Section I Use of English
Directions:
Read the following text. Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C or D on the ANSWER SHEET. (10 points)
How many different kinds of emotions do you feel? You may be 1 to find that it is very hard to specify all of them. Not only 2 hard to describe in words, they are difficult to 3 . As a result, two people rarely 4 all of them. However, there are a number of 5 emotions that most people experience.
When we receive something that we want, or something happens 6 we like, we usually feel joy or happiness. Joy is a positive and powerful emotion, 7 for which we all strive. It is natural to want to be happy, and all of us 8 happiness. As a general 9 , joy occurs when we reach a 10 goal or obtain a desired object.
11 people often desire different goals and objects, it is 12 that one person may find joy in repairing an automobile, 13 another may find joy in solving a math problem. Of course, we often share 14 goals or interests, and therefore we can experience joy together. This may be in sports, in the arts, in learning, in raising a family, or in 15 being together.
When we have difficulty 16 desired objects or reaching desired goals, we experience 17 emotions such as anger and grief. When little things get in our way, we experience 18 frustrations or tensions. For example, if you are dressing to go out 19 a date, you may feel frustration when a zipper breaks or a button falls off. The more difficulty you have in reaching a goal, the more frustrated you may feel and the angrier you may become. If you really want something to happen, and you feel it 20 happen, but someone or something stops it, you may become quite angry.
Section II Reading Comprehension
Part A
Directions:
Read the following four texts. Answer the questions after each text by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answers on the ANSWER SHEET. (40 points)
Text 1
Habits are a funny thing. We reach for them mindlessly, setting our brains on auto-pilot and relaxing into the unconscious comfort of familiar routine. "Not choice, but habit rules the unreflecting herd," William Wordsworth said in the 19th century. In the ever-changing 21st century, even the word "habit" carries a negative implication.
So it seems paradoxical to talk about habits in the same context as creativity and innovation. But brain researchers have discovered that when we consciously develop new habits, we create parallel paths, and even entirely new brain cells, that can jump our trains of thought onto new, innovative tracks.
These researchers believe that rather than dismissing ourselves as unchangeable creatures of habit, we can direct our own change by consciously developing new habits. In fact, the more new things we try — the more we step outside our comfort zone — the more inherently creative we become, both in the workplace and in our personal lives.
But don't bother trying to kill off old habits; once those ruts of procedure are worn into the brain, they're there to stay. Instead, the new habits we deliberately press into ourselves create parallel pathways that can bypass those old roads.
"The first thing needed for innovation is a fascination with wonder," says Dawna Markova, author of "The Open Mind" and an executive change consultant for Professional Thinking Partners. "But we are taught instead to 'decide,' just as our president calls himself 'the Decider.' " She adds, however, that "to decide is to kill off all possibilities but one. A good innovational thinker is always exploring the many other possibilities."
All of us work through problems in ways of which we're unaware, she says. Researchers in the late 1960s discovered that humans are born with the capacity to approach challenges in four primary ways: analytically, procedurally, relationally (or collaboratively) and innovatively. At the end of adolescence, however, the brain shuts down half of that capacity, preserving only those modes of thought that have seemed most valuable during the first decade or so of life.
The current emphasis on standardized testing highlights analysis and procedure, meaning that few of us inherently use our innovative and collaborative modes of thought. "This breaks the major rule in the American belief system — that anyone can do anything," explains M. J. Ryan, author of the 2006 book This Year I Will... and Ms. Markova's business partner. "That's a lie that we have perpetuated, and it fosters commonness. Knowing what you're good at and doing even more of it creates excellence." This is where developing new habits comes in.
Text 2
Over the past decade, thousands of patents have been granted for what are called business methods. Amazon.com received one for its "one-click" online payment system. Merrill Lynch got legal protection for an asset allocation strategy. One inventor patented a technique for lifting a box.
Now the nation's top patent court appears completely ready to scale back on business-method patents, which have been controversial ever since they were first authorized 10 years ago. In a move that has intellectual-property lawyers abuzz the U.S. court of Appeals for the federal circuit said it would use a particular case to conduct a broad review of business-method patents. In re Bilski, as the case is known , is "a very big deal", says Dennis D. Crouch of the University of Missouri School of law. It "has the potential to eliminate an entire class of patents."
Curbs on business-method claims would be a dramatic about-face, because it was the federal circuit itself that introduced such patents with its 1998 decision in the so-called state Street Bank case, approving a patent on a way of pooling mutual-fund assets. That ruling produced an explosion in business-method patent filings, initially by emerging internet companies trying to stake out exclusive rights to specific types of online transactions. Later, more established companies raced to add such patents to their files, if only as a defensive move against rivals that might beat them to the punch. In 2005, IBM noted in a court filing that it had been issued more than 300 business-method patents despite the fact that it questioned the legal basis for granting them. Similarly, some Wall Street investment films armed themselves with patents for financial products, even as they took positions in court cases opposing the practice.
