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Part A
Directions:
Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D．
Text 1
It is the world’s fourth-most-important food crop, after maize, wheat and rice. It provides more calories, more quickly, using less land and in a wider range of climates than any Other plant. It is, of Course, the potato.
The United Nations has declared 2008 the International Year of the Potato. It hopes that greater awareness of the merits of potatoes will contribute to the achievement of its Millennium Development Goals, by helping to alleviate poverty, improve food security and promote economic development. It is always the international year of this or month of that. But the potato’s unusual history means it is well worth celebrating by readers of The Economist because the potato is intertwined with economic development, trade liberalisation and globalisation.
Unlikely though it seems, the potato promoted economic development by underpinning the industrial revolution in England in the 19th century. It provided a cheap source of calories and was easy to cultivate, so it liberated workers from the land. Potatoes became popular in the north of England, as people there specialised in livestock farming and domestic industry, while farmers in the south (where the soil was more suitable ) concentrated on wheat production. By a happy accident, this concentrated industrial activity in the regions where coal was readily available, and a potato-driven population boom provided ample workers for the new factories. Friedrich Engels even declared that the potato was the equal of iron for its "historically revolutionary role".
The potato promoted free trade by contributing to the abolition of Britain’s Corn Laws-the cause which prompted the founding of The Economist in 1843. The Corn Laws restricted imports of grain into the United Kingdom in order to protect domestic wheat producers. Landowners supported the laws, since cheap imported grain would reduce their income, but industrialists opposed them because imports would drive down the cost of food, allowing people to spend more on manufactured goods. Ultimately it was not the eloquence of the arguments against the Corn Laws that led to their abolition-and more’s the pity. It was the tragedy of the Irish potato famine of 1845, in which 1million Irish perished when the potato crop on which they subsisted succumbed to blight. The need to import grain to relieve the situation in Ireland forced the government, which was dominated by landowners who backed the Corn Laws, to reverse its position.
This paved the way for liberalisation in other areas, and free trade became British policy. As the Duke of Wellington complained at the time, "rotten potatoes have done it all. "
In the form of French fries, served alongside burgers and Coca-Cola, potatoes are now an icon of globalisation. This is quite a turnaround given the scepticism which first greeted them on their arrival in the Old World in the 16th century. Spuds were variously thought to cause leprosy, to be fit only for animals, to be associated with the devil or to be poisonous. They took hold in 18th century Europe only when war and famine meant there was nothing else to eat; people then realised just how versatile and reliable they were. As Adam Smith, one of the potato’s many admirers, observed at the time, "The very general use which is made of potatoes in these kingdoms as food for man is a convincing proof that the prejudices of a nation, with regard to diet, however deeply rooted, are by no means unconquerable. " Mashed, fried, boiled and roast, a humble tuber changed the world, and free-trading globalisers everywhere should celebrate it.
Why were potatoes at last accepted by Europeans

A．They changed their diet to a more diversified trend.
B．French fries swept all over the world alongside burgers and Coca-Cola.
C．Potatoes saved them when war and famine stroke Europe in 18th century.
D．It became very important goods for Europe in trading with Asia.
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单项选择题


Part A
Directions:
Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D．
Text 1
It is the world’s fourth-most-important food crop, after maize, wheat and rice. It provides more calories, more quickly, using less land and in a wider range of climates than any Other plant. It is, of Course, the potato.
The United Nations has declared 2008 the International Year of the Potato. It hopes that greater awareness of the merits of potatoes will contribute to the achievement of its Millennium Development Goals, by helping to alleviate poverty, improve food security and promote economic development. It is always the international year of this or month of that. But the potato’s unusual history means it is well worth celebrating by readers of The Economist because the potato is intertwined with economic development, trade liberalisation and globalisation.
Unlikely though it seems, the potato promoted economic development by underpinning the industrial revolution in England in the 19th century. It provided a cheap source of calories and was easy to cultivate, so it liberated workers from the land. Potatoes became popular in the north of England, as people there specialised in livestock farming and domestic industry, while farmers in the south (where the soil was more suitable ) concentrated on wheat production. By a happy accident, this concentrated industrial activity in the regions where coal was readily available, and a potato-driven population boom provided ample workers for the new factories. Friedrich Engels even declared that the potato was the equal of iron for its "historically revolutionary role".
The potato promoted free trade by contributing to the abolition of Britain’s Corn Laws-the cause which prompted the founding of The Economist in 1843. The Corn Laws restricted imports of grain into the United Kingdom in order to protect domestic wheat producers. Landowners supported the laws, since cheap imported grain would reduce their income, but industrialists opposed them because imports would drive down the cost of food, allowing people to spend more on manufactured goods. Ultimately it was not the eloquence of the arguments against the Corn Laws that led to their abolition-and more’s the pity. It was the tragedy of the Irish potato famine of 1845, in which 1million Irish perished when the potato crop on which they subsisted succumbed to blight. The need to import grain to relieve the situation in Ireland forced the government, which was dominated by landowners who backed the Corn Laws, to reverse its position.
This paved the way for liberalisation in other areas, and free trade became British policy. As the Duke of Wellington complained at the time, "rotten potatoes have done it all. "
In the form of French fries, served alongside burgers and Coca-Cola, potatoes are now an icon of globalisation. This is quite a turnaround given the scepticism which first greeted them on their arrival in the Old World in the 16th century. Spuds were variously thought to cause leprosy, to be fit only for animals, to be associated with the devil or to be poisonous. They took hold in 18th century Europe only when war and famine meant there was nothing else to eat; people then realised just how versatile and reliable they were. As Adam Smith, one of the potato’s many admirers, observed at the time, "The very general use which is made of potatoes in these kingdoms as food for man is a convincing proof that the prejudices of a nation, with regard to diet, however deeply rooted, are by no means unconquerable. " Mashed, fried, boiled and roast, a humble tuber changed the world, and free-trading globalisers everywhere should celebrate it.
According to the text, what are the features of potatoes

