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

     Peninsula City News reported on May 30 that the recent drama Les Interpretes (The Interpreters) starring Huang Xuan and Yang Mi ushered in the opener ratings,with the view figures of major media ranking first.
     The play is adapted from the popular Internet novel The Interpreters，which is the so-called “IP drama”.Currently,the drama has presented the reputation of polarization，with the thumbs-up from many people as well as some teasing from other viewers，especially from the fans of the original novel，since the adapted screenplay has a lot of dissatisfaction. At the Huairou Professional Writers Forums held in Beijing not long ago,screenwriter Wang Hailin solemnly said，“Do not change IP,”which spoke out the voices of many writes.
     Les Interpretes tells the story that Cioffi，a master of the French Language Department，grows into a senior interpreter under the guidance of the translation genius Cheng Jiayang.The two become intimate lovers as the story unfolds.
     The original novel enjoys high popularity among the online readers.The audience ratings have risen across the board since it was broadcast on May 24，causing a hot discussion and uneven comments among the audience.

     As an excellent actor of the new generation，Huang Xuan continues to catch people’s eyes.Yang Mi’s performance in the play also wins some praise for her enhanced acting skills.The theme of professional translators，which rarely appeared in the TV market，has received many good comments from some audience.However,more and more critics are also heard at the same time.It is said that the play is “the first drama which devotedly depicts the translation industry”, trying to show the audience the “ precise principle, cruel elimination system and training methods”in translation circles.However，many people have complained that it is not that rigorous in production and the plot set-up.

     Some netizens said that the plot seemed to be a love story under the banner of translation and
workplace.Huang Xuan acts more like an indifferent and offensive CEO instead of a translation
genius.Yang Mi，known as a straight A student，seems more like a silly and woolly-minded girl.
     Now more and more production companies have chosen to make a combination of popular IP and popular actors.However,the masterworks such as “Legend of Zhen Huan”and “Nirvana in Fire”are extremely rare.The majority of IP dramas end up with dissatisfaction and teasing from people.It is not a bad thing to depict the story in the manner of TV drama or movie ，but the unsuccessful IP dramas have overflown the market so that a lot of people have begun to worry that the original might have been destroyed before the shooting begins.
     Professional writers appeal against the adaptation of IP.
     At the forums held in Beijing not long ago，Wang Hailin，whose works include “Legend of Chu and Han” and “Medicine Man Xi Laile”，said solemnly,“Do not change the IP anymore.”
     Wang Hailin believes that IP cannot revitalize the soap opera market if the investors only focus on the popularity rather than devote themselves to the recreation of the plots.He called on writers to adhere to the original instead of imitating IP dramas of inferior quality.However,the reverse of the market environment is a long-term project.

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 America’s air becomes steadily more contaminated，activities across the nation to cope with smog appear to be lagging further and further behind actual needs despite a rising public clamor for improvement.
     There has been considerable progress in the last couple of years.But the over-all picture is that so many localities haven’t really come to grips with the air pollution problem that people might be dismayed if they knew how their welfare was being trifled with.
     Air pollution sources are now hurling more than 140 million tons of contaminants into the atmosphere every year by Federal estimates.Two years ago ， it was only 130 million tons.The increase has been caused by many things—more people，more automobiles，more industry, more space heating，little if any reductions that more often than not are inadequate.
     The adverse health effects of air pollution are becoming more widely recognized，although specific medical evidence is still fragmentary.As a psychological annoyance ， often called an “ esthetic ” factor,it translates into decreased property values.In damage to crops and other plants，its cost is reckoned in millions of dollars；in damage to structures and materials，in billions.

     Federal and state pollution control officials report the following highlight of the current situation.
     States and localities generally still have penalties for air pollution that are little more than a wrist slap (with fines as low as ＄ 10).Enforcement is generally sketchy and weak.And the remedial procedures are so cumbersome that more and more they are being bypassed by simple lawsuits brought by public officials or citizens.
     Although Federal law has required auto makers to provide vehicles with fume control equipment，few states have done anything to assure its effectiveness，after a car has left the factory,by providing for regular inspection of the equipment.
     Public officials in many places still seem to consider bursts of complaints from citizens preferable to complaints they might get from instituting effective air quality programs.Industries and other polluters，such as municipalities，still exert great influence，opposing or weakening regulatory laws and “packing” regulatory boards with their own spokesmen.
     Public resentment over air pollution is growing ， as is shown by recurring incidents of picketing the increasing number of legal actions.
     The big Federal program to combat air pollution，under way for several years，is proceeding fairly close to schedule.But Federal auto-fume regulations will not be very productive for nearly a decade—until around 100 million unregulated，older-generation cars have been replaced on the highways.
     The part of the Federal effort that deals with stationary pollution sources，like factories，is still largely in an organizational phase，yielding little immediate reduction in fumes.

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

     Q. There's a lot of talk about putting up manned orbital stations. What does this mean, concretely?
     A. It is very important to have scientific stations in space, A space telescope with a mirror slightly over six and a half feet in diameter will be placed in orbit, and there will be more and more of these. A few years ago, our group at Saclay, in collaboration with a number of other European Laboratories, orbited a telescope that revolutionized our knowledge of gamma-ray emissions by celestial objects. 