The Bilski case involves a claimed patent on a method for escaping from risk in the energy market. The Federal circuit issued an unusual order stating that the case would be heard by all 12 of the court's judges, rather than a typical panel of three, and that one issue it wants to evaluate is whether it should "reconsider" its state street Bank ruling.
The Federal Circuit's action comes in the wake of a series of recent decisions by the supreme Court that has narrowed the scope of protections for patent holders. Last April, for example the justices signaled that too many patents were being upheld for "inventions" that are obvious. The judges on the Federal circuit are "reacting to the anti-patent future at the Supreme Court", says Harold C. Wegner, a patent attorney and professor at George Washington University Law School.
Text 3
Educators and business leaders have more in common than it may seem. Teachers want to prepare students skills for a successful future. Technology companies have an interest in developing a workforce with the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) skills needed to grow the company and advance the industry. How can they work together to achieve these goals? Play may be the answer.
Focusing on STEM skills is important, but the reality is that STEM skills are enhanced and more relevant when combined with traditional, hands-on creative activities. This combination is proving to be the best way to prepare today's children to be the makers and builders of tomorrow. That is why technology companies are partnering with educators' to bring back good, old-fashioned play.
In fact many experts argue that the most important 21st-century skills aren't related to specific technologies or subject matter, but to creativity; skills like imagination, problem -finding and problem-solving, teamwork, optimism, patience and the ability to experiment and take risks. These are skills acquired when kids tinker(捣鼓小玩意). High-tech industries such as NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory have found that their best overall problem solvers were master tinkerers in their youth.
There are cognitive benefits of doing things the way we did as children — building something, tearing it down, then building it up again. Research shows that given 15 minutes of free play, four and five-year-olds will spend a third of this time engaged in spatial, mathematical, and architectural activities. This type of play — especially with building blocks — helps children discover and develop key principles in math and geometry.
If play and building are critical to 2lst-century skill development, that's really good news for two reasons: Children are born builders, makers, and creators, so fostering 21st-century skills may be as simple as giving kids room to play, tinker and try things out, even as they grow older. Secondly, it doesn’t take 21st-century technology to foster 21st-century skills. This is especially important for under-resourced schools and communities. Taking whatever materials are handy and tinkering with them is a simple way to engage those important "maker" skills. And anyone, anywhere, can do it.
Text 4
Two years ago, Rupert Murdoch’s daughter, Elisabeth, spoke of the “unsettling dearth of integrity across so many of our institutions”. Integrity had collapsed, she argued, because of a collective acceptance that the only “sorting mechanism” in society should be profit and the market. But “it’s us, human beings, we the people who create the society we want, not profit.”
Driving her point home, she continued: “It’s increasingly apparent that the absence of purpose, of a moral language within government, media or business could become one of the most dangerous goals for capitalism and freedom.” This same absence of moral purpose was wounding companies such as News International, shield thought, making it more likely that it would lose its way as it had with widespread illegal telephone hacking.
As the hacking trial concludes ---- finding guilty one ex-editor of the News of the World, Andy Coulson, for conspiring to hack phones, and finding his predecessor, Rebekah Brooks, innocent of the same charge ---- the wider issue of dearth of integrity still standstill, Journalists are known to have hacked the phones of up to 5,500 people. This is hacking on an industrial scale, as was acknowledged by Glenn Mulcaire, the man hired by the News of the World in 2001 to be the point person for phone hacking. Others await trial. This long story still unfolds.
In many respects, the dearth of moral purpose frames not only the fact of such widespread phone hacking but the terms on which the trial took place. One of the astonishing revelations was how little Rebekah Brooks knew of what went on in her newsroom, how little she thought to ask and the fact that she never inquired how the stories arrived. The core of her successful defence was that she knew nothing.
In today’s world, title has become normal that well-paid executives should not be accountable for what happens in the organizations that they run perhaps we should not be so surprised. For a generation, the collective doctrine has been that the sorting mechanism of society should be profit. The words that have mattered are efficiency, flexibility, shareholder value, business–friendly, wealth generation, sales, impact and, in newspapers, circulation. Words degraded to the margin have been justice fairness, tolerance, proportionality and accountability.
The purpose of editing the News of the World was not to promote reader understanding to be fair in what was written or to betray any common humanity. It was to ruin lives in the quest for circulation and impact. Ms Brooks may or may not have had suspicions about how her journalists got their stories, but she asked no questions, gave no instructions ---- nor received traceable, recorded answers.