A．Lower price, quicker growing speed, less land required, and wider range of climate.
B．More calories, quicker growing speed, less labor required in growing and processing, and wider range of climate.
C．More calories, quicker growing speed, less land required, and wider range of climate.
D．More calories, quicker growing speed, less land required, and wider range of products to be made of.
单项选择题


Part A
Directions:
Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D．
Text 1
It is the world’s fourth-most-important food crop, after maize, wheat and rice. It provides more calories, more quickly, using less land and in a wider range of climates than any Other plant. It is, of Course, the potato.
The United Nations has declared 2008 the International Year of the Potato. It hopes that greater awareness of the merits of potatoes will contribute to the achievement of its Millennium Development Goals, by helping to alleviate poverty, improve food security and promote economic development. It is always the international year of this or month of that. But the potato’s unusual history means it is well worth celebrating by readers of The Economist because the potato is intertwined with economic development, trade liberalisation and globalisation.
Unlikely though it seems, the potato promoted economic development by underpinning the industrial revolution in England in the 19th century. It provided a cheap source of calories and was easy to cultivate, so it liberated workers from the land. Potatoes became popular in the north of England, as people there specialised in livestock farming and domestic industry, while farmers in the south (where the soil was more suitable ) concentrated on wheat production. By a happy accident, this concentrated industrial activity in the regions where coal was readily available, and a potato-driven population boom provided ample workers for the new factories. Friedrich Engels even declared that the potato was the equal of iron for its "historically revolutionary role".
The potato promoted free trade by contributing to the abolition of Britain’s Corn Laws-the cause which prompted the founding of The Economist in 1843. The Corn Laws restricted imports of grain into the United Kingdom in order to protect domestic wheat producers. Landowners supported the laws, since cheap imported grain would reduce their income, but industrialists opposed them because imports would drive down the cost of food, allowing people to spend more on manufactured goods. Ultimately it was not the eloquence of the arguments against the Corn Laws that led to their abolition-and more’s the pity. It was the tragedy of the Irish potato famine of 1845, in which 1million Irish perished when the potato crop on which they subsisted succumbed to blight. The need to import grain to relieve the situation in Ireland forced the government, which was dominated by landowners who backed the Corn Laws, to reverse its position.
This paved the way for liberalisation in other areas, and free trade became British policy. As the Duke of Wellington complained at the time, "rotten potatoes have done it all. "
In the form of French fries, served alongside burgers and Coca-Cola, potatoes are now an icon of globalisation. This is quite a turnaround given the scepticism which first greeted them on their arrival in the Old World in the 16th century. Spuds were variously thought to cause leprosy, to be fit only for animals, to be associated with the devil or to be poisonous. They took hold in 18th century Europe only when war and famine meant there was nothing else to eat; people then realised just how versatile and reliable they were. As Adam Smith, one of the potato’s many admirers, observed at the time, "The very general use which is made of potatoes in these kingdoms as food for man is a convincing proof that the prejudices of a nation, with regard to diet, however deeply rooted, are by no means unconquerable. " Mashed, fried, boiled and roast, a humble tuber changed the world, and free-trading globalisers everywhere should celebrate it.
What is the ultimate purpose of establishing 2008 the International Year of the Potato

A．Promote the sales volume of potatoes all over the globe.
B．Help the farmers that grow potatoes but are still in poverty.
C．Promote a greater awareness of the merits of potatoes among the public.
D．Alleviate poverty, improve food security and promote economic development.
问答题