     Life aboard manned space stations won' t be as exciting as we might suppose. It will probably be comparable to the life people lead aboard deep-sea oil rigs.
     Q. What scientific interest will these stations offer?
     A. Observation is much more precise beyond the atmosphere, because the sky is darker. You see many more stars and objects that are concealed by the earth's luminescence.
     Q. What objects?
     A. We know pretty well how stars are born because we can observe them. Two or three new stars appear in our galaxy every year. But nearly all the galaxies were born at the same time, when the universe was constituted 15 billion (light) years ago. No new ones are thought to exist .

     To observe the birth of a galaxy that happened so long ago, you have to see a very long way. At present we can go back 10 to 12 billion years. We have to go a bit farther back still, and maybe catch them in the act of birth. Distant objects are necessarily very dim, so ideal condition are needed to observe them. Orbital stations provide such conditions.
     Q. Would orbital stations be choice places from which to try to communicate with extraterrestrial intelligences?
     A. Not particularly through radio communication, except on certain wave lengths that are absorbed by the atmosphere. But as points of departure for exploration they'll be very useful
     Q. How far would such exploration go?
     A. In 1989 the satellite Voyager II will reach Neptune after a journey of three and a half years. In addition, five probes were sent ta rendezvous with Halley's comet. So exploration of the solar system is more or less under way. We've put people on the moon, sent probes to Mars and Venus, lofted satellites near the sun (within a few tens of millions of miles), and one satellite even left the solar system a few years ago.
     But visiting the stars is something else again, Light takes four years to reach the nearest stars, so you can see that it would take a satellite hundreds of thousands of years .

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

     They earn and spend, buy and sell, work and play. It's a mass of individuals, struggling to satisfy often-conflicting goals, who set the pace for the American system. 

     Whether the nation's huge business machine sputters or steams ahead depends on millions of individual consumers, the real “bosses” of the American economy.
     People’s decisions on where to live and work，what to buy or pass over, how much to save are at the heart of the free market system. Business and government take their cues from consumers, changing plans to meet their wants and needs.
     Everyday, the nation's 218 million consumers spend more than 3 billion dollars. Their purchases account for almost two-thirds of all the money spent each year, with government and business responsible for the rest. The trouble is that while people's needs are almost endless, their incomes aren’t.
     Where money goes? About 70 percent of the average household's spending goes for necessities such as housing, food, clothes and health care. To be able to afford these items and still have money left for nonessentials such as travel and entertainment, most families find themselves economizing and watching their pennies. The same problem of matching limited resources with seemingly endless demands confronts businesses and public agencies.
     That is what the economy is all about—making choices on how to use limited resources of money, manpower, machinery and materials, whether it involves a shopper deciding what to buy in the supermarket or a manufacturer deciding what line of goods to produce.
     Choices made in the economy involve a continuous tug-of-war between consumers and producers over price. 

     If many businesses are offering a product and there is plenty of it to satisfy the needs of all consumers, a producer will be forced to sell at a price not far above costs in order to keep from being stuck with a lot of unmarketable supplies. This is why ,for example, prices fresh fruit and vegetables drop during the summer months when such produce is in great number.
     There is a natural ceiling on price, but it differs from one buyer to the next, depending on how much each can afford to pay and how badly he wants to buy. If a company prices its goods or services too high, some consumers will decide they're getting too little value for the money and will put off buying. "It’s not worth that much’’ is the view heard in such situation. 

     But if a respected brand of clothing or appliance is marked down during a sale, the reaction may be just the opposite: a rush of purchases. Why? "It’s a good buy for the money.” 

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

     Barry Glassner is president of Lewis & Clark College in Oregon, where he also teaches sociology. Morton Schapiro is president of Northwestern University in Illinois, where he also teaches economics. Here's what they told The Washington Post. 
     When the presidents of colleges and universities talk privately at this time of year, a popular topic is how to handle the "helicopter parents" We muse over what to say during new-student orientation sessions to dissuade parents from hovering over their children for the next four years——interfering with the maturation their children need, while driving us a bit crazy in the process. 

     The usual plan of attack is to lecture parents on the importance of letting go. "Help your children unpack," parents are told. "Kiss them goodbye, and ask them to text you a couple of times per week."
     Having found that approach both unrealistic and ineffective, the two of us have come to take quite a different tack. We encourage the parents of freshmen to stay closely connected with their children. We know that some parents make inappropriate demands on professors, student-services staff and college officials while failing to disconnect from their children sufficiently to allow them to grow up. But we also understand that total disengagement is not the solution.
     One way to counteract excessive parental involvement is constructive engagement, a way for parents to stay meaningfully involved with their children during this new phase in their growth. We speak plainly about the areas where many parents today have a difficult time shifting gears. We counsel that most of the interventions they made on their children's behalf when they were younger should now be responsibilities of the child. And we make known that, when parents call us and say their son or daughter would kill them if he or she knew they were calling the president, our first thought is that the child may have a good point.
     College is a time when parents can grant their children the precious opportunity to take responsibility as they develop into independent young men and women, fully prepared to be productive and engaged citizens. To the parents of children who don't like their roommates, teachers, academic advisers or grades, we urge empathy and calm. The social and survival skills young people develop in these situations will serve them well later in life.
     So parents can help by gently pushing their children to embrace complexity and diversity and to stretch the limits of their comfort zones. Some of the most important learning we provide is uncomfortable learning—where students take classes in subjects they find intimidating, and live, study and play with classmates from backgrounds very different from their own. 

