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

     eBay scored an important victory in an American court on Monday on how much checking it is required to do of its auction listings, but the decision was in contrast to recent European court rulings.
     In a long-awaited decision in a four-year-old trademark lawsuit against eBay brought by the jeweler Tiffany & Company, Judge Richard J. Sullivan of the Federal District Court in Manhattan ruled that the online retailer does not have a legal responsibility to prevent its users from selling fake items on its online marketplace. The verdict reaffirms that Internet companies do not have to actively filter their sites for trademarked material. Rather, they can rely on intellectual property holders to monitor their sites, as long as they promptly remove material when rights holders complain.
     “The court ruled that eBay does in fact meet its responsibilities regarding fakes,” said Rob Chesnut, senior vice president and legal counsel at eBay. “We aggressively fight fakes not only to meet our limited responsibilities, but also because fakes hurt the eBay community.” James B. Swire, counsel for Tiffany and a partner at the law firm of Arnold & Porter, said he was “shocked and disappointed” in the ruling. “The principal purpose of trademark law is first to protect consumers and then to protect brand owners,” he added. “You don’t get a real sense of that in this decision.” Mr. Swire said that Tiffany was likely to appeal the decision to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
     The ruling is a shift in eBay’s recent courtroom fortunes. A week ago, a French judge ordered eBay to pay 40 million euros ($63.2 million) to the French luxury goods maker LVMH Moёt Hennessy Louis Vuitton over faking charges. In April, a German appeals court ruled that eBay must take preventive measures against the sale of fake Rolex watches.
     If those judgments are upheld in appellate court, eBay could have a potential problem on its hands. Though it operates a single global marketplace - buyers in Europe see the same items that buyers in the United States do - eBay would be legally required to do more abroad to fight faking than it is required to do at home. American shoppers on eBay will see no change in the company’s listings, but how the various rulings will affect the listings in Europe remains to be seen.

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

     Questions arise after the vote of the environment committee of the Spanish Parliament last month to grant limited rights to our closest biological relatives, the great apes - chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans. The committee would bind Spain to the principles of the Great Ape Project, which points to apes’ human qualities, including the ability to feel fear and happiness, create tools, use languages, remember the past and plan the future. The project’s directors, Peter Singer, the Princeton ethicist, and Paola Cavalieri, an Italian philosopher, regard apes as part of a “community of equals” with humans.
     If the bill passes - the news agency Reuters predicts it will - it would become illegal in Spain to kill apes except in self-defense. Torture, including in medical experiments, and arbitrary imprisonment, including for circuses or films, would be forbidden. The 300 apes in Spanish zoos would not be freed, but better conditions would be mandated.
     What’s intriguing about the committee’s action is that it puts two sliding scales together that are normally not allowed to slide against each other: how much kinship humans feel for which animals, and just which “human rights” each human deserves.
     We like to think of these as absolutes: that there are distinct lines between humans and animals, and that certain “human” rights are unalienable. But we’re kidding ourselves.
     In an interview, Mr. Singer described just such calculations behind the Great Ape Project: he left out lesser apes like gibbons because scientific evidence of human qualities is weaker, and he demanded only rights that he felt all humans were usually offered, such as freedom from torture - rather than, say, rights to education or medical care. Depending on how it is counted, the DNA of chimpanzees is 95 percent to 98.7 percent the same as that of humans.
     Nonetheless, the law treats all animals as lower orders. Human Rights Watch has no position on apes in Spain and has never had an internal debate about who is human, said Joseph Saunders, deputy program director. Meanwhile, even in democracies, the law accords diminished rights to many humans: children, prisoners, the insane, the senile. Teenagers may not vote, courts can order surgery or force-feeding. Spain does not envision endowing apes with all rights: to drive, to bear arms and so on. Rather, their status would be akin to that of children.