Part B
Directions:
In the following article, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 41-45, choose the most suitable one from the list A-G to fit into each of the numbered blanks. There are two extra choices, which do not fit in any of the blanks.
Long before man lived on the Earth, there were fishes, reptiles, birds, insects, and some mammals. Although some of these animals were ancestors of kinds living today, others are now extinct, that is, they have no descendants alive now. Nevertheless, we know a great deal about many of them because their bones and shells have been preserved in the rocks as fossils.
41.______That kind of rock in which the remains are found tells us much about the nature of the original land, often of the plants that grew on it, and even of its climate.
When an animal dies, the body, its bones, or shell, may often be carried away by streams into lakes or the sea and there get covered up by mud. If the animal lived in the sea its body would probably sink and be covered with mud. More and more mud would fall upon it until the bones or shell become embedded and preserved. 42．______Thus it follows that there must be many kinds of mammals, birds, and insects of which we know nothing,
43．______Later forms are more complex, and among these are the sea-lilies, relations of the star-fishes, which had long arms and were attached by a long stalk to the sea bed, or to rocks. There were also crab-like creatures, whose bodies were covered with a horny substance, The body segments each had two pairs of legs, one pair for walking on the sandy bottom, the other for swimming. The head was a kind of shield with a pair of compound eyes, often with thousands of lenses. They were usually an inch or two long but some were 2 feet.
The shellfish have a long history in the rock and many different kinds are known. Of these, the ammonites are very interesting and important. They have a shell composed of many chambers, each representing a temporary home of the animal. As the young grew larger it grew a new chamber and sealed off the previous one. Thousands of these can be seen in the rocks on the Dorset Coast.
The first animals with true backbones were fishes, first known in the rocks of 375 million years ago. About 300 million years ago the amphibians, the animals able to live both on land and in water, appeared. They were giant, sometimes 8 feet long, and many of them lived in the swampy pools in which our coal seam, or layer, formed. 44．______About 75 million years ago the Age of Reptiles was over and most of the groups died out. The mammals quickly developed, and we can trace the evolution of many familiar animals such as the elephant and horse. 45．______
[A] The best index fossils tend to be marine creatures. These animals evolved rapidly and spread over large areas of the world.
[B] The amphibians gave rise to the reptiles and for nearly 150 million years these were the principal forms of life on land, in the sea, and in the air.
[C] Many of the later mammals, though now extinct, were known to primitive man and were featured by him in cave paintings and on bone carvings.
[D] Nearly all of the fossils that we know were preserved in rocks formed by water action, and most of these are of animals that lived in or near water.
[E] The earliest animals whose remains have been found were all very simple kinds and lived in the sea.
[F] Many factors can influence how fossils are preserved in rocks. Remains of an organism may be replaced by minerals, dissolved by an acidic solution to leave only their impression, or simply reduced to a more stable form.
[G] From them we can tell their size and shape, how they walked, the kind of food they ate. Very occasionally the rocks show impression of skin, so that, apart from color, we can build up a reasonably accurate picture of an animal that died millions of years ago.

答案： G
单项选择题

Text 2
Twenty-seven years ago, Egypt revised its secular constitution to enshrine Muslim sharia as "the principal source of legislation". To most citizens, most of the time, that seeming contradiction-between secularism and religion-has not made much difference. Nine in ten Egyptians are Sunni Muslims and expect Islam to govern such things as marriage, divorce and inheritance. Nearly all the rest profess Christianity or Judaism, faiths recognised and protected in Islam. But to the small minority who embrace other faiths, or who have tried to leave Islam, it has, until lately, made an increasingly troubling difference.
Members of Egypt’s 2,000-strong Bahai community, for instance, have found they cannot state their religion on the national identity cards that all Egyptians are obliged to produce to secure such things as driver’s licenses, bank accounts, social insurance and state schooling. Hundreds of Coptic Christians who have converted to Islam, often to escape the Orthodox sect’s ban on divorce, find they cannot revert to their original faith. In some cases, children raised as Christians have discovered that, because a divorced parent converted to Islam, they too have become officially Muslim, and cannot claim otherwise.
Such restrictions on religious freedom are not directly a product of sharia, say human- rights campaigners, but rather of rigid interpretations of Islamic law by over-zealous officials. In their strict view, Bahai belief cannot be recognised as a legitimate faith, since it arose in the 19th century, long after Islam staked its claim to be the final revelation in a chain of prophecies beginning with Adam. Likewise, they brand any attempt to leave Islam, whatever the circumstances, as a form of apostasy, punishable by death.
But such views have lately been challenged. Last year Ali Gomaa, the Grand Mufti, who is the government’s highest religious adviser, declared that nowhere in Islam’s sacred texts did it say that apostasy need be punished in the present rather than by God in the afterlife. In the past month, Egyptian courts have issued two rulings that, while restricted in scope, should ease some bothersome strictures.
Bahais may now leave the space for religion on their identity cards blank. Twelve former Christians won a lawsuit and may now return to their original faith, on condition that their identity documents note their previous adherence to Islam.
Small steps, perhaps, but they point the way towards freedom of choice and citizenship based on equal rights rather than membership of a privileged religion.
According to the text, what impact did the revision of Egypt’s secular constitution have on its citizens’ lives