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

     For most architects, moss (苔藓)and lichen (地衣) growing up die side of a structure is a bad sign. Building materials are designed specifically to resist growth, and much research has been done to develop paint treatments and biocides that make sure the concrete and wood and bricks that sheathe a building aren' t colonized by living things. But a new group is trying to change all that. Instead of developing surfaces resistant to moss and lichen, the BiotA lab wants lo build facades that are "bioreceptive".
     BiotA lab, based in University College London's Bartlett School of Architecture, was founded last year. The lab’s architects and engineers are working on making materials that can foster the growth of organisms like lichens and mosses. The idea is that ultimately they'll be able to build buildings onto which a variety of these plants can grow. Right now they' re particularly focused on designing a type of bioreceptive concrete.
     Marcos Cruz, one of the directors of the BiotA lab, says that he has long been interested in what he sees as a conflicted way of thinking about buildings and beauty: "We admire mosses growing on old buildings, we identify them with our romantic past, but we don't like them on contemporary buildings," he says. Cruz says that he wants the BiotA project to push back against the idea that cleanliness is the ideal that buildings should strive for, "Architects were wearing a straightjacket, that only in the last 20 years architects started shredding off." 
     Richard Beckett, another director of the BiotA lab, says that he' s interested in the project flipping the usual way that buildings are designed, at least in a small way, "Traditionally architecture is a top-down process, you decide what the building will look like, and then you build it. Here we're designing for a specific species or group of species, the material and geometry we're using is so specific that it only allows certain species to grow." It's controlled chaos.
Both Cruz and Beckett talked about a particular way of thinking about their buildings. "Every architect you speak to talks about the skin of the building." says Beckett. But they want to propose a different way of seeing things. Instead of skin, the lab wants people to think of the exterior of a building as bark. "Not just a protective thing, a host; it allows other things to grow on it, it integrates as well," says Beckett,
     But these living systems can be expensive and hard to maintain. Sometimes all the plants die, and have to be replaced. Cruz tells a story of a plant nursery in East London that, had a green wall. "When I saw it for the first time, I thought it was wonderful!” he says. But six months later when he passed the nursery again, he noticed that the plants were all dead and falling off the wall." A year later much to my surprise, they were putting up steel panels with photographs of a forest on them," he says, laughing. 

Reading Comprehension.
Directions: Read the following passage. Choose the best answer from the four choices marked A, B, C and D for each question and then blacken the corresponding letter on your Answer Sheet.

     Years ago, when I started looking for my first job, wise advisers urged, “Barbara, be enthusiastic! Enthusiasm will take you further than any amount of experience."
     How right they were. Enthusiastic people can turn a boring drive into an adventure, extra work into opportunity and strangers into friends. 
     "Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. ’’ wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. It is the paste that helps you hang in there when the going gets tough. It is the inner voice that whispers. “I can do it! ” when others shout, “No, you can't. ”
     It took years and years for the early work of Barbara McClintock, a geneticist who won the 1983 Nobel Prize in medicine, to be generally accepted. Yet she didn't let up on her 

experiments. Work was such a deep pleasure for her that she never thought of stopping.
     We are all born with wide-eyed, enthusiastic wonder as anyone knows who has ever seen an infant's delight at the jingle of keys or the scurrying of a beetle.
     It is this childlike wonder that gives enthusiastic people such a youthful air, whatever their age.
     At 90, cellist Pablo Casals would start his day by playing Bach. As the music flowed through his fingers, his stooped shoulders would straighten and joy would reappear in his eyes. Music. for Casals, was an elixir that made life a never ending adventure. As author and poet Samuel Ullman once wrote. "Years wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul."
     How do you rediscover the enthusiasm of your childhood? The answer, I believe, lies in the word itself. “ Enthusiasm ’’ comes from Greek and means "God within". And what is God within is but an abiding sense of love-proper love of self (self-acceptance) and, from that, love of others.
     Enthusiastic people also love what they do, regardless of money or title or power. If we cannot do what we love as a full-time career, we can as a part-time avocation, like the head of state who paints, the nun who runs marathons, the executive who handcrafts furniture.
     Elizabeth Layton of Wellsville, Kan, was 68 before she began to draw. This activity ended bouts of depression that had plagued her for at least 30 years, and the quality of her work led one critic to say, "I am tempted to call Layton a genius." Elizabeth has rediscovered her enthusiasm.
     We can' t afford to waste tears on "might-have-beens". We need to turn the tears into sweat as we go after “what-can-be." 
     We need to live each moment wholeheartedly, with all our senses一 finding pleasure in the fragrance of a back-yard garden, the crayoned picture of a six-year-old, the enchanting beauty of a rainbow. It is such enthusiastic love of life that puts a sparkle in our eyes, a lilt in our steps and smooths the wrinkles from our souls. 

