either monitor their websites better so that children do not sign up too early, or they should adjust their websites to the needs of younger users.
    Javed Khan, of children's charity Bamardo's, said: "It's vital that new compulsory age-appropriate relationship and sex education lessons in England should help equip children to deal with the growing demands of social media.
    "It's also hugely important for parents to know which apps their children are using."

SPEED READING
Skim or scan the following passages and then decide on the best answer.

     During the latter part of the 19th century two kinds of entertainment developed in America to meet the needs of the new urban dwellers--the ballpark and vaudeville. Both kinds of entertainment helped to fill the growing amount of leisure time that workers enjoyed. both later were transformed into mass-mediated（大众媒体化的） activities
     The first professional baseball team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, was founded in 1869 and soon there were teams in all the major Eastern and Mid-western cities. The ballpark brought together crowds of strangers who could experience a sense of community within the big city as they watched a baseball game. Immigrants were able to shake loose their ethnic ties and become absorbed in the new national game, which was becoming representative of the "American spirit". The green fields and fresh air of the ballpark were a welcome change from the sea of bricks, stone and eventually concrete that dominated the city scene.
     Workers could temporarily escape the routine and dullness of their daily lives by indirectly participating in the competition and accomplishment that baseball games symbolized. Baseball reflected the competitiveness of the workplace and the capitalist ethic, regarded as players were bought and sold and were regarded as property. The ballpark also provided a means for spectators to release their frustrations against authority figures.
     As professional baseball emerged as a popular pastime, it became an increasingly commercial enterprise. Stadiums were built to seat the spectators, and the hawkers(小贩) of beer, soda, hot dogs, peanuts and popcorn soon appeared Advertising on signboards, streetcar posters, balloons and in newspapers helped "sell" the ballpark to the public. With the arrival of the electronic media in the 20th century, baseball and other sports would become a form of mass-mediated entertainment. Vaudeville was the other popular form of entertainment in the 19th century. Vaudeville took the traditional forms of popular entertainment or folk art, such as ethnic humor, juggling dancing and clown acts, and made them part of the new mass culture.
     Vaudeville set the mold(形式) for entertainment programs on the electronic media that eventually displaced it in the 20th century. Radio incorporated the style and humor of vaudeville, and television in turn took over the entertainment format of radio when it developed in the late 1940s and 1950s. The quick cuts and action of modern-day television are ultimately based on the conventions of vaudeville entertainment.

Short Answer Questions

          “But I can't save any money.” It's an excuse I hear a lot from which I detect a note of defiance. In the past few years, it has become increasingly frequent, as more and more Americans make less than we spend, eating up the savings in our homes. The national savings rate is declining. And the situation seems to be getting worse.
          We certainly know that saving money is good for us. Yet saving for tomorrow is still a largely ignored and unappreciated skill. The question that naturally follows is: Why? Why don't Americans make saving a priority?
           To start with, saving today is much harder. The typical household income has held largely steady for a good half decade, while prices have continued to rise. If you're having to spend a disproportionate amount of income on food and gas, it’s hard to save. Besides, credit became too accessible. For years it was simply too easy to get your hands on money to spend. While banks at one time would not let you spend more than 36 percent of your total income on debt, they stretched that number to 55 percent during the housing boom. Why save when you could get that big flat-screen TV today and pay for it with mortgage debt that was both cheap and deductible? Last but not least, saving is, was, and always will be no fun. Think about it this way: Choosing to save almost always means opting for delayed gratification instead of immediate gratification. The pleasure of getting something good today is much greater than that in the future—even if the reward in the future is bigger.
             Recently, neuroeconomists, a relatively new breed of experts in economics and neuroscience, have started using MRIs (核磁共振成像) to view the brain as it is making money choices. When something we want to buy comes into view, they see the pleasure center firing up. Similarly, getting a few dollars today is more thrilling than getting a slightly larger profit tomorrow. And if you have to wait a few months for that gain, it will have to be much bigger in order to arouse the same interest in your brain. Things way off in the future—like retirement—don't jostle the pleasure center much at all.