A．It did not make much difference to all the citizens.
B．Most of the Muslims felt that there was no much difference, but Christians, Judaists and people who embraced other religions felt increasing troubles.
C．Muslims, Christians and Judaists were protected in Islam, thus feeling no much difference, while other who embraced other faiths felt increasingly troubling difference.
D．Only Buddhists were specially treated, while others not.
问答题

Part C
Directions:
Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese. Your translation should be written clearly .
It is hard to get a grip on food. The UN’s World Health Organisation worries about diminishing supplies and increased prices in poor countries; recent riots and near-riots in Haiti, Bangladesh and Egypt were sparked by the growing cost of wheat and rice. But, as Paul Roberts observes in "The End of Food", the developed world has lived through "a near miraculous period during which the things we ate seemed to grow only more plentiful, more secure, more nutritious, and simply better. " 46． In the second half of the 20th century, world output of corn, wheat and cereal crops more than tripled. Yet there is not enough to feed the rich, the aspirational and the poor in the world. A golden age has been transformed quite suddenly into a global crisis.
Mr Roberts insists that modern agribusiness is unsustainable and becoming more so. "Precisely at the moment in history when we need to shift our system of food production into overdrive, our agricultural engine is breaking down," he says. The industry has taken cheap oil for granted. Oil fuels transportation and farm machinery, and natural gas is the basis of synthetic nitrogen production ( prices have tripled since 2002). Agriculture accounts for three- quarters of freshwater use, and water is becoming an increasingly scarce and expensive resource. Climate change makes some old assumptions about farming redundant. 47．A combination of these factors, he says, will ultimately force a complete rethinking of the way we make food.
For years government subsidies held down grain prices, making food cheaper. 48．Water was also plentiful-it takes 1,000 tonnes of water to produce a tonne of grain-and an ingenious process known as Haber-Bosch makes synthetic nitrogen fertiliser easily available to grain farmers. Ruthless price-cutting at supermarkets means consumers have grown accustomed to eating too much. (In the late 19th century, Europeans already thought Americans ate three or four times more than was necessary. ) The most damaging consequence is that by 2000 31% of American adults were obese, with another 16% defined as overweight. American airlines spend $ 275 million a year more on fuel simply to lift the heavier passengers. Mr Roberts claims that every year obesity causes 400,000 premature deaths in America. Food has become as deadly as tobacco.
A fruitful start would be to halve the size of portions in all American restaurants, but most consumers are reluctant rethinkers. 49．Eating organic product could be a partial solution, although one study suggests that the cost of avoiding intensive farm chemicals would mean a 31% increase in food prices. Government scientists believe that genetically modified crops might be the only way out of the crisis, but a majority of consumers are reluctant to listen.
Is there a model for the future 50．Fashionably, Mr. Roberts believes that a local system based on easily obtainable seasonal foods that do not need to be transported huge distances would form part of a solution. The economics and greenery of this are far from proven. Mr Roberts can find only one country that has made "serious efforts" in this direction: Cuba, hardly a comforting example. The coming food crisis, warns the author, is as intractable as global warming, and no less urgent.

答案： 20世纪下半叶，世界玉米、小麦以及谷物产量增长三倍多，可是仍不足以养活全世界人民，包括富人、穷人以及那些正努力朝着中产阶...
单项选择题

Text 4
Scores of workers from MTV Networks walked off the job yesterday afternoon, filling the sidewalk outside the headquarters of its corporate parent, Viacom, to protest recent changes in benefits. The walkout highlighted the concerns of a category of workers who are sometimes called permalancers: permanent freelancers who work like full-time employees but do not receive the same benefits.
Waving signs that read "Shame on Viacom," the workers, most of them in their 20s, demanded that MTV Networks reverse a plan to reduce health and dental benefits for freelancers beginning On Jan. 1st. In a statement, MTV Networks noted that its benefits program for full-time employees had also undergone changes, and it emphasized that the plan for freelancers was still highly competitive within the industry. Many freelancers receive no corporate benefits. But some of the protesters asserted that corporations were competing to see which could provide the most mediocre health care coverage. Matthew Yonda, who works at Nickelodeon, held a sign that labeled the network "Sick-elodeon. " "I’ve worked here every day for three years-I’m not a freelancer," Mr. Yonda said. "They just call us freelancers in order to bar us from getting the same benefits as employees. "
The changes to the benefits package were announced last Tuesday. Freelancers were told that they would become eligible for benefits after 160 days of work, beginning in January. While that eased previous eligibility rules, which required freelancers to work for 52 weeks before becoming eligible, it would have required all freelancers not yet eligible for benefits to start the waiting period over again on Jan. 1st. The 401 (k) plan was also removed. On Thursday, acknowledging the complaints, MTV Networks reinstated the 401 (k) plan and said freelancers who had worked consistently since March would be eligible.
Fueled by a series of blog posts on the media Web site Gawker-the first post was headlined "The Viacom Permalance Slave System"-a loose cohort of freelancers created protest stickers and distributed walkout fliers last week. Caroline O’Hare, a unit manager who has worked for MTV for more than two years, said the new health care plan-with higher deductibles and a $ 2,000 cap on hospital expenses each year-had provoked outrage. "They think they can treat us like children that don’t have families, mortgages or dreams of retirement," she said.
Outside Viacom’s headquarters, several workers held posters with the words, "There’s too many of us to ignore. " It was unclear how many freelancers are on the company’s payroll; an MTV Networks’ spokeswoman said the figure was not known because it rises and falls throughout the year. The company has 5,500 full-time employees, excluding freelancers, around the world.
Two freelancers and one full-time employee, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution, estimated that the percentage of freelancers in some departments exceeded 75 percent. Another labor action is expected to take place outside Viacom later this week. Members of the Writers Guild of America, who have been on strike for five weeks, are expected to picket there on Thursday.
Which of the following is NOT true on MTV Networks’ new benefits plan for freelancers