Reading Comprehension. 
Passage One
    True, going to college for four years can be an enriching, eye-opening experience. True, a bachelor’s degree is still an asset if you’re trying to make it in America. It’s also a must for many crème de la crème careers.
    But not all kids are cut out for college, despite the expectations of their parents or teachers. And, especially in the brave new world of the 21st century, not all kids need to go to college right after high school——or ever——to succeed, says J. Michael Farr, author of America’s Top Jobs for People Without a Four-Year Degree. “The mythology here is that everybody has to go to college to do well. Not true,” says Farr. “This generation is a little bit better off than ours. But there are so many more options. It’s more complex now.”
    A boom economy coupled with dramatic changes in technology has created entirely new jobs and expanded opportunities in age-old professions. Many of these occupations——from computer programmers and Web page designers to chefs and police officers——don’t require a bachelor’s degree. Neither do many good jobs in the arts, crafts, skilled trades, construction, service industry, science, and health fields. Such jobs include: aircraft mechanic, cardiovascular technologist, electronic technician, law clerk, registered nurse, sales rep, secretary, travel agent ... the list goes on.
    Jenna Norvell, 21, is now full of career ideas thanks to a ten-month cosmetology program she attended this year [2000] at the Aveda Institute in Minneapolis. She paid $9,865 for tuition and about $6,000 more in expenses, including rent for a one-bedroom apartment she shared with another student. Although Norvell got lots of career leads from salon recruiters at a career fair hosted by the institute, she didn’t meet any from California——where she wants to live. So she plans to find a job out West on her own, perhaps in television or maybe doing makeup for fashion shows, or selling cosmetics, or managing a salon. “You’d be surprised how many occupations there are in this field,” says Norvell.
    “High school students often don’t understand there are so many options available to them,” says Farr. “That’s a shame. People who are interested in various things really can earn a decent living even if they don’t want to go to college.”
    It’s still true that people with more educations, on average, earn more money. But 28 percent of workers without a four-year degree earn more than the average worker with a bachelor’s degree, according to Harlow G. Unger, author of But What if I Don’t Want to Go to College? - a guide to educational alternatives to college. And more and more computer-savvy young people are skipping college to join the high-tech revolution as computer network engineers, Internet entrepreneurs, and game designers.

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

     I'm the Customer. I have lots of money and I'm going to spend it. Take care of me and I'll take care of you. I'll encourage my friends to come to see you. I'll come back when I need more of what you sell. All you've got to do is to satisfy me.
     Not long ago, I needed new business telephone lines and numbers. I called and was greeted by one of the friendliest voices. I'd ever heard. Immediately, I felt comfortable. The person thanked me and put me completely at ease. Her greeting was most effective. Yours can be, too. All you have to do is to be aware of the importance of greeting people and then learn some simple techniques:
     Thank customers for coming in, contacting you, or seeing you. This is not what a new receptionist did the last time I went into the dental office. I walked in and stood at the counter for at least a minute. She knew I was there, but she didn't acknowledge me. Finally she looked up, showed no reaction -no smile, no warmth -and said, "Sign in!" Her inattentiveness left me feeling less than thrilled about being there.
     Tune the world out then in. Another technique is to tune the world out and customers in. How often do you talk to yourself when you should be focusing on your customers? It's easy to do this and it can be damaging to customer relations. 

     Good customer service isn't just painting a smile on your face and performing certain actions. People quickly see through thinly veiled attempts at niceness.
     Most people who work with people don' t really know what business they're in. Most think they're in business to deliver products or services. They don't know they're in business to give benefits to people.
     Many in retailing, telemarketing, medical offices, or other places where people spend money, don't know how to identify the real needs customers have. How do you go about identifying people's needs? First, understand people's needs aren't for the product or service, but for what that will do for them. Customers don't buy cars to have a vehicle to drive. They do it so they can keep up with the Joneses, get good gas mileage, or save money.
     A most important part of your contact with customers will be to find out what their needs are - the payoff they want from what you sell. Ask open-ended questions. These call explanations because they contain the words who, what, where, why, when and how. Not only will these questions help you understand a person's needs, you will also strengthen rapport by showing concern and listening.

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

     People have all kinds of obsessions - silly, serious, and everything in between. The sheer diversity of these fascinations, from playing bridge (my personal obsession) to scanning the skies for new planets, is one of the most beautiful things about humanity. And yet one person's obsession doesn’t necessarily make for interesting reading for those of us who have never been bitten by that same bug. 

     Mark Miodownik's personal and professional obsession, as he explains in his book Stuff Matters, is basic materials we often lake for granted such as paper, glass, concrete, and steel-as well as new super-materials that will change our world in the decades ahead. I’m pleased to report that he is a witty, smart writer who has a great talent for imparting his love of this subject. As a result. Stuff Matters is a fun, accessible read. 

     My favorite writer, the historian Vaclav Smil, also wrote a wonderful book on materials, but it’s completely different from Miodownik's. Smil is a facts-and-numbers guy; he doesn't bring any romance to his topic. Miodownik is the polar opposite. He's heavy on romance and very light on numbers. 

