Directions: Read the following passage. Summarize the main idea and the main point(s) of the passage in NO MORE THAN 60 WORDS. Use your own words as far as possible. Write your answer on the answer sheet.
To understand the changing role of women in China, consider the runaway success of a novel titled Du Lala’s Rise. Decades after Mao Zedong declared that women hold up half the sky,” the success of Du Lala and her peers reflects a curious fact about women in China: they appear to be far more ambitious than their counterparts (对应者)in the United States.
Rjpa Rashid, a senior vice president at the Center for Work-Life Policy, says the rapid growth “creates this excitement”， and builds on a cultural and historical legacy (遗产)in which Chinese women are not just encouraged to participate in the workforce, they are expected to.
One result has been a generation of women and girls who believe they belong among China’s power elite ( 精 英 ). In the US, that shift followed decades of battles over equality and women’s rights. In China, there are fewer institutional barriers for women trying to succeed professionally.
That’s true, too, in the executive suite. Grant Thornton International, the tax consultancy, found that roughly eight out of 10 companies in China had women in senior management roles, compared with approximately half in the European Union and two thirds in the US. Similarly, in China, 31 percent of top executives are female, compared with 20 percent in America.
Thirdly, child care is easily accessible in China, enabling them to pursue their careers after giving birth to their children. Fourthly, ambition has become a matter of necessity in fast-paced China, and both the husband and wife have to work in order to keep up with the skyrocketing housing prices.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Directions: Read the following passage. Fill in each blank with a proper sentence given in the box. Each sentence can be used only once. Note that there are two more sentences than you need.
In 1974, I graduated from Skyline High School in Oakland, California, an underachieving student with poor SAT scores. I couldn't afford tuition for college anyway.
1.
For thousands of commuting students like me, Chabot was our Harvard, offering courses in physics, stenography, automechanics, certified public accounting, foreign languages, journalism and so on. Classmates included veterans ( 老 兵 )back from Vietnam, married women returning to school, middle-aged men wanting to improve their employment prospects and paychecks. We could get our general education requirements out of the way at Chabot — credits we could transfer to a university — which made those two years an invaluable head start.
Classes I took at Chabot have rippled (起涟漪)through my professional pond. I produced the HBO mini-series John Adams with an outline format I learned from a pipe-smoking historian, James Coovelis, whose lectures were interesting. Mary Lou Fitzgerald’s “Studies in Shakespeare” taught me how the five-act structures of Richard III, The Tempest, and Othello focused their themes.
In Herb Kennedy’s “Drama in Performance”， I read plays like The Hot L Baltimore and Desire Under the Elms, then saw their productions. I got to see the plays he taught, through student rush tickets at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco and the Berkeley Repertory Theatre.2.I got an A. Some hours I stayed in the huge library, where I first read the New York Times, frustrated by its lack of comics.
If Chabot’s library still has its collection of vinyl records (黑胶唱片), you will find my name repeatedly on the takeout slip of Jason Robards’s performance of the monologue of Eugene O’Neill.3.
Chabot College is still in Hayward, though Mr. Coovelis, Ms. Fitzgerald and Mr. Kennedy are no longer there. I drove past the campus a few years ago with one of my kids and summed up my two years there this way: “4.”
A.I listened to it 20 times at least.
B.That place made me what I am today.
C.Community colleges have improved a lot these years.
D.Those plays filled my head with expanded dreams.
E.Of course, I enjoyed the pleasure of eating French fries between classes.
F.So I sent my test results to Chabot, a community college in nearby Hayward, California, which accepted everyone and was free.
Now the Bush team is pushing hard an idea which is inherited from the Clinton administration and which, in some way, builds on the debt-relief initiative. For the very poorest countries, America strongly favors moving from loans to grants, though other industrial-country donors are still doubtful of the wisdom of this. Giving grants, they argue, will cut future aid flows because some of the funding for loans on generous terms comes from money which has been repaid to donors.
America takes the view that, since many developing—country loans will never be repaid, mainly because the recipients cannot afford to make large payments to their creditors, it makes more sense to treat them as grants in the first place. The Bush administration has threatened to hold up the provision of the funds used for this sort of aid. International Development Assistance (IDA), if it cannot persuade everyone else to come on board. All members talked about having made progress in this area, but it remains a stumbling block.