A．Its benefits plan for freelancers is highly competitive in the industry.
B．Its freelancers cannot get the same benefits as the full-time employees do.
C．The freelancers who are not eligible for benefits should start the waiting period over again on Jan. 1 st.
D．The freelancers are against the new plan which substantially undermined their benefit.
单项选择题


Part A
Directions:
Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D．
Text 1
It is the world’s fourth-most-important food crop, after maize, wheat and rice. It provides more calories, more quickly, using less land and in a wider range of climates than any Other plant. It is, of Course, the potato.
The United Nations has declared 2008 the International Year of the Potato. It hopes that greater awareness of the merits of potatoes will contribute to the achievement of its Millennium Development Goals, by helping to alleviate poverty, improve food security and promote economic development. It is always the international year of this or month of that. But the potato’s unusual history means it is well worth celebrating by readers of The Economist because the potato is intertwined with economic development, trade liberalisation and globalisation.
Unlikely though it seems, the potato promoted economic development by underpinning the industrial revolution in England in the 19th century. It provided a cheap source of calories and was easy to cultivate, so it liberated workers from the land. Potatoes became popular in the north of England, as people there specialised in livestock farming and domestic industry, while farmers in the south (where the soil was more suitable ) concentrated on wheat production. By a happy accident, this concentrated industrial activity in the regions where coal was readily available, and a potato-driven population boom provided ample workers for the new factories. Friedrich Engels even declared that the potato was the equal of iron for its "historically revolutionary role".
The potato promoted free trade by contributing to the abolition of Britain’s Corn Laws-the cause which prompted the founding of The Economist in 1843. The Corn Laws restricted imports of grain into the United Kingdom in order to protect domestic wheat producers. Landowners supported the laws, since cheap imported grain would reduce their income, but industrialists opposed them because imports would drive down the cost of food, allowing people to spend more on manufactured goods. Ultimately it was not the eloquence of the arguments against the Corn Laws that led to their abolition-and more’s the pity. It was the tragedy of the Irish potato famine of 1845, in which 1million Irish perished when the potato crop on which they subsisted succumbed to blight. The need to import grain to relieve the situation in Ireland forced the government, which was dominated by landowners who backed the Corn Laws, to reverse its position.
This paved the way for liberalisation in other areas, and free trade became British policy. As the Duke of Wellington complained at the time, "rotten potatoes have done it all. "
In the form of French fries, served alongside burgers and Coca-Cola, potatoes are now an icon of globalisation. This is quite a turnaround given the scepticism which first greeted them on their arrival in the Old World in the 16th century. Spuds were variously thought to cause leprosy, to be fit only for animals, to be associated with the devil or to be poisonous. They took hold in 18th century Europe only when war and famine meant there was nothing else to eat; people then realised just how versatile and reliable they were. As Adam Smith, one of the potato’s many admirers, observed at the time, "The very general use which is made of potatoes in these kingdoms as food for man is a convincing proof that the prejudices of a nation, with regard to diet, however deeply rooted, are by no means unconquerable. " Mashed, fried, boiled and roast, a humble tuber changed the world, and free-trading globalisers everywhere should celebrate it.
Friedrich Engels declared that the potato was the equal of iron for its " historically revolutionary role", then according to the text, what does this "historically revolutionary role" refer to

A．Its high volume of production, and consequently lower price, greatly supported the workers in the factories then.
B．It liberated workers from the land, thus providing labour force for the industry.
C．It changed the agriculture structure of England, which ultimately resulted in a shift from an agricultural country to an industrial one.
D．It can provide more calories, thus saving land for cotton growing, and consequently boosting the textile industry.
单项选择题