     Miodownik, an Oxford-trained materials scientist who has worked in some of the most advanced labs in the world, discovered his obsession with materials in a bizarre way. When he was in high school in the 1980s, he was the victim of a random attack on a London Tube train. In his telling, instead of freaking out about the five-inch slash wound in his back, he fixated on the elegance of the attacker's steel razor blade. "This tiny piece of steel, not much bigger than a postage stamp, had cut through five layers of my clothes, and then though the epidermis and dermis of my skin in one slash without any problem at all," he writes. "It was the birth of my obsession with materials.”
     Most of us have the luxury of not thinking much about steel - and not being attacked with a razor. But as Miodownik makes clear, steel is pretty magical. Its greatest virtue is that it doesn't crack or break under tension, unlike iron, from which it is forged. Steel has been made by skilled blacksmiths dating back to ancient Roman times, but once inventors created a process for producing steel cheaply at industrial scale in the mid-19th century, it became central to our lives - from our utensils to our transport to our built environment.
     Our next century is likely to produce even bigger material innovations. I live close to the longest floating bridge in the world, which, like so many big modem structures, is made from steel-reinforced concrete. That bridge has served Seattle well for more than a half century, but now it's near the end of its lifespan. (From my yard I can see the construction crews working on the bridge that will replace it.) According to Miodownik. future bridges may be built with a . “self-healing concrete'' that could save billions of dollars in repair and replacement costs.
     Self-healing concrete is a great study in material innovation. In highly sulfurous volcanic lakes that would bum human skin, scientists found incredibly resilient bacteria that can stay dormant in rock for decades. You embed these bacteria in concrete with starch for them to consume; when the concrete cracks and water starts seeping in. the bacteria revive, find the starch, begin to replicate, and excrete minerals that seal up the crack. 

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

     They earn and spend, buy and sell, work and play. It's a mass of individuals, struggling to satisfy often-conflicting goals, who set the pace for the American system. 

     Whether the nation's huge business machine sputters or steams ahead depends on millions of individual consumers, the real “bosses” of the American economy.
     People’s decisions on where to live and work，what to buy or pass over, how much to save are at the heart of the free market system. Business and government take their cues from consumers, changing plans to meet their wants and needs.
     Everyday, the nation's 218 million consumers spend more than 3 billion dollars. Their purchases account for almost two-thirds of all the money spent each year, with government and business responsible for the rest. The trouble is that while people's needs are almost endless, their incomes aren’t.
     Where money goes? About 70 percent of the average household's spending goes for necessities such as housing, food, clothes and health care. To be able to afford these items and still have money left for nonessentials such as travel and entertainment, most families find themselves economizing and watching their pennies. The same problem of matching limited resources with seemingly endless demands confronts businesses and public agencies.
     That is what the economy is all about—making choices on how to use limited resources of money, manpower, machinery and materials, whether it involves a shopper deciding what to buy in the supermarket or a manufacturer deciding what line of goods to produce.
     Choices made in the economy involve a continuous tug-of-war between consumers and producers over price. 

     If many businesses are offering a product and there is plenty of it to satisfy the needs of all consumers, a producer will be forced to sell at a price not far above costs in order to keep from being stuck with a lot of unmarketable supplies. This is why ,for example, prices fresh fruit and vegetables drop during the summer months when such produce is in great number.
     There is a natural ceiling on price, but it differs from one buyer to the next, depending on how much each can afford to pay and how badly he wants to buy. If a company prices its goods or services too high, some consumers will decide they're getting too little value for the money and will put off buying. "It’s not worth that much’’ is the view heard in such situation. 

     But if a respected brand of clothing or appliance is marked down during a sale, the reaction may be just the opposite: a rush of purchases. Why? "It’s a good buy for the money.” 

Reading Comprehension.

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

     My mother used to tell my father that he was a very good mother. This was her way of praising his attendance at every concert and game, his patience and care. In those days, “good mother” was the highest domestic achievement; to have called him a good father, given how low the bar was set, wouldn’t have done him justice. 

     But that was long, long ago. Now fathers sing to their babies in uteri, come to birthing class, coach mom through delivery (as opposed to the days of the hospital clubs, where fathers smoked and paced while mothers delivered their offspring). They can buy strap-on breasts, so they can share in the bonding. And baby toupees, for those sensitive about hairlessness. I can’t help thinking that the increased engagement of fathers has some direct connection to the increased availability of baby gadgets, since having two fanatically engaged parents offers twice the target for retailers. 

     The typical father spends about seven hours per week in “primary child care”, which doesn’t sound like a lot until you realize it’s more than twice as much as in 1965.
     Among other things, this all means fathers are now much better positioned to write parenting books like Michael Lewis’ Home Game and Sam Apple’s American Parent: My Strange and Surprising Adventures in Modern Babyland.
     The dad diarists approach their subject like anthropologists, engaged in rational inquiry into an alien culture and the nature of nurture. Thus I learned from Apple things I never knew from reading What to Expect When You’re Expecting, like the fact that in the 1st century Pliny the Elder recommended that women in labor drink goose semen mixed with water to ease the process along.
     Maybe the respectful distance men keep reflects the obvious ambivalence so many women show about male involvement. We talk about fathers like puppies tripping over their big paws, a portrait long mirrored in a culture in which “Father Knows Least”. We diminish with faint praise; dads still get points for returning children at the end of the day with all their limbs in place. But the more engaged fathers become, the more women have to reckon with what a true parenting partnership would look like.