Work is also under way in the IMF and the G7 to reform the international financial system. This now has two objectives. One is to make it harder for terrorist organizations to obtain funding by cracking down on money—laundering and increasing financial transparency. The other is to reduce the occurrence and severity of financial crises in emerging—market countries. On this, American views seem to have prevailed. The G7 meeting on April 19th and 20th ended with an unexpected decision to proceed with an American plan to include collective action clauses in future loans taken out by emerging- market governments. The idea is that in the event of a delay of payment—such as that by Argentina last December--a government could negotiate with a “super-majority” of its creditors to restructure its debts, rather than, as now, have a small minority of creditors able to weaken such attempts.
This market--based approach is still controversial and implementing it could be difficult given the previous reluctance of governments to include such clauses in loan contracts (lest they appear to be signaling a readiness to default (拖欠)even as they borrow). Work on IMF plans for more far —reaching reforms of supreme debt, on which the Bush team recently appeared to pour cold water, is to proceed at the same time. The two approaches, said the G7, are “complementary”.
1.According to the passage, America favors moving from loans to grants on the purpose of____
A.making more money for the donors
B.relieving debt of the poorest countries
C.solving the problem of poverty completely
D.collecting more money for future aid to other countries
2.It can be seen that the undertaking of moving from loans to grants____
A.makes no progress at all
B.makes progress smoothly
C.still face some difficulties
D.will achieve its success in near future
3.The purpose of the reform of the international financial system includes____.
A.relieving the debt of poor countries
B.establishing a global financial market
C.distributing money more fairly in the world
D.preventing the possible financial crisis and terrorists to raise money through the system
4.It can be inferred from Para. 3 that at present .
A.a country can never expect to reconstruct its debts
B.a country can reconstruct its debt with the permission of IMF
C.a country in default cannot reconstruct its debts without the permission of all of its creditors
D.a country in default can reconstruct its debts by acquiring the permission of most of its creditors.
Villa d’Este, Tivoli (Italy) --- Official Site Useful Information
Call Center 199766166
Number to dial from all of Italy for pre-sales and reservations for: tickets, guided tours, school groups, instructional visits.
Bookings from abroad:
email: villadestetivoli@teleart.org fax: 0039 0412770747
Visiting Hours:
Opening 8.30 – closed one hour before sunset.
The ticket office closes one hour before the closing of the monument.
The hydraulic organ of the Organ Fountain is active daily, from 10.30 am, every two hours.
The Fontana della Civetta functions daily, from 10.00 am, every two hours.
Ticket Prices:
(from May 17 to October 20, 2015)
Full ticket (exhibition + villa and gardens, not divisible): €11.
Reduced ticket: €7.
These prices will be valid during the daytime openings of the Villa until the closure of the exhibition, due on the 20th of October, 2015 (From the 22nd of October, 2015)
Full ticket: €8 Reduced ticket €4
These fares may vary in conjunction with exhibitions set inside the Villa. The right to purchase reduced price tickets belongs to all citizens of the European Union between the ages of 18 and 24 as well as permanent teachers of state schools (upon presentation of identity documents).
School Visits:
Reservations are required. The management of Villa d’Este, in the aim of preserving the monument and better distributing the flow of students, has limited the number of students allowed into the Villa to 100 students per hour. Should any school group arrive at the Villa without having made a reservation, it will be admitted to the Villa according to space availability at a particular time and asked to wait until such space becomes available. Right of reservation cost: €1,00.
Notices:
Certain areas of the villa may be closed for restoration: for information inquire at the ticket office. Please pay particular attention to the areas marked with signs indicating danger (in Italian: pericolo).
1.How can a visiting Chinese professor of architecture in Rome make a booking?
A.By dialing 199766166.
B.By writing an email to villadestetivili@teleart.org.
C.By calling 0039 04127 19036.
D.By sending a fax to 0039 0412 770747
2.The receptionist at the ticket office may recommend you to see ______first, if you arrive at 10.25 am.
A.the exhibition inside the villa B.the Organ Fountain
C.the gardens D.the Fontana della Civetta
3.Why are reservations essential for school visits?
A.Reservations are more economical.
B.Reservations enable as many students as possible to visit the monument.
C.Reservations ensure a pleasant visit for students and a manageable one of the Villa.
D.Reservation fees can help preserve the site.
Not too many decades ago it seemed “obvious” both to the general public and to sociologists that modern society has changed people’s natural relations, loosened their responsibilities to kin (亲戚) and neighbors, and substituted in their place superficial relationships with passing acquaintances. However, in recent years a growing body of research has revealed that the “obvious” is not true. It seems that if you are a city resident, you typically know a smaller proportion of your neighbors than you do if you are a resident of a smaller community. But, for the most part, this fact has few significant consequences. It does not necessarily follow that if you know few of your neighbors you will know no one else.