SHORT ANSWER QUESTIONS

The following questions are based on the below passage. Read the passage carefully again and answer the questions briefly.

     Pronouncing a language is a skill. Every normal person is expert in the skill of pronouncing his own language; but few people are even moderately proficient at pronouncing foreign languages. Now there are many reasons for this, some obvious, some perhaps not so obvious. But I suggest that the fundamental reason why people in general do not speak foreign languages very much better than they do their own languages is that they fail to grasp the true nature of the problems of learning to pronounce, and consequently never set about tackling it in the right way. Far too many people fail to realize that pronouncing a foreign language is a skill——one that needs careful training of a special kind, and one that cannot be acquired by just leaving it to take care of itself.
     I think, even teachers of language, while recognizing the importance of a good accent, tend to neglect the branch of study concerned with speaking in their practical teaching. So, the first point I want to make here is that the teacher should be prepared to devote some of the lesson time to the teaching of English pronunciation. There should be occasions when other aspects of English, such as grammar or spelling, are allowed for the moment to take second place.
     Apart from this question of the time given to pronunciation, there are two other requirements for the teacher: the first, knowledge; the second, technique.
     It is important that the teacher should be in possession of the necessary information. This can generally be obtained from books. It is possible to get from books some idea of the mechanics of speech, and of what we call general phonetic theory. But the first and most important part of a language teacher’s technique is his own performance, his ability to demonstrate the spoken language, in every detail of articulation （发音）as well as in fluent speaking, so that the student’s talent capacity for imitation is given the fullest scope and encouragement.

The following questions are based on the below passage. Read the passage carefully again and answer the questions briefly.

     “High tech” and “state of the art” are two expressions that describe very modern technology. High tech is just a shorter way of saying high technology. And high technology describes any invention, system or device that uses the newest ideas or discoveries of science and engineering.
     What is high tech? A computer is high tech. So is a communications satellite. A moderm manufacturing system is surely high tech.
     High tech became a popular expression in the United States during the early 1980's. Because of improvements in technology, people could buy many new kinds of products in American stores, such as home computers, microwave ovens, etc.
     “State of the art” is something that is as modern as possible. It is a product that is based on the very latest methods and technology. Something that is “state of the art” is the newest possible design or product of a business or industry. A state-of-the-art television set, for example, uses the most modern electronic design and parts. It is the best that one can buy.
     “State of the art” is not a new expression. Engineers have used it for years to describe the best and most modern way of doing something.
     Millions of Americans began to use the expression in the late 1970's. The reason was the computer revolution.
     Every computer company claimed that its computers were “state of the art”.
     Computer technology changed so fast that a state-of-the-art computer today might be old tomorrow. The expression “state of the art” became as common and popular as computers themselves. Now all kinds of products are said to be “state of the art”.

Short Answer Questions

The following 2 questions are based on the following passage. Read the passage carefully again and answer the questions briefly. 

     As those people on board the Mayflower settled on the Atlantic coast in 1620, they did not have to wait for roads to be built to receive passengers and produce from the other parts of the world or to send out their produce in exchange. Safe harbors-Boston, New York, Savannah-open on ready-made highways to the whole world. The spacious holds of ships that brought settlers could sent out furs and corn and rise and to bacco. An elegant London-made coach could be delivered directly to Geroge Washington’s dock at Mount Vernon on the Potomac River. 

     The English who settled the thirteen American colonies were not the first Europeans to start colonies in America. Adventures from Spain and Portugal, France and the Netherlands along with others, had long been competing for treasures of faraway places. A century before the Puritans come to New England, the bold Hernando Cortes, with only two hundred men conquered the armed hordes of the Aztec empire. In two years（1519-1521） he had made Mexico a colony of Spain. Ten years later, Francisco Pizarro, a Spanish who enjoyed adventures and sword-fighting but could not even write his name, overcome the grand Inca empire and added Peru to the realm of Spanish king.
     These Spanish conquerors were as ruthless and as courageous as any who could ever set foot on the Americas. They aimed “to convert the Indians to Christianity” and brought fairs to help them. But they were better at robbing than converting. They lived and died for gold and glory. They had no desire to settle down with their families as hardworking farmers.
     In 1620, when the sober William Bradford and the prudent John Winthrop came to New England, they had another idea. They came not for gold and glory but to build homes for themselves, their children, and their grand children. They aimed to make a city upon a hill for all the world to admire. Their was not a violent adventure of conquest but a long-lasting tale of building. They were a bit kinder to the Indians than the Spanish conquerors had been. One of them, John Eliot, set a friendly example and even translated the Bible into the Algonquian Indian language. The Indians in new England were few in number and had no riches of gold or silver to tempt the new comers. But they had much to teach the colonies how to survive in the wilderness, how to hunt and what would grow. The English colonies planted themselves and put down roots in the New world.