[A] Follow on Lines
[B] Whisper: Keep It to Yourself
[C] Word of Guidance: Stick to It
[D] Code of Success: Freed and Targeted
[E] Efficient Work to Promote Efficient Workers
[F] Done: Simplicity Means Everything
[G] Efficiency Comes from Control
Part B
Directions:
Read the following text and answer the questions by choosing the most suitable subheading from the list A—G for each numbered paragraph (41—45). There are two extra subheadings which you do not need to use. Mark your answers on the ANSWER SHEET . (10 points)
A. Follow on Lines
B. Whisper: Keep It to Yourself
C. Word of Guidance: Stick to It
D. Code of Success: Freed and Targeted
E. Efficient Work to Promote Efficient Workers
F. Done: Simplicity Means Everything
G. Efficiency Comes from Control
Every decade has its defining self-help business book. In the 1940s it was How to Win Friends and Influence People, in the 1990s The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People. These days we’re worried about something much simpler: Getting Things Done.
41. __________________
That’s the title of productivity guru David Allen’s pithy 2001 thesis on working efficiently, which continues to resonate in this decade’s overworked, overwhelmed, overteched workplace. Allen hasn’t just sold 500,000 copies of his book. He has preached his message of focus, discipline and creativity everywhere from Sony and Novartis to the World Bank and the U. S. Air Force. He counsels swamped chief executives on coping with information overload. He ministers to some clients with an intensive, two-day, $6,000 private session in which he and his team organize their lives from top to bottom. And he has won the devotion of acolytes who document on their blogs how his Getting Things Done (GTD) program has changed their lives.
42.__________________
Allen admits that much of his basic recipe is common sense. Free your mind, and productivity will follow. Break down projects and goals into discrete, definable actions, and you won’t be bothered by all those loose threads pulling at your attention. First make decisions about what needs to get done, and then fashion a plan for doing it. If you’ve catalogued everything you have to do and all your long-term goals, Allen says, you’re less likely to wake up at 3 a.m. worrying about whether you’ve forgotten something: “Most people haven’t realized how out of control their head is when they get 300 e-mails a day and each of them has potential meaning.”
43. __________________
When e-mails, phone calls and to-do lists are truly under control, Allen says, the real change begins. You will finally be able to use your mind to dream up great ideas and enjoy your life rather than just occupy it with all the things you’ve got to do. Allen himself, despite running a $ 5.5 million consulting practice, traveling 200 days a year and juggling a business that’s growing 40% every year, finds time to joyride in his Mini Cooper and sculpt bonsai plants. Oh, and he had earned his black belt in karate.
44. __________________
Few companies have embraced Allen’s philosophy as thoroughly as General Mills, the Minnesota-based maker of Cheerios and Lucky Charms. Allen began at the company with a couple of private coaching sessions for top executives, who raved about his guidance. Allen and his staff now hold six to eight two-day training sessions a year. The company has already put more than 2,000 employees through GTD training and plans to expand it company-wide. “Fads come and go,” says Kevin Wilde, General Mills’ CEO, “but this continue to work.”
45.__________________
The most fevered followers of Allen’s organizational methodology gather online. Websites like gtdindex. marvelz. com parse Allen’s every utterance. The 43 Folders blog ran an eight-part podcast interview with him. GTD enthusiasts like Frank Meeuwsen, on Whatsthenextaction. com gather best practice techniques for implementing the book’s ideas. More than 60 software tools have been built specifically to supplement Allen’s system.
Section III Translation
46.Direction:
Translate the following text into Chinese. Write your translation on the ANSWER SHEET.(15 points)
Sustainable development is applied to just about everything from energy to clean water and economic growth, and as a result it has become difficult to question either the basic assumptions behind it or the way the concept is put to use. This is especially true in agriculture, where sustainable development is often taken as the sole measure of progress without a proper appreciation of historical and cultural perspectives.
To start with, it is important to remember that the nature of agriculture has changed markedly throughout history, and will continue to do so. Medieval agriculture in northern Europe fed, clothed and sheltered a predominantly rural society with a much lower population density than it is today. It had minimal effect on biodiversity, and any pollution it caused was typically localized.
Section IV Writing
47. Directions:
You are invited to a housewarming party at a friend’s house, but you are not able to attend it for some reasons. Write a letter to your friend to
1) explain your reasons, and
2) make an apology.
You should write about 100 words neatly on the ANSWER SHEET. (10 points)
48.Directions:
Write an essay based on the chart below. In your writing, you should
1) interpret the chart, and
2) give your comments.
You should write about 150 words on the ANSWER SHEET. (15 points)