Text 3
Remember Second Life, the virtual world that was supposed to become almost as important as the first one Now populated by no more than 84,000 avatars at a time, it has turned out to be a prime example of how short-lived Internet fads can be. Yet if many adults seem to have given up on virtual worlds, those that cater to children and teenagers are thriving. Several have even found a way to make money.
In America, nearly 10 million children and teenagers visit virtual worlds regularly, estimates eMarketer, a market researcher-a number the firm expects to increase to 15 million by 2013．As in January, there were 112 virtual worlds designed for under-18s with another 81 in development, according to Engage Digital Media, a market research firm.
All cater to different age groups and tastes. In Club Penguin, the market leader, which was bought by Disney in 2007 for a whopping $ 700 million, primary-school children can take on a penguin persona, fit out their own igloo and play games. Habbo Hotel, a service run from Finland, is a global hangout for teenagers who want to customise their own rooms and meet in public places to attend events. Gala Online, based in Silicon Valley, offers similar activities, but is visited mostly by older teens who are into Manga comics.
Not a hit with advertisers, these online worlds earn most of their money from the sale of virtual goods, such as items to spruce up an avatar or a private room. They are paid for in a private currency, which members earn by participating in various activities, trading items or buying them with real dollars.
This sort of stealth tax seems to work. At Gala Online, users spend more than $1 million per month on virtual items, says Craig Sherman, the firm’s chief executive. Running such a virtual economy is not easy, which is why Gaia has hired a full-time economist to grapple with problems that are well known in the real world, such as inflation and an unequal distribution of wealth.
There are other barriers that could limit the growth of virtual worlds for the young, but the main one is parents. Many do not want their offspring roaming virtual worlds, either because they are too commercial or are thought to be too dangerous. Keeping them safe is one of the biggest running costs, because their sponsors have to employ real people to police their realms.
Youngsters are also a fickle bunch, says Simon Levene of Accel Partners, a venture- capital firm. Just as children move from one toy to another, they readily switch worlds or social networks, often without saying goodbye.
Even so, Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst at eMarketer, believes "these worlds are a training ground for the three-dimensional web". If virtual worlds for adults, which so far have been able to retain only hardcore users, manage to hang on for a few years, they may yet have a second life.
In the first paragraph it says that "Several have even found a way to make money" Which of the following could possibly be the "way"

A．Sales of the copies of the game.
B．Sales of virtual goods in the game.
C．Sales of game peripheral goods, such as dolls and OST CDs.
D．Development of different games towards gamers of different ages.
单项选择题

Text 2
Twenty-seven years ago, Egypt revised its secular constitution to enshrine Muslim sharia as "the principal source of legislation". To most citizens, most of the time, that seeming contradiction-between secularism and religion-has not made much difference. Nine in ten Egyptians are Sunni Muslims and expect Islam to govern such things as marriage, divorce and inheritance. Nearly all the rest profess Christianity or Judaism, faiths recognised and protected in Islam. But to the small minority who embrace other faiths, or who have tried to leave Islam, it has, until lately, made an increasingly troubling difference.
Members of Egypt’s 2,000-strong Bahai community, for instance, have found they cannot state their religion on the national identity cards that all Egyptians are obliged to produce to secure such things as driver’s licenses, bank accounts, social insurance and state schooling. Hundreds of Coptic Christians who have converted to Islam, often to escape the Orthodox sect’s ban on divorce, find they cannot revert to their original faith. In some cases, children raised as Christians have discovered that, because a divorced parent converted to Islam, they too have become officially Muslim, and cannot claim otherwise.
Such restrictions on religious freedom are not directly a product of sharia, say human- rights campaigners, but rather of rigid interpretations of Islamic law by over-zealous officials. In their strict view, Bahai belief cannot be recognised as a legitimate faith, since it arose in the 19th century, long after Islam staked its claim to be the final revelation in a chain of prophecies beginning with Adam. Likewise, they brand any attempt to leave Islam, whatever the circumstances, as a form of apostasy, punishable by death.
But such views have lately been challenged. Last year Ali Gomaa, the Grand Mufti, who is the government’s highest religious adviser, declared that nowhere in Islam’s sacred texts did it say that apostasy need be punished in the present rather than by God in the afterlife. In the past month, Egyptian courts have issued two rulings that, while restricted in scope, should ease some bothersome strictures.
Bahais may now leave the space for religion on their identity cards blank. Twelve former Christians won a lawsuit and may now return to their original faith, on condition that their identity documents note their previous adherence to Islam.
Small steps, perhaps, but they point the way towards freedom of choice and citizenship based on equal rights rather than membership of a privileged religion.
What trouble may people who are neither Muslims nor Christians nor Judaists encounter according to the text

A．They cannot preserve their own customs.
B．They cannot state their religion on the national identity cards.
C．They will not be able to divorce.
D．They cannot leave Egypt.
问答题