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

     We all know that people sometimes change their behavior when someone is looking their way. Now, a new study reported online on April 2nd in Current Biology shows that jackdaws —birds related to crows with eyes that appear similar to human eyes — can do the same.
     “Jackdaws seem to recognize the eye’s role in visual perception, or at the very least they are extremely sensitive to the way that human eyes are oriented,” said Auguste von Bayern, formerly of the University of Cambridge and now at the University of Oxford.
     When presented with a preferred food, hand-raised jackdaws took significantly longer to retrieve the reward when a person was directing his eyes towards the food than when he was looking away, according to the research team led by Nathan Emery of the University of Cambridge. The birds hesitated only when the person in question was unfamiliar and thus potentially threatening.
     In addition, the birds were able to interpret human communicative gestures, such as gaze alternation and pointing to help them find hidden food, they found. The birds were unsuccessful in using static cues, including eye gaze or head orientation, in that context.
     Unlike most birds, jackdaws’ eyes have a dark pupil surrounded by a silvery white iris. The researchers said they believe jackdaws are probably sensitive to human eyes because, as in humans, eyes are an important means of communication for them. The hand-raised birds examined in the study may be even better than wild jackdaws at attending to human gaze and responding to the gestures of the people who have raised them.
     The findings are particularly notable given that most other species investigated so far, including our closest relatives the chimpanzee and “man’s best friend,” the dog, are not particularly sensitive to eye orientation and eye gaze, von Bayern said. Rather, she continued, chimps and dogs seem to rely on other cues such as head or body orientation in determining the looking direction of others and do not appear to appreciate the eyes as the visual organs. The results suggest that birds may deserve more respect for their mental abilities.

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

     The establishment of Earth Day began with an idea proposed in October 1969 by John McConnell，a San Francisco resident.
     McConnell approached the San Francisco Board of Supervisors with a resolution to devote one day a year to public awareness dedicated to nature and the fragile ecosystem that comprises it．The day’s events would emphasize the urgency of all inhabitants of the planet to take responsibility for building a healthy and ecologically sustainable planet．The board was impressed with McConnell’s idea and declared Earth Day an annual celebration to be held on March 21，the date of the vernal equinox．McConnell stated，“This is the moment when night and day are equal throughout the earth—reminding us of Earth’s beautiful systems of balance which humanity has partially upset and must restore.’’
     Earth Day was established as a national day of celebration in the United States in 1 970 and was embraced by the United Nations in 1 97 1 when it declared an Earth Day ceremony to be held each year on the day of the March Equinox．In 1970，Senator Gaylord Nelson，proposed an Earth Week for the third week in April and together with Bruce Anderson，an architect of solar energy and environmental author, co-founded Earth Day USA. The first national Earth Day was celebrated in the United States on April 22，1 970．Twenty million participants nationwide took part in teach-ins，street demonstrations，and workshops in 2,000 communities and 12，000 college and high school campuses．The major public concern at that time was industrial pollution and its effect on the air we breathe，the water we drink，and the health of the planet we live on．Those celebrations led to overwhelming public outcries for legislation mandating ecologically sound environmental policies and rigid controls on industrial pollution.
     Over the years, the issues of concern have expanded greatly into all aspects of air, water, soil, and noise pollution. Whether it comes from vehicles, factories, agriculture, housing, or private property, public concern and activism continue unabated with citizens from around the world involved in efforts to achieve a sustainable and enduring ecosystem.

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

     As a professor of business and government policy, I’ve long been interested in the pursuit of happiness as a national concept. According to hundreds of reliable surveys of thousands of people across the land, happy people increase our prosperity and strengthen our communities. They make better citizens - and better citizens are vital to making our nation healthy and strong. So when I chanced upon data a couple of years ago saying that certain Americans were living in a manner that facilitated happiness - while others were not - I jumped on it.
     I wanted to be able to articulate which personal lifestyles and public policies would make us the happiest nation possible. I also wanted to know which of my own values were the most conducive to happiness. I had always thought that marching to the beat of my own drummer and making up my own values as I went along were the right things to do, and that traditional values, to put it bluntly, were for fools.
     Turns out that I was in for some surprises.
     You might suspect that Americans are getting happier all the time. After all, many (though clearly not all) are getting richer, and this should make them better able and equipped to follow their dreams. On the other hand, there’s a lot of talk about the good old days, when kids could play outside without any worry about being kidnapped. And there’s a great deal of stress in this country right now, due to financial concerns, negative workplace environments, and chronic health problems, among other pressing issues.
     But average happiness levels in America have stayed largely constant for many years. In 1972, 30 percent of the population said they were very happy with their lives, according to the National Opinion Research Center’s General Social Survey. In 1982, 31 percent said so, and in 2006, 31 percent said so as well. The percentage saying they were not too happy was similarly constant, generally hovering around 13 percent.
     The factors that add up to a happy life for most people are not what we typically hear about. Things like winning the lottery and earning a master’s degree don’t make people happy over the long haul. Rather, the key to happiness, and the difference between happy and unhappy Americans, is a life that reflects values and practices like faith, hard work, marriage, charity, and freedom.