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

     A new study released just days after the U.S. House passed a bill that would prevent states from requiring labels on genetically modified foods reveals that GMO (genetically modified organism) labeling would not act as warning labels and scare consumers away from buying products with GM ingredients. The study, presented at the annual conference of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, held in San Francisco on July 27, relies on five years of data (2003, 2004, 2008, 2014 and 2015) and includes 2,012 responses to a representative, statewide survey of Vermont residents. It focuses on the relationship between two primary questions: whether Vermonters are opposed to GMO's in commercially available food products; and whether respondents thought products containing GMO’s should be labeled. 

     Results showed no evidence that attitudes toward GMO's are strengthened in either a positive or negative way due to a desire for labels that indicate the product contains GM ingredients. On average across all five years of the study, 60 percent of Vermonters reported being opposed to the use of GM technology in food production and 89 percent desired labeling of food products containing GM ingredients. These numbers have been increasing slightly since 2003. In 2015, the percentages were 63 and 92 percent, respectively.
     Responses varied slightly by demographic groups. For example, given a desire for positive GMO labels, opposition to GMO decreased in people with lower levels of education, in single parent households, and those earning the highest incomes. Opposition to GMO increases in men and people in the middle-income category. No changes were larger than three percentage points.
     ''When you look at consumer opposition to the use of GM technologies in food and account for the label, we found that overall the label has no direct impact on opposition. And it increased support for GM in some demographic groups," said Jane Kolodinsky, author of the study and professor and chair of the Department of Community Development and Applied Economics at the University of Vermont. “ This was not what I hypothesized based on the reasoning behind the introduction of The Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Bill. We didn't find evidence that the labels will work as a warning.” 

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

     Plastered on the wall of San Francisco's main public library are 50,000 index cards, formerly entries in the library's catalogue. The tomes they refer to may be becoming decorative, too. Not only can library patrons now search the collection online, they may also check out electronic books without visiting the library. For librarians, “e-lending” is a natural offer in the digital age. Publishers and booksellers fear it could unbind their business.  

     Worries about the effect of libraries on the book trade are not new. But digital devices, which allow books to reach readers with ease and speed, intensify them. As Brian Napack, president of Macmillan, a big publisher, put it in 2011, the fear is that someone who gets a library card will "never have to buy a book again''. 

     A printed book can be borrowed only during opening hours and at the library, so many readers save themselves the hassle and buy their own copy. But e-lending is frictionless: any user with the right privileges can download a digital file instantly (at the end of the borrowing period it self-destructs). This raises big issues: must libraries buy many copies of an e-book, or just one? And what about security? A hacker who cracks the library's system could pirate everything it holds. 

     In publishers' eyes librarians are "sitting close to Satan”, declared Phil Bradley, president of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals. He was addressing indignant librarians who recently gathered in London to swap tales of e-lending woe. Some publishers have refused to sell their e-books to public libraries, made them prohibitively costly or put severe restrictions on their use.
     Under copyright law, anyone who buys a printed book can lend or rent it, but the same does not apply to digital works. Libraries do not own these outright. Instead they must negotiate licensing deals for each book they want to lend. They put the e-collections on servers run by computer firms such as OverDrive and 3M, which typically charge around $20,000 annually, plus a fee for each book.
     No country has a settled policy on e-lending. Britain has ordered a review; the results are expected soon. Other governments are waiting for publishers to set their terms. In America, where around three-quarters of public libraries lend e-books, each of the "big six" publishers has a different policy. Simon & Schuster refuses to make e-books available to public libraries at all. HarperCollins's e-books expire after they have been lent 26 times. At the 80 libraries where Penguin is offering a pilot e-lending program, licenses for its e-books expire after a year. Other publishers want to apply the limitations of printed books to digital ones. For example，some want public libraries to replace e-books periodically, just as they have to do with real books that get dirty and torn. 

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

    Most of us lead unhealthy lives: we spend far too much time sitting down. If, in addition, we are careless about our diets, our bodies soon became flabby and our system sluggish. The guilt feelings start: “I must go on a diet”, “I must try to lose weight”, “I must get more fresh air and exercise”, “I must stop smoking”, “I must try to keep fit”. There are some aspects of our unhealthy lives that we cannot avoid.
    I am thinking of such features of modem urban life as pollution, noise, rushed meals and stress. But keeping fit is a way to minimize the effects of these evils.
    The usual suggestion for a person who is looking for a way to keep fit is to take up some sport or other. While it is true that every weekend you will find people playing football and tennis in the local park, they are outnumbered a hundred to one by the people who are simply watching them. It is an illusion to think that you will get fit by going to watch the football match every Saturday, unless you count the effort required to fight your way through the crowds to get to the best seats.
    For those who do not particularly enjoy competitive sports — and it is especially difficult to do so if you are not good at them — there are such solitary activities as cycling, walking and swimming. What often happens, though, is that you do them in such a leisurely way, so slowly, that it is doubtful if you are doing yourself much good, apart from the fact that you have at least managed to get up out of your armchair. Of course you can be very thorough about exercises. Many sports shops now sell frightening pieces of apparatus, chest-expanders and other mysterious gadgets of shiny spring steel, which, according to the advertisements, will bring you up to an Olympic standard of fitness, provided programs generally involve long periods of time bending these curious bits of metal into improbable shapes.
    It all strikes me as utterly boring and also time-consuming. Somebody suggested recently that all such effort was pointless anyway because if you spend half an hour every day jogging round the local park, you will add to your life exactly the number of hours that you wasted during the "jogging" in the first place. The argument is false even if the facts are correct, but there is no doubt that exercise in itself can be boring.
    Even after you have found a routine for keeping in shape, through sport or gymnastics, you are still only half way to good health, because, according to the experts, you must also master the art of complete mental and physical relaxation.
    Now this does not mean snoozing in the armchair or going dancing. It has something to do with deep breathing, emptying your mind of all thoughts, medication and so on.