The following questions are based on the below passage. Read the passage carefully again and answer the questions briefly.

         Some estimates are that as many as 8% of adolescents suffer from depression at some time during any one-year period, making it much more common than, for example, eating disorders, which seem to get more attention as a source of adolescent misery.
        Even among psychiatrists and other mental health care professionals, the extent of the disability caused by depression is vastly underestimated. The World Health Organization has found that major depression is the single greatest cause of disability in the world—more than twice as many people are disabled by depression as by the second leading cause of disability, iron-deficiency anemia (贫血症). Other diseases and disorders may get more press coverage or more research money, or more sympathy and concern from a well-meaning public, but major depression causes more long term human misery than any other single disease.
          When I was a resident in psychiatry, we believed that true depression was rare among teenagers, or that insofar as it existed, it was just a normal phase of adolescent development with no lasting consequences. It didn’t take long after I began treating troubled kids to see that this couldn't possibly be true. Research over recent decades has confirmed my impression. These beliefs, if any still holds them, are false and dangerous. In fact, early onset of depression is not normal, and can predict numerous unhappy life events for youngsters, including school failure, teenage pregnancy, and suicide attempts.

            Although depression is increasingly common today, it is among the oldest diseases recorded in the history of medicine. As early as the fourth century, the symptoms of “melancholia” were well known. In other words, depression was first thought of as an exclusively physical illness—the loss of appetite, sleeplessness, irritability, and general depression was believed to have a physical, not a psychological cause. It wasn't until the nineteenth century—when the term depression was invented to substitute for melancholia—that a psychological understanding of the illness began to develop. Eventually this psychological explanation of depression would become the only one, although today it no longer is. We now know that depression has both psychological and physical symptoms, and that both psychological and medical treatments can help to alleviate them. 

Short Answer Questions
The following 2 questions are based on the following passage. Read the passage carefully again and answer the questions briefly. 

     The Yanomami are a people living in villages between 40 and 250 people in the Venezuelan rain forest. Since the 1960s, Napoleon Chagnon has studied several Yanomami villages, written a widely-read book called The Fierce People about the Yanomami and helped to produce several films about them.
     Chagnon’s writings and films have promoted a long-standing view of the Yanomami as exceptionally violent and war-loving. According to Chagnon, about one third of adult Yanomami males die violently, about two thirds of all adults had lost at least one close relative through violence, and over 50 percent had lost two or more close relatives. He has reported that one village was raided 25 times during his first 15 months there.
     Chagnon provides a sociobiological explanation for the fierceness of the Yanomami. He explains that village raids and warfare are carried to obtain wives. Although the Yanomami prefer to marry within their village, there is a shortage of potential brides because the Yanomami practice the killing of female infants, which creates a scarcity of women. While the Yanomami prefer to marry within their own group, taking a wife from another group is preferable to remaining a bachelor. Men in other groups, however, are unwilling to give up their women; hence the necessity for raids. Chagnon also argues that, as successful warriors will be able to gain a wife or more than one wife, they often have more children than unsuccessful ones. Successful warriors, Chagnon suggests, carry a genetic advantage for fierceness, which they pass on to their sons, leading to a high growth rate of groups with violent males through genetic selection for fierceness. Male fierceness, in this view, is biologically determined.
     Marvin Harris, who has a cultural materialist perspective, says that food scarcity and population in the area are the underlying causes of warfare. The Yanomami lack plentiful sources of meat, which is highly valued. Harris suggests that when hunting in an area was exhausted, the Yanomami would venture into territories of neighboring groups, thus giving rise to conflicts. Such conflicts in turn resulted in high rate of adult male deaths. Combined with the effects of female infant killing, this meat-warfare complex kept population growth rate down to a level that the environment could support.
     In contrast, Patrick Tierney, a journalist, points the finger of blame to a large extent at Chagnon himself. Tierney presents evidence that it was the presence of Chagnon and his team of co-researchers and many boxes of trade goods that triggered a series of deadly raids, for the Yanomami competed with other groups for his trade goods. In addition, Tierney argues that Chagnon intentionally prompted the Yanomami to act fiercely for his films and to stage raids that actually led to bad feelings where they had not existed before.