Even in very large cities, people maintain close social ties within small, private social worlds. Indeed, the number and quality of meaningful relationships do not differ between more and less urban people. Small-town residents are more involved with kin than are big-city residents. Yet city dwellers compensate by developing friendships with people who share similar interests and activities. Urbanism many produce a different style of life, but the quality of life does not differ between town and city. Nor are residents of large communities any likelier to display psychological symptoms of stress or alienation, a feeling of not belonging, than are residents of smaller communities. However, city dwellers do worry more about crime, and this leads them to a distrust of strangers.
These findings do not imply that urbanism makes little or no difference. If neighbors are strangers to one another, they are less likely to sweep the sidewalk of an elderly couple living next door or keep an eye out for young trouble makers. Moreover, as Wirth suggested, there may be a link between a community’s population size and its social heterogeneity (多样性). For instance, sociologists have found much evidence that the size of a community is associated with bad behavior including gambling, drugs, etc. Large-city urbanities are also more likely than their small-town counterparts to have a cosmopolitan(见多识广)outlook, to display less responsibility to traditional kinship roles, to vote for leftist political candidates, and to be tolerant of nontraditional religious groups, unpopular political groups, and so—called undesirables. Everything considered, heterogeneity and unusual behavior seem to be outcomes of large population size.
1.Which of the following statements best describes the organization of the first paragraph?
A.An argument is examined and possible solutions given.
B.Two contrasting views are presented.
C.Research results concerning the quality of urban life are presented in order of time.
D.A detail description of the difference between urban and small-town life is given.
2.According to the passage, it was once a common belief that urban residents .
A.could not develop long-standing relationships.
B.did not have the same interests as their neighbors.
C.tended to be associated with bad behavior.
D.usually had more friends.
3.One of the consequences of urban life is that impersonal relationships among neighbors .
A.disrupt people’s natural relations.
B.make them worry about crime.
C.cause them no to show concern for one another.
D.cause them to be suspicious of each other.
4.It can be inferred from the passage that the bigger a community is____,
A.the better its quality of life
B.the more tolerant and open-minded it is.
C.the likelier it is to display psychological symptoms of stress.
D.the more similar its interests
Each stage of life has different major demands mainly because our needs change. As children, a period of deep uncertainty and sensitivity,___ and family are the top needs although we may not think of them in those terms. As teenagers, we are__the waters of adult life, preparing ourselves for the exciting unknown and as young adults, we search for a__. The drive to fulfill each stage is so strong that sometimes we have to hold the breath to___.
At each stage, although everyone may___in dreams, we will all try to take hold of the means to achieve our particular dreams. Some will be driven with almost tunnel vision, others take a(n)____attitude to getting there. Anyway, without dreams it is hard to direct life. If you are fortunate enough to achieve your current dreams, you can move forward for___desires and prepare yourself for a new conquest.
For each period of life, the needs are decided by that stage, and as we grow older, whether we like it or not, we gain___, which, on the basis of former facts and information, permits us to see a broader view if we are wise enough to take on board what is there. As we mature, the sharpness of the___of youth, the black and white approach to life, will be tempered by what is possible, kind, just and fair. Ageing helps us to grow if we allow it. So often we___that process, holding on tightly to rooted beliefs which do not do us any favour, yet our needs change and in result we will___be different.
Physically, even when we stay fit and able, the body cannot deliver in quite the same way as youth. This comes as a(n)___to most of us who start life in the belief that we are unbeatable and will live forever. Again, coming to terms with this fact helps us to___anxiety, and finally realize the unexpected benefits which come along with___face and slowed body. What was important when we were young can be seen now in a new light, and a different list of importance emerges. In the end, extreme age can be as demanding and sensitive as babyhood, so while ones need changes through life, it seems to come___.
1.A.finance B.security C.marriage D.education
2.A.testing B.sharing C.changing D.setting
3.A.financial advisor B.childhood companion C.life partner D.household keeper
4.A.take action B.calm down C.look forward D.pay attention
5.A.believe B.persevere C.vary D.persist
6.A.easy B.random C.formal D.similar
7.A.noble B.fresh C.reasonable D.superior
8.A.experience B.responsibility C.respect D.agreement
9.A.individualism B.materialism C.idealism D.socialism
10.A.resist B.enjoy C.evolve D.strengthen
11.A.unexpectedly B.terribly C.comparatively D.necessarily
12.A.inquiry B.instinct C.refusal D.shock
13.A.worsen B.manage C.judge D.feel
14.A.wrinkled B.depressed C.impressive D.serious
15.A.with high requirements B.in full circle C.without difficulty D.on a large scale