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

     Jim Trelease has devoted the past 16 years to promoting what he considers the best-kept secret in education today. “Most people don’t believe me when they first hear it,” he says. “They dismiss it for three reasons: One, it’s simple. Two, it’s free. Three, the child enjoys it. So how good can it be?”
     His audience tonight, mostly young parents and teachers gathered in the St. Helena, Calif., elementary-school auditorium, giggles nervously. “I know what you’re thinking,” Trelease says. “There are only 24 hours in a day. It’s true. But who ever told you that parenting was going to be a time-saving activity?” Trelease continues to persuade them that no matter how busy they are, the foremost nurturing they can give a child, next to hugging him, is reading aloud to him.
     He backs up his pitch with facts. Numerous studies, including recent reports by the Center for the Study of Reading and the National Council of Teachers of English, confirm that reading to children builds vocabulary, stimulates imagination, stretches the attention span, nourishes emotional development, and introduces the textures and nuances of the English language. Reading aloud is, in essence, an advertisement for learning to read.
     Trelease laments that elementary-school students are too often conditioned to associate reading with work. “We have concentrated so hard on teaching children how to read that we have forgotten to teach them to want to read,” he says.
     His audience is surprised to hear that only 22 percent of eighth-graders read for fun daily, while 65 percent watch three hours or more of television each day. Research also indicates that average reading proficiency drops when TV viewing reaches about three hours a day. Their parents’ habits are no better: a recent survey shows a decline in newspaper readership among U.S. adults.
     Lest there be any doubt about the stakes involved, Trelease makes a bold claim. Reading, he says, is the single most important social factor in American life today. “The more you read, the smarter you grow. The longer you stay in school, the more money you earn. The more you earn, the better your children will do in school. So if you hook a child with reading, you influence not only his future but also that of the next generation.”
     When his two children, Elizabeth and Jamie, were young, Trelease and his wife, Susan, fed them as many books as meals. “I read to my kids because my father had read to me,” he says. “I just wanted them to have the good feelings I had had.”

Reading Comprehension.

Anna liked the look of the house as soon as she saw it. Jack knew that before she said anything. The plain white walls, the black window frames and door - the good taste of that combination had always pleased her.
“It’s a nice family house, ” she said. “One can see it’s been well lived in”
Fifty-seven Eden Square was a tall narrow house of three storeys in the middle of a row facing a small park. It was in what a house agent would call a popular rather than a fashionable area. The little front gate was open, broken. They went in and up a few stone steps to the front door. They could see in through one of the sitting-room windows from which a net curtain had fallen at one side. The large room was almost bare. A dirty green carpet half covered the floor. From an old brick fireplace a gas-fire had been pulled out into the room. The wallpaper was dark green, dirty and damp-looking. There was no furniture. Silently they stared in. Then Jack tried the front door. It was locked.
“Any empty house up for sale needs cleaning,” said Anna. “That’s part of the fun of buying. You can make it look so different. This place will be a lot better when cleaned up. How much do you think it’ll cost?”
“Well, it’s about eighty years old，and modernized probably.” He stepped back and looked up. “It should have three or four large bedrooms, as large as I think bedrooms ought to be, and one or two small ones. That is, if it wasn’t used as a guesthouse in the days before people started going to Spain for their holidays, I think it would cost about fifteen thousand. It depends on how modem it is inside. We’ll get the keys and have a look, shall we?”
They did so the following afternoon. In an earlier time, the spacious house had had large, airy bedrooms. All four of these were now divided up by wooden walls and ugly passages. Each big window looking onto the park was shared by two or even three rooms. There were in all eighteen tiny bedrooms, each with a tiny washbasin and water: sleeping space for thirty or so holidaymakers.
“Little cages,” Anna said. She did not like the place at all.

Reading Comprehension: In the passage, there are five questions with four choices marked A, B, C and D. Choose the best answer and then blacken the corresponding letter on your Answer Sheet.