The following questions are based on the below passage. Read the passage carefully again and answer the questions briefly.

     Blaming the media for violence is misguided. To better understand the issue of violence and society, it is helpful to examine its historical roots. Certainly not all tribal societies were violent. For example, many native tribes in the American southwest were entirely peaceful. However, for most tribal people throughout most of the world, war and violence have always been part of life. One of our oldest books, the Old Testament, tells of constant tribal wars among the peoples of the Middle East. Likewise, ancient texts such as the Greek Iliad, the Indian Bhagavad-Gita and the Nordic Beowulf all tell tales of war and violence. Certainly the peoples of ancient Babylonia, Greece, India, and Scandinavia were not influenced by the media, yet most of the earliest human records indicate that violence has been an ever-present part of human life. Since violence was with us long before modern media, it seems unlikely that controlling the media now would have much impact on stopping human violence.
     A comparison of violence in nations around the world indicates that there is no relationship between media violence and real violence. In the United States, in 1996, there were 9,390 gun-related deaths. In the same year, Japan had 15 gun-related deaths. Yet the level of violence on television in Japan is higher than that in the U.S. Japanese TV often depicts graphic violence that would not be allowed on U.S. television, and Japanese movie-goers see the same major Hollywood films that Americans see, but street crime is so rare in Tokyo that most people do not worry about it. In contrast, in American cities, people in general, and women in particular, are afraid to walk alone at night. Security is an ever-present concern in the U.S., where citizens limit their lives in numerous ways to reduce the chances of joining the 11,000 people who are killed by guns in America each year. However, the number of murders in the U.S. is small compared to Columbia, where, for example, 23,000 people were murdered in 1999. Columbians have much less exposure to media violence than either Americans or Japanese; they have fewer TV stations and watch fewer films. Indeed, those committing murders in Columbia are often people from the countryside who have the least exposure to the media. Thus people who are not exposed to the media are often more likely to commit violent crimes than those exposed to it. Since Canada borders the U.S., Canadians receive the same TV and radio programs that Americans receive, yet gun violence in Canada is nearly one hundred times lower than that in the U.S. Clearly there is no significant relationship between media violence and real-life violence. We need to look elsewhere for solutions to real-life violence.

SHORT ANSWER QUESTIONS
The following questions are based on following passage. Read the passage carefully again and answer the questions briefly. 