Part B
Directions:
In the following article, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 41-45, choose the most suitable one from the list A-G to fit into each of the numbered blanks. There are two extra choices, which do not fit in any of the blanks.
Long before man lived on the Earth, there were fishes, reptiles, birds, insects, and some mammals. Although some of these animals were ancestors of kinds living today, others are now extinct, that is, they have no descendants alive now. Nevertheless, we know a great deal about many of them because their bones and shells have been preserved in the rocks as fossils.
41.______That kind of rock in which the remains are found tells us much about the nature of the original land, often of the plants that grew on it, and even of its climate.
When an animal dies, the body, its bones, or shell, may often be carried away by streams into lakes or the sea and there get covered up by mud. If the animal lived in the sea its body would probably sink and be covered with mud. More and more mud would fall upon it until the bones or shell become embedded and preserved. 42．______Thus it follows that there must be many kinds of mammals, birds, and insects of which we know nothing,
43．______Later forms are more complex, and among these are the sea-lilies, relations of the star-fishes, which had long arms and were attached by a long stalk to the sea bed, or to rocks. There were also crab-like creatures, whose bodies were covered with a horny substance, The body segments each had two pairs of legs, one pair for walking on the sandy bottom, the other for swimming. The head was a kind of shield with a pair of compound eyes, often with thousands of lenses. They were usually an inch or two long but some were 2 feet.
The shellfish have a long history in the rock and many different kinds are known. Of these, the ammonites are very interesting and important. They have a shell composed of many chambers, each representing a temporary home of the animal. As the young grew larger it grew a new chamber and sealed off the previous one. Thousands of these can be seen in the rocks on the Dorset Coast.
The first animals with true backbones were fishes, first known in the rocks of 375 million years ago. About 300 million years ago the amphibians, the animals able to live both on land and in water, appeared. They were giant, sometimes 8 feet long, and many of them lived in the swampy pools in which our coal seam, or layer, formed. 44．______About 75 million years ago the Age of Reptiles was over and most of the groups died out. The mammals quickly developed, and we can trace the evolution of many familiar animals such as the elephant and horse. 45．______
[A] The best index fossils tend to be marine creatures. These animals evolved rapidly and spread over large areas of the world.
[B] The amphibians gave rise to the reptiles and for nearly 150 million years these were the principal forms of life on land, in the sea, and in the air.
[C] Many of the later mammals, though now extinct, were known to primitive man and were featured by him in cave paintings and on bone carvings.
[D] Nearly all of the fossils that we know were preserved in rocks formed by water action, and most of these are of animals that lived in or near water.
[E] The earliest animals whose remains have been found were all very simple kinds and lived in the sea.
[F] Many factors can influence how fossils are preserved in rocks. Remains of an organism may be replaced by minerals, dissolved by an acidic solution to leave only their impression, or simply reduced to a more stable form.
[G] From them we can tell their size and shape, how they walked, the kind of food they ate. Very occasionally the rocks show impression of skin, so that, apart from color, we can build up a reasonably accurate picture of an animal that died millions of years ago.

答案： D
问答题

Part C
Directions:
Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese. Your translation should be written clearly .
It is hard to get a grip on food. The UN’s World Health Organisation worries about diminishing supplies and increased prices in poor countries; recent riots and near-riots in Haiti, Bangladesh and Egypt were sparked by the growing cost of wheat and rice. But, as Paul Roberts observes in "The End of Food", the developed world has lived through "a near miraculous period during which the things we ate seemed to grow only more plentiful, more secure, more nutritious, and simply better. " 46． In the second half of the 20th century, world output of corn, wheat and cereal crops more than tripled. Yet there is not enough to feed the rich, the aspirational and the poor in the world. A golden age has been transformed quite suddenly into a global crisis.
Mr Roberts insists that modern agribusiness is unsustainable and becoming more so. "Precisely at the moment in history when we need to shift our system of food production into overdrive, our agricultural engine is breaking down," he says. The industry has taken cheap oil for granted. Oil fuels transportation and farm machinery, and natural gas is the basis of synthetic nitrogen production ( prices have tripled since 2002). Agriculture accounts for three- quarters of freshwater use, and water is becoming an increasingly scarce and expensive resource. Climate change makes some old assumptions about farming redundant. 47．A combination of these factors, he says, will ultimately force a complete rethinking of the way we make food.
For years government subsidies held down grain prices, making food cheaper. 48．Water was also plentiful-it takes 1,000 tonnes of water to produce a tonne of grain-and an ingenious process known as Haber-Bosch makes synthetic nitrogen fertiliser easily available to grain farmers. Ruthless price-cutting at supermarkets means consumers have grown accustomed to eating too much. (In the late 19th century, Europeans already thought Americans ate three or four times more than was necessary. ) The most damaging consequence is that by 2000 31% of American adults were obese, with another 16% defined as overweight. American airlines spend $ 275 million a year more on fuel simply to lift the heavier passengers. Mr Roberts claims that every year obesity causes 400,000 premature deaths in America. Food has become as deadly as tobacco.
A fruitful start would be to halve the size of portions in all American restaurants, but most consumers are reluctant rethinkers. 49．Eating organic product could be a partial solution, although one study suggests that the cost of avoiding intensive farm chemicals would mean a 31% increase in food prices. Government scientists believe that genetically modified crops might be the only way out of the crisis, but a majority of consumers are reluctant to listen.
Is there a model for the future 50．Fashionably, Mr. Roberts believes that a local system based on easily obtainable seasonal foods that do not need to be transported huge distances would form part of a solution. The economics and greenery of this are far from proven. Mr Roberts can find only one country that has made "serious efforts" in this direction: Cuba, hardly a comforting example. The coming food crisis, warns the author, is as intractable as global warming, and no less urgent.