        The estimates of the number of home-schooled children vary widely. The U.S. Department of Education estimates there are 250,000 to 350,000 home-schooled children in the country. Home-school advocates put the number much higher at about a million.
        Many public school advocates take a harsh attitude toward home schoolers, perceiving their actions as the ultimate slap in the face for public education and damaging move for the children. Home schoolers harbor few kind words for public schools, charging shortcomings that range from lack of religious perspective in the curriculum to a herdlike approach to teach children.
        Yet, as public school officials realize they stand little to gain by remaining hostile to the home-school population, and as home schoolers realize they can reap benefits from public schools, these hard lines seem to be softening a bit. Public schools and home schoolers have moved closer to tolerance and, in some cases, even cooperation.
        John Marshall, an education official, says, “We are becoming relatively tolerant of home schoolers.” The idea is, “Let's give the kids access to public school so they'll see it's not as terrible as they've been told, and they'll want to come back.”
        Perhaps, but don't count on it, say home-school advocates. Home schoolers oppose the system because they have strong convictions that their approach to education-whether fueled by religious enthusiasm or the individual child's interests and natural pace—is best.
        “The bulk of home schoolers just want to be left alone,” says Enge Cannon, associate director of the National Center for Home Education. She says，“Home schoolers choose that path for a variety of reasons, but religion plays a role 85 percent of the time.”
        Professor Van Galen breaks home schoolers into two groups. Some home schoolers want their children to learn not only traditional subject matter but also “strict religious doctrine and a conservative political and social perspective. Not incidentally, they also want their children to learn-both intellectually and emotionally-that the family is the most important institution in society.”
        Other home schoolers contend “not so much that the schools teach heresy(异端邪说), but that schools teach whatever they teach inappropriately,” Van Galen writes.“These parents are highly independent and strive to take responsibility for their own lives within a society that they define as bureaucratic and inefficient.”

Reading Comprehension.

Art is considered by many people to be little more than a decorative means of giving pleasure. This is not always the case; however, at times, art may be seen to have a purely functional side as well. Such could be said of the sand paintings of the Navaho Indians of the American Southwest; they have a medicinal as well as an artistic purpose.
According to the Navaho traditions, one who suffers from either a mental or physical illness has in some way disturbed or come in contact with the supernatural -perhaps a certain animal, a ghost, or the dead. To counteract this evil contact, the ill person or one of his relatives will employ a medicine man called a “singer” to perform a healing ceremony which will attract a powerful supernatural being. During the ceremony, which may last from 2 to 9 days, the “singer” will produce a sand painting on the floor of the Navaho Hogan. On the last day of the ceremony, the patient will sit on this sand painting and the “singer” will rub the ailing parts of the patient’s body with sand from a specific figure in the sand painting. In this way the patient absorbs the power of that particular supernatural being and becomes strong like it. After the ceremony, the sand painting is then destroyed and disposed of, so its power will not harm anyone.
The art of sand painting is handed down from old “singers” to their students. The materials used are easily found in the areas the Navaho inhabit: brown, red, yellow, and white sandstone, which is pulverized by being crushed between two stones much as corn is ground into flour. The “singer” holds a small amount of this sand in his hand and lets it flow between his thumb and forefinger onto a clean, flat surface on the floor. With a steady hand and great patience, he is thus able to create designs of stylized people, snakes and other creatures that have power in the Navaho belief system. The traditional Navaho does not allow reproduction of sand paintings, since he believes the supernatural powers that taught him the craft have forbidden this. However, such reproductions can in fact be purchased today in tourist shops in Arizona and New Mexico. These are done by either the Navaho Indians or by other people who wish to preserve the craft.

        Men are spending more and more time in the kitchen encouraged by celebrity chefs like Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver, according to a report from Oxford University. The effect of the celebrity role models, who have given cookery a more manly image, has combined with a more general drive towards sexual equality, to mean men now spend more than twice the amount of time preparing meals than they did in 1961.
        According to research by Prof. Jonathan Gershuny, who runs the Centre for Time Research at Oxford, men now spend more than half an hour a day cooking, up from just 12 minutes a day in 1961.
        Prof. Gershuny said: “The man in the kitchen is part of a much wider social trend. There has been 40 years of gender equality, but there is another 40 years probably to come.”
        Women, who a generation ago spent a fraction under two hours a day cooking, now spend just one hour and seven minutes - a dramatic fall, but they still spend far more time at the stove than men. Some critics say men have been inspired to pick up a spatula by the success of Ramsay, Oliver as well as other male celebrity chefs such as Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Marco Pierre White and Keith Floyd.
        The report, commissioned by frozen food company Birds Eye, also makes clear that the family meal is limping on in far better health than some have suggested, thanks in part to a resurgence in cooking by some consumers. Two-thirds of adults claim that they come together to share at least three times a week, even if it is not necessarily around a kitchen or dining room table.
        Anne Murphy, general manager at Birds Eye, said: “The evening meal is still clearly central to family life and with some saying family time is on the increase and the appearance of a more frugal consumer, we think the return to tradition will continue as a trend.”
        However, Prof. Gershuny pointed out that the family meal was now rarely eaten by all of its members around a table - with many “family meals” in fact taken on the sofa in the sitting room, and shared by completely different members of the family.
        “The family meal has changed very substantially, and few of us eat - as I did when I was a child - at least two meals a day together as a family. But it has survived in a different format.”