     If you are looking for an explanation of why we don’t get tough with criminals, you need only look at the numbers. Each year almost a third of the households in America are victims of violence or theft. This amounts to more than 41 million crimes, many more than we are able to punish. There are also too many criminals. We don’t have room for any more!
     The painful fact is that the more crime there is, the less we are able to punish it. We think that punishment prevents crime, but it just might be the other way around. When there is so much crime it is simply impossible to deal with it or punish it. This is the situation we find ourselves in today: the gradual increase in the criminal population has made it more difficult to get into prison. Some of the most exclusive prisons now require about five serious crimes before a criminal is accepted.
     These features show that it makes little sense to blame the police or judges for being soft on criminals. There is not much else they can do. The police can’t find most criminals and those they do find are difficult and costly to convict. Those convicted can’t all be sent to prison. The public demands that we do everything we can against crime. The practical reality is that there is very little the police, courts or prisons can do about the crime problem.
     We could, of course, get tough with the people we already have in prison and keep them locked up for longer periods of time. Yet when measured against the lower crime rates this would probably produce, longer prison sentences are not worth the cost to states and local governments. Besides, those states that have tried to gain voters’ approval for building new prisons often discover that the public is unwilling to pay for prison constructions. And if it were willing to pay, long prison sentences may not be effective in reducing crime.
     More time spent in prison is also more expensive. The best estimates are that it costs an average of $13,000 to keep a person in prison for one year. If we had a place to keep the 124,000 released prisoners, it would have cost us $1.6 billion to prevent 15,000 crimes. This works out to more than $100,000 per crime prevented. But there is more. With the average cost of prison construction running around $50,000 per bed, it would cost more than $6 billion to build the necessary cells. The first-year operating cost would be $150,000 per crime prevented, worth it if the victim were you or me, but much too expensive to be feasible as a national policy.
     Faced with the reality of the numbers, I will not be so foolish as to suggest a solution to the crime problem. My contribution to the public debate begins and ends with this simple observation: getting tough with criminals is not the answer.

Short Answer Questions
The following 2 questions are based on the following passage. Read the passage carefully again and answer the questions briefly. 

     In the American colonies there was little money. England did not supply the colonies with coins and it did not allow the colonies to make their own coins, except for the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which received permission for a short period in 1652 to make several kinds of silver coins. England wanted to keep money out of America as a means of controlling trade: America was forced to trade only with England if it did not have the money to buy products from other countries. The result during this pre-revolutionary period was that the colonists used various goods in place of money: beaver pelts (生皮), Indian wampum (贝壳珠)，and tobacco leaves were all commonly used substitutes for money. The colonists also made use of any foreign coins they could obtain. Dutch, Spanish, French, and English coins were all in use in the American colonies.
     During the Revolutionary War, funds were needed to finance the war, so each of the individual states and the Continental Congress issued paper money. So much of this paper money was printed that by the end of the war it was virtually worthless. As a result, trade in goods and the use of foreign coins still flourished during this period.
     By the time the Revolutionary War had been won by the American colonists, the monetary system was in a state of total disarray. To remedy this situation, the new Constitution of the United States, approved in 1789, allowed only Congress to issue money. The individual states could no longer have their own money supply. A few years later, the Coinage Act of 1792 made the dollar the official currency of the United States and put the country on a bimetallic standard. In this bimetallic system, both gold and silver were legal money, and the rate of exchange of silver to gold was fixed by the government at sixteen to one.

The following questions are based on the below passage. Read the passage carefully again and answer the questions briefly.

     As the South was beginning to find itself after the American Civil War, the North, too, focused its interest on the lands below the Mason-Dixon Line. Northerners swarmed over the South: journalists, agents of prospective investors, speculators with plans for railroads, writers anxious to expose themselves to a new environment.
     One of these was Constance Fenimore Woolson, a young woman from New Hampshire, a grandniece of James Fenimore Cooper, who, like many Northerners, was drawn to the unhappy South by affection, compassion, admiration, or the charm of the life there. With her singular gift of minute observation and a talent for analysis, her imagination lingered over the relics of the ancient South, the quaintly emblazoned tablets and colonial tombs, the wrecked old mansions that stood near by, perhaps in ruined rice lands, amid desolated fields and broken dikes. Such was the dwelling on the Georgia sea island that sidled and leaned in Jupiter Lights with one of its roofless wings falling into the cellar. After St. Augustine, Charleston especially attracted Miss Woolson, crumbling as it was but aristocratic still.
     In a later novel, Horace Chase, one of the best of all her books, she anticipated Thomas Wolfe in describing Asheville, in which the young capitalist from the North who falls in love with the Southern girl sees the “Lone Star” of future mountain resorts.
     Miss Woolson was a highly conscious writer, careful, skillful, subtle, with a sensitive, clairvoyant feeling for human nature, with the gift of discriminating observation that characterized Howells and Henry James, two famous realistic writers. She was surely best in her stories of the South, fascinated as she was by its splendor and carelessness, its tropical plants, flowers , odors and birds, and the pathos and beauty of the old order as she saw it in decay.