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

     When one looks back upon the fifteen hundred years that are the life span of the English language, he should be able to notice a number of significant truths. The history of our language has always been a history of constant change - at times a slow, almost imperceptible change, at other times a violent collision between two languages. Our language has always been a living growing organism, it has never been static. Another significant truth that emerges from such a study is that language at all times has been the possession not of one class or group but of many.  At one extreme it has been the property of the common, ignorant folk, who have used it in the daily business of their living, much as they have used their animals or the kitchen pots and pans. At the other extreme it has been the treasure of those who have respected it as an instrument and a sign of civilization, and who have struggled by writing it down to give it some permanence, order, dignity, and if possible, a little beauty. 

     As we consider our changing language，we should note here two developments that are of special and immediate importance to us. One is that since the time of the Anglo-Saxons there has been an almost complete reversal of the different devices for showing the relationship of words in a sentence. Anglo-Saxon (old English) was a language of many inflections. Modern English has few inflections. We must now depend largely on word order and function words to convey the meanings that the older language did by means of changes in the forms of words. Function words, you should understand, are words such as prepositions, conjunctions, and a few others that are used primarily to show relationships among other words. A few inflections, however, have survived. And when some word inflections come into conflict with word order, there may be trouble for the users of the language, as we shall see later when we turn our attention to such matters as WHO or WHOM and ME or I. The second fact we must consider is that as language itself changes, our attitudes toward language forms change also. The eighteenth century, for example, produced from various sources a tendency to fix the language into patterns not always set in and grew, until at the present time there is a strong tendency to restudy and re-evaluate language practices in terms of the ways in which people speak and write. 

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

    That experiences influence subsequent behavior is evidence of an obvious but nevertheless remarkable activity called remembering. Learning could not occur without the function popularly named memory. Constant practice has such an effect on memory as to lead to skillful performance on the piano, to recitation of a poem, and even to reading and understanding these words. So-called intelligent behavior demands memory, remembering being a primary requirement for reasoning. The ability to solve any problem or even to recognize that a problem exists depends on memory. Typically, the decision to cross a street is based on remembering many earlier experiences.
    Practice (or review) tends to build and maintain memory for a task or for any learned material. Over a period of no practice what has been learned tends to be forgotten, and the adaptive consequences may not seem obvious. Yet, dramatic instances of sudden forgetting can be seen to be adaptive. In this sense, the ability to forget can be interpreted to have survived through a process of natural selection in animals. Indeed, when one’s memory of an emotionally painful experience leads to serious anxiety, forgetting may produce relief. Nevertheless, an evolutionary interpretation might make it difficult to understand how the commonly gradual process of forgetting survived natural selection.
    In thinking about the evolution of memory together with all its possible aspects, it is helpful to consider what would happen if memories failed to fade. Forgetting clearly aids orientation what would happen if memories weaken and the new tend to stand out, providing clues for inferring duration. Without forgetting, adaptive ability would suffer, for example, learned behavior that might have been correct a decade ago may no longer be. Cases are recorded of people who (by ordinary standards) forgot so little that their everyday activities were foil of confusion. This forgetting seems to serve that survival of the individual and the species.
    Another line of thought assumes a memory storage system of limited capacity that provides adaptive flexibility specifically through forgetting. In this view，continual adjustments are made between learning or memory storage (input) and forgetting (output). Indeed, there is evidence that the rate at which individuals forget is directly related to how much they have learned. Such data offers gross support of contemporary models of memory that assume an input-output balance.

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

     Today, there’s scarcely an aspect of our life that isn’t being upended by the torrent of information available on the hundreds of millions of sites crowding the Internet, not to mention its ability to keep us in constant touch with each other via electronic mail. “If the automobile and aerospace technology had exploded at the same pace as computer and information technology,” says Microsoft, “a new car would cost about $2 and go 600 miles on a thimbleful of gas. And you could buy a Boeing 747 for the cost of a pizza.” 