Reading comprehension.

     Life used to be simpler than today. People picked the careers their parents expected them to or went to whatever job was available. Once employed, most people stuck to their careers; in fact, few people had the luxury of considering a change. They patiently waited for a few moves up the corporate ladder, supported their families, and collected a gold watch upon retirement. Many people still follow this career course. But for millions of others, life is more complex.
     Many people decide that they may be in the wrong career - that they would be better satisfied or more creative in a different one. When people become euphoric at 4 p.m. on Friday and depressed because it’s Sunday evening and they have to go to work tomorrow, it says something about their feelings about their job. To help these people, there are professional career counselors who charge fees that can range from $100 to several thousand dollars. The career counseling field, because of the demand for the service, has attracted some excellent professionals but has drawn others who have dubious credentials.
     People in their 40s become conscious that all of their young dreams are not going to come true. Career counselors seem to be seeing an increasing number of clients in that age that are troubled by what is called “mid-life crisis”. Some want to confirm that they are in the right field; others believe that a career shift will solve their problems. For any person to try a new career at 30 or 40 is a difficult task. It takes a lot of courage to look at yourself, your career, dreams, and goals and decide to make a shift. It is a lot easier to stay put and do the best you can.
     Some counseling professionals think that career counseling is not a magical process where perfect solutions to problems are hatched at every session. Instead they ask clients to remember that career counseling is a guiding process that asks the clients to look at their lives and goals, then to find out how their particular skill strengths fit into accomplishing their goals.
     Most qualified professional career counselors use discussions, tests, surveys, life inventories, and other assessment tools to get people to look at themselves and to indicate strengths and weaknesses. Then comes the process of offering interpretations of results, a guiding hand, and support to clients. If individuals prefer not to have management know that they are questioning present career situations, then a reputable outside professional career counselor may be a good idea.

Reading Comprehension: In the passage, there are five questions with four choices marked A, B, C and D. Choose the best answer and then blacken the corresponding letter on your Answer Sheet.

        How many languages do you speak? One, maybe, two, you say? Wrong! If you speak English, you use words from at least 3 5 foreign languages. Surprised?
        You shouldn't be. Tim Morris is an English professor at the University of Texas, Arlinton. He says that when we speak English, we are using bits and pieces of many languages. Scholars estimate that one-third of the world's languages are of Indo-European origin. These include English, French, Latin, German, Dutch, Celtic, and Slavic tongues. Back around AD 450, when Julius Caesar was alive, English as we know didn't exist. English is relatively young. Its roots go back 1,500 years to Britain. People there spoke Celtic. Then came Anglo-Saxon invaders. "These conquerors spoke languages closely related to older forms of Dutch.” Morris says. Dutch words like “woord”, “gas” and “man”, became the English equivalents “word”, “grass” and “man”. Anglo-Saxon “Anglish” became “English”.
        But our story doesn't end there. English continued to grow and change. When Norman French invaded Britain in 1066, the English vocabulary got an enormous boost. Scholars say that nearly half of all English words are French in their origin. Words like art, orange, taxi, tree and surprise are a few examples. When English colonists came to America in the 1700s, they encountered native Americans and their languages. Words like wigwam, teepee, chipmunk, possum, and tomahawk settled into the colonists' vocabulary.
        Centuries later, in the early 1900s, immigrants streamed to America's shores. Italians taught us to say broccoli, macaroni, opera, and studio. Spanish speakers added mosquito, mustang, tortilloa, and alligator. Bagel, kosher, and pastrami came from those who spoke Yiddish. And yam, gorilla, and jitterbug were taken from African languages.
        It's impossible to say exactly how big the English language is. Even counting all the words in a dictionary won't give you an accurate figure. But you may be interested to know that college-size editions like Merriam-Webster's 10th Collegiate contain about 90,000 “headwords”. Headwords are main entries in bold print. Under a headword are plurals and various forms of that word, along with definitions. In a large dictionary, like the Oxford English Dictionary, are more than 250,000 headwords. Some say the true number of English words is twice of that. That's a lot of words! But even a highly educated person uses only about 10% of them.

Reading Comprehension: In the passage, there are five questions with four choices marked A, B, C and D. Choose the best answer and then blacken the corresponding letter on your Answer Sheet.

        It is said that in England death is pressing, in Canada inevitable and in California optional. Small wonder. American's life expectancy has nearly doubled over the past century. Failing hips can be replaced, clinical depression controlled, cataracts (白内障) removed in a 30-minute surgical procedure. Such advances offer the aging population a quality of life that was unimaginable when I entered medicine 50 years ago. But not even a great health-care system can cure death and our failure to confront that reality now threatens this greatness of ours.
        Death is normal; we are genetically programmed to disintegrate and perish, even under ideal conditions. We all understand that at some level, yet as medical consumers we treat death as a problem to be solved. Shielded by third-party payers from the cost of our care, we demand everything that can possibly be done for us, even if it's useless. The most obvious example is late-stage cancer care. Physicians - frustrated by their inability to cure the disease and fearing loss of hope in the patient - too often offer aggressive treatment far beyond what is scientifically justified.
        In 1950, the U.S. spent $12.7 billion on health care. In 2002, the cost will be $1,540 billion. Anyone can see this trend is unsustainable. Yet few seem willing to try to reverse it. Some scholars conclude that a government with finite resources should simply stop paying for medical care that sustains life beyond a certain age-say 83 or so. Former Colorado governor Richard Lamm has been quoted as saying that the old and infirm “have a duty to die and get out of the way” so that younger, healthier people can realize their potential.
        I would not go that far. Energetic people now routinely work through their 60s and beyond, and remain dazzlingly productive. At 78, Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone jokingly claims to be 53. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is in her 70s, and former surgeon general C. Everett Koop chairs an Internet start-up in his 80s. These leaders are living proof that prevention works and that we can manage the health problems that come naturally with age. As a mere 68-year-old, I wish to age as productively as they have.
        Yet there are limits to what a society can spend in this pursuit. Ask a physician, I know the most costly and dramatic measures may be ineffective and painful. I also know that people in Japan and Sweden, countries that spend far less on medical care, have achieved longer, healthier lives than we have. As a nation, we may be overfunding the quest for unlikely cures while underfunding research on humbler therapies that could improve people's lives.

Reading Comprehension.

        How we look and how we appear to others probably worry us more when we are in our teens or early twenties than at any other time in our life. Few of us are content to accept ourselves as we are, and few are brave enough to ignore the trends of fashion. 

        Most fashion magazines or TV advertisements try to persuade us that we should dress in a certain way or behave in a certain manner. If we do, they tell us, we will be able to meet new people with confidence and deal with every situation confidently and without embarrassment. Changing fashion, of course, does not apply just to dress. A barber does not cut a boy’s hair in the same way as he used to, and girls do not make up in the same way as their mothers and grandmothers did. The advertisers show us the latest fashionable styles and we are constantly under pressure to follow the fashion in case our friends think we are odd or dull.
        What causes fashions to change? Sometimes convenience or practical necessity or just the fancy of an influential person can establish a fashion. Take hats, for example. In cold climate, early buildings were cold inside, so people wore hats indoors as well as outside. In recent times, the late President Kennedy caused a depression in American hat industry by not wearing hats: more American men followed his example.
        There is also a cyclical pattern in fashion. In the 1920s in Europe and America, short skirts became fashionable. After World War II, they dropped to ankle length. Then they got shorter and shorter until the miniskirt was in fashion. After a few more years, skirts became longer again.
        Today, society is much freer and easier than it used to be. It is no longer necessary to dress like everyone else. Within reason, you can dress as you like or do your hair the way you like instead of the way you should because it is the fashion. The popularity of jeans and the “untidy” look seems to be a reaction against the increasingly expensive fashions of the top fashion houses.
        At the same time, appearance is still important in certain circumstances and then we must choose our clothes carefully. It would be foolish to go to an interview for a job in a law firm wearing jeans and a sweater; and it would be discourteous to visit some distinguished scholar looking as if we were going to the beach or a night club. However, you need never feel depressed if you don’t look like the latest fashion photo. Look around you and you’ll see that no one else does either!

Reading Comprehension: In the passage, there are five questions with four choices marked A, B, C and D. Choose the best answer and then blacken the corresponding letter on your Answer Sheet.