     Probably the biggest payoff, however, is the billions of dollars the Internet is saving companies in producing goods and serving for the needs of their customers. Nothing like it has been seen since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, when power-driven machines began producing more in a day than men could turn out in nearly a year. “We view the growth of the Internet and e-commerce as a global megatrend,” says Merrill Lynch, “along the lines of the printing press, the telephone, the computer, and electricity.”
     You would be hard pressed to name something that isn’t available on the Internet. Consider: books, health care, movie tickets, construction materials, baby clothes, stocks, cattle feed, music, electronics, antiques, tools, real estate, toys, autographs of famous people, wine and airline tickets. And even after you’ve moved on to your final resting place, there’s no reason those you love can’t keep in touch. A company called FinalThoughts.com offers a place for you to store “afterlife e-mails” you can send to Heaven with the help of a “guardian angel”.
     Kids today are so computer savvy that it virtually ensures the United States will remain the unchallenged leader in cyberspace for the foreseeable future. Nearly all children in families with incomes of more than $75,000 a year have home computers, according to a study by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. Youngsters from ages 2 to 17 at all income levels have computers, with 52% of those connected to the Internet. Most kids use computers to play games (some for 30 hours or more a week), and many teenage girls think nothing of rushing home from school to have e-mail chats with friends they have just left.
     What’s clear is that, whether we like it or not, the Internet is an ever growing part of our lives and there is no turning back. “The Internet is just 20% invented,” says cyber pioneer Jake Winebaum. “The last 80% is happening now.”

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

     Many Americans harbor a grossly distorted and exaggerated view of most of the risks surrounding food. Fergus Clydesdale, head of the department of food science and nutrition at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, says bluntly that if the dangers from bacterially contaminated chicken were as great as some people believe, “the streets would be littered with people lying here and there.”
     Though the public increasingly demands no-risk food, there is no such thing. Bruce Ames, chairman of the biochemistry department at the University of California, Berkeley, points out that up to 10% of a plant’s weight is made up of natural pesticides. He says, “Since plants do not have jaws or teeth to protect themselves, they employ chemical warfare,” And many naturally produced chemicals, though occurring in tiny amounts, prove in laboratory tests to be strong carcinogens — substance which can cause cancer. Mushrooms might be banned if they were judged by the same standards that apply to food additives. Declares Christina Stark, a nutritionist at Cornell University, “We’ve got far worse natural chemicals in the food supply than anything man-made.”
     Yet the issues are not that simple. While Americans have no reason to be terrified to sit down at the dinner table, they have every reason to demand significant improvements in food and water safety. They unconsciously and unwillingly take in too much of too many dangerous chemicals. If food already contains natural carcinogens, it does not make much sense to add dozens of new man-made ones. Though most people will withstand the small amount of contaminants generally found in food and water, at least a few individuals will probably get cancer one day because of what they eat and drink.
     To make good food and water supplies even better, the Government needs to tighten its regulatory standards, stiffen its inspection program and strengthen its enforcement policies. The food industry should modify some long-accepted practices or turn to less hazardous alternatives. Perhaps most important, consumers will have to do a better job of learning how to handle and cook food properly. The problems that need to be tackled exist all along the food-supply chain, from fields to processing plants to kitchens.

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 roots of the seven-day week can be traced back about 4,000 years, to Babylon. The Babylonians believed there were seven planets in the solar system, and the number seven held such power to them that they planned their days around it. Their seven-day, planetary week spread to Egypt, Greece, and eventually to Rome, where it turns out the Jewish people had their own version of a seven-day week. At the very latest, the seven-day week was firmly entrenched in the Western calendar about 250 years before Christ was born.
    The earliest recorded use of the word "weekend" occurred in 1879 in an English magazine called Notes and Queries. Some 19th-century Britons used the week's seventh day for merriment rather than for the rest prescribed by Scripture. They would drink, gamble, and enjoy themselves so much that the phenomenon of "Saint Monday," in which workers would skip work to recover from Sunday's gallivanting, emerged. English factory owners later compromised with workers by giving them a half-day on Saturday in exchange for guaranteed attendance at work on Monday.
    It took decades for Saturday to change from a half-day to full day's rest. In 1908, a New England mill became the first American factory to institute the five-day week. It did so to Jewish workers, whose observance of a Saturday Sabbath (the day of rest and worship ) forced them to make up their work on Sundays, offending some in the Christian majority. The mill granted these Jewish workers a two-day weekend, and other factories followed this example. The Great Depression cemented the two-day weekend into the economy, as shorter hours were considered a remedy to underemployment.
    Nearly a century later, mills have been overtaken by more advanced technologies, yet the five-day workweek remains the fundamental organizing concept behind when work is done. Its obsolescence has been foretold for quite a while now: A 1965 Senate subcommittee predicted Americans would work 14-hour weeks by the year 2000, and before that, back in 1928, John Maynard Keynes wrote that technological advancement would bring the workweek down to 15 hours within 100 years.
    There's reason to believe that a seven-day week with a two-day weekend is an inefficient technology: A growing body of research and corporate case studies suggests that transition to a shorter workweek would lead to increased productivity, improved health, and higher employee-retention rates.
    Moreover, there's some anecdotal evidence that a four-day workweek might increase productivity. Beyond working more efficiently, a four-day workweek appears to improve morale and well-being.
    The five-day workweek might already have so much cultural inertia that it can't be changed. Most companies can't just tell employees not to come in on Fridays, because they'd be at a disadvantage in a world that favors the five-day workweek.