        What will people use the Internet for? Shopping and banking will be big growth areas. Henley predicts that, from under 1% of all purchases today, it will account for 6.4% of purchases within four years, amounting to 42 billion. Sales have already started with dry goods such as books and CDs and, as people learn to trust it, will move on to regular purchases such as food. Iceland, the supermarket chain, began computer shopping trials two weeks ago and has already signed up at least 15,000 customers, ranging from busy executives to the housebound. When it links up with digital television, Iceland expects to double that immediately.
        Yet internet-linked televisions and phones may be only the start. One potential breakthrough is Bluetooth named after a 10th century Danish king famed for his rotten front tooth and uniting warring factions in Denmark and Norway.
        The modern Bluetooth allows an unlikely array of machines to talk to each other, so that a phone tucked away in a briefcase can remember to send out a signal that turns on a video machine 50 miles away, switches on the heating or starts the cooker. Cars, offices and kitchens will all speak to each other. In Finland, the idea of phones communicating with computerized tills so that you press a button and pay for your supermarket goods or drink from a vending machine is being tested.Said one enthusiast:“Your phone will be your remote control for life.”
        As with all revolutions, there are reservations. Health concerns about mobile phones are unresolved, with microwave radiation linked to increased tiredness and headaches in one recent study in Sweden.
        Some argue that more sophisticated entertainment at home will deepen antisocial “cocooning” trends, that internet grocery deliveries will kill off the last comer shops, and that a “couch potato” generation of children will grow even more over-fat.
        The most significant impact, however, will be in the way we work. Adrian Hosford, director of millennial projects at BT, predicts it will encourage more people to work at home. “People have talked about telecommuting for years, but at last it makes economic sense. Many offices will turn into touchdown centers, where people will only occasionally call in. This is already the case for one in five at BT,” he said.

Reading Comprehension: In the passage, there are five questions with four choices marked A, B, C and D. Choose the best answer and then blacken the corresponding letter on your Answer Sheet.

        Social anxiety is the single most common psychological problem, according to the 1986 results of the Stanford shyness inventory, a survey conducted by Philip G.Zimbardo, a professor of social psychology at Stanford University in California. At a party with strangers, for instance, three-quarters of adults feel anxious. “The best estimate is that 40 percent of all Americans suffer from shyness,” says Zimbardo.
        How can you avoid being nervous when you meet people? Prepare. Preparation for any communication situation is a must. You've been invited to a big dinner party in two weeks. You know that one of the other guests is a politician. Scan the newspapers and magazines; listen to newscasts for topics of conversation in political areas. Then at the party, pretend you're an interviewer on talk show. Think of questions to ask what can't be answered yes or no. “In your opinion, who...”“What do you think of...” Keep the momentum going.
        Whether you're delivering a speech, approaching your boss for a raise or an important social occasion, do your homework. The most polished, smoothly delivered, spontaneous-sounding talks are the result of many hours of work. The memorable one-liners and moving phrases that go down in history don't come from last-minute bursts of inspiration.
        If you're making a presentation of any sort, begin preparing as far ahead of time as possible. “Good writing,” says Harvard University historian Richard Marius, “is a kind of wrestling with thought.” Begin the wrestling match early. Two days before your presentation is usually too late to go into the ring and come up with a winning idea.
        “To communicate,” says New York Times columnist William Safire, “put your thoughts in order, give them a purpose; use them to persuade, to instruct, to discover, to seduce.”
        Prepare yourself as well as your material, giving special attention to your voice. A shrill, nasal tone strikes your listeners like chalk screeching on a blackboard. By putting energy and resonance into your voice, you will have a positive effect. If your voice is timid or quivers with nervousness, you sense it, the audience hears it, and you see discomfort in their eyes. With energy and enthusiasm in your voice the listeners say ahhh, tell me more. You read approval.
        Like your voice, your appearance is a communication tool. For example, if you are animated, you are most likely to see animated listeners. You give the audience the message: I'm glad I'm here; I'm glad you're here.
        Your approach can, in fact, be a powerful weapon for deflecting hostility-from an audience, an interviewer, an employer. A benevolent aspect says I understand and conveys good will and positive expectations. It works.

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

     Where do you go when you want to know the latest business news, follow commodity prices, keep up with political gossip, find out what others think of a new book, or stay abreast of the latest scientific and technological developments? Today, the answer is obvious: you log on to the Internet Three centuries ago, the answer was just as easy: you went to coffee-house. There, for the price of a cup of coffee, you could read the latest pamphlets catch up on news and gossip, attend scientific lectures, strike business deals, or chat with like-minded people about literature or politics.
     The coffee-houses that sprang up across Europe, starting around 1650, functioned as information exchanges for writers, politicians, businessmen and scientists. Like today's websites, weblogs and discussion boards, coffee-houses were lively and often unreliable sources of information that typically specialized in a particular topic or political viewpoint. They were outlets for a stream of newsletters, pamphlets, and advertising free-sheets. Depending on the interests of their customers, some coffee-houses displayed commodity prices, share prices and shipping lists, whereas others provided foreign newsletters filled with coffee-house gossip from abroad.
     Rumors, news and gossip were also carried between coffee-houses by their patrons, and sometimes runners would flit from one coffee-house to another within a particular city to report major events such as the outbreak of a war or the death of a head of state, Coffee-houses were centers of scientific education, literary and philosophical speculation, commercial innovation and, sometimes, political fermentation. Collectively, Europe's interconnected web of coffee-houses formed the internet of the Enlightenment era. 
     The contrast between coffee and alcoholic drinks was reflected in the decor of the coffee-houses that began to appear in European cities, London in particular. They were adorned with bookshelves, mirrors, gilt-framed pictures and good furniture, in contrast to the noisiness, gloom and squalor of taverns. According to custom, social differences were left at the coffee-house door, and anyone who started a quarrel had to atone for it by buying an order of coffee for all present. In short, coffee-houses were calm, sober and well-ordered establishments that promoted polite conversation and discussion.
     With a new rationalism abroad in the spheres of both philosophy and commerce, coffee was the ideal drink. Its popularity owed much to the growing middle class of information workers——clerks, merchants and businessmen——who did mental work in offices rather than performing physical labor in the open, and found that coffee sharpened their menial faculties. Such men were not rich enough to entertain lavishly at home, but could afford to spend a few pence a day on coffee. Coffee-houses provided a forum for education, debate and self-improvement. They were nicknamed "penny universities" in a contemporary English verse which observed: "So great a Universitie, I think there ne'er was any; In which you may a Scholar be, for spending of a Penny. "

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

     “Young people ought not to be idle. It is very bad for therm,"  said Margaret Thatcher in 1984. She was right: there are few worse things that society can do to its young than to leave them in limbo. Those who start their careers on the dole are more likely to have lower wages and more spells of joblessness later in life, because they lose out on the chance lo acquire skills and self-confidence in their formative years.
     Yet more young people are idle than ever. OECD (the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) figures suggest that 26m 15- to 24-year-olds in developed countries are not in employment, education or training; the number of young people without a job has risen by 30% since 2007. The International Labour Organization reports that 75m young people globally are looking for a job. The World Bank surveys suggest that 262m young people in emerging markets are economically inactive. Depending on how you measure them, the number of young people without a job is nearly as large as  the population of America (311m).
     Two factors play a big part. First, the long slowdown in the West has reduced demand for labour, and it is easier to put off hiring young people than it is to fire older workers. Second, in emerging economies population growth is fastest in countries with dysfunctional labour markets, such as India and Egypt.
     The result is an "arc of unemployment",  from southern Europe through North Africa and the Middle East to South Asia, where the rich worlds recession meets the poor world's youth quake. The anger of the young jobless has already burst onto the streets in the Middle East. Violent crime, generally in decline in the rich world, is rising in Spain, Italy and Portugal—countries with startlingly high youth unemployment.
     The most obvious way to tackle this problem is to reignite growth, That is easier said than done in a world plagued by debt, and is anyway only a partial answer. The countries where the problem is worst (such as Spain and Egypt) suffered fro in high youth unemployment even when their economies were growing. Throughout the recession companies have continued to complain that they cannot find young people with the right skills. This underlines the importance of two other solutions: reforming labour markets and improving education. These are familiar prescriptions, but ones that need to be delivered with both a new vigor and a new twist.

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

     Tight-lipped elders used to say, “It’s not what you want in this world but what you get that matters." Psychology teaches that you do get what you want if you know what you want and want the right things.
     You can make a mental blueprint of a desire as you would make a blueprint of a house, and each of us is continually making these blueprints in the general routine of everyday living. If we intend to have friends to dinner, we plan the menu, make a shopping list and decide which food to cook first, and such planning is essential for any type of meal to be served.
     Likewise, if you want to find a job, take a sheet of paper, and write a brief account of yourself. In making a blueprint for a job, begin with yourself, for when you know exactly what you have to offer, you can intelligently plan where to sell your services.
     This account of yourself is actually a sketch of your working life and should include education, experience and references. Such an account is valuable. It can be referred to in filling out standard application blanks and is extremely helpful in personal interviews. While talking to you, your could-be employer is deciding whether your education, your experience, and other qualifications will pay him to employ you and your "wares" and abilities must be displayed in an orderly and reasonably connected manner.
     When you have carefully prepared a blueprint of your abilities and desires, you have something tangible to sell. Then you are ready to hunt for a job. Get all the possible information about your could-be job. Make inquiries as to the details regarding the job and the firm. Keep your eyes and ears open, and use your own judgment. Spend a certain amount of time each day seeking the employment you wish for, and keep in mind: Securing a job is your job now.