答案： 这些因素结合在一起，他说，将最终迫使我们重新的思考我们的粮食生产方式。[分析] 主体结构是combination wil...
单项选择题

Text 2
Twenty-seven years ago, Egypt revised its secular constitution to enshrine Muslim sharia as "the principal source of legislation". To most citizens, most of the time, that seeming contradiction-between secularism and religion-has not made much difference. Nine in ten Egyptians are Sunni Muslims and expect Islam to govern such things as marriage, divorce and inheritance. Nearly all the rest profess Christianity or Judaism, faiths recognised and protected in Islam. But to the small minority who embrace other faiths, or who have tried to leave Islam, it has, until lately, made an increasingly troubling difference.
Members of Egypt’s 2,000-strong Bahai community, for instance, have found they cannot state their religion on the national identity cards that all Egyptians are obliged to produce to secure such things as driver’s licenses, bank accounts, social insurance and state schooling. Hundreds of Coptic Christians who have converted to Islam, often to escape the Orthodox sect’s ban on divorce, find they cannot revert to their original faith. In some cases, children raised as Christians have discovered that, because a divorced parent converted to Islam, they too have become officially Muslim, and cannot claim otherwise.
Such restrictions on religious freedom are not directly a product of sharia, say human- rights campaigners, but rather of rigid interpretations of Islamic law by over-zealous officials. In their strict view, Bahai belief cannot be recognised as a legitimate faith, since it arose in the 19th century, long after Islam staked its claim to be the final revelation in a chain of prophecies beginning with Adam. Likewise, they brand any attempt to leave Islam, whatever the circumstances, as a form of apostasy, punishable by death.
But such views have lately been challenged. Last year Ali Gomaa, the Grand Mufti, who is the government’s highest religious adviser, declared that nowhere in Islam’s sacred texts did it say that apostasy need be punished in the present rather than by God in the afterlife. In the past month, Egyptian courts have issued two rulings that, while restricted in scope, should ease some bothersome strictures.
Bahais may now leave the space for religion on their identity cards blank. Twelve former Christians won a lawsuit and may now return to their original faith, on condition that their identity documents note their previous adherence to Islam.
Small steps, perhaps, but they point the way towards freedom of choice and citizenship based on equal rights rather than membership of a privileged religion.
Which of the following statements is TRUE according to the text

A．Bahai belief is a legitimate faith according to some Islamic officials.
B．Any attempt to leave Islam will be punishable by death, whatever the situation is.
C．Bahai belief is a religion that boasts a long history.
D．Islamic officials tend to employ strict interpretations of Islamic law when it comes to the issue of religious freedom.
单项选择题

【案例分析题】

Text 4

Scores of workers from MTV Networks walked
off the job yesterday afternoon, filling the sidewalk outside the headquarters
of its corporate parent, Viacom, to protest recent changes in benefits. The
walkout highlighted the concerns of a category of workers who are sometimes
called permalancers: permanent freelancers who work like full-time employees but
do not receive the same benefits.
Waving signs that read
"Shame on Viacom," the workers, most of them in their 20s, demanded that MTV
Networks reverse a plan to reduce health and dental benefits for freelancers
beginning On Jan. 1st. In a statement, MTV Networks noted that its benefits
program for full-time employees had also undergone changes, and it emphasized
that the plan for freelancers was still highly competitive within the industry.
Many freelancers receive no corporate benefits. But some of the protesters
asserted that corporations were competing to see which could provide the most
mediocre health care coverage. Matthew Yonda, who works at Nickelodeon, held a
sign that labeled the network "Sick-elodeon. " "I’ve worked here every day for
three years-I’m not a freelancer," Mr. Yonda said. "They just call us
freelancers in order to bar us from getting the same benefits as employees. "

The changes to the benefits package were announced last
Tuesday. Freelancers were told that they would become eligible for benefits
after 160 days of work, beginning in January. While that eased previous
eligibility rules, which required freelancers to work for 52 weeks before
becoming eligible, it would have required all freelancers not yet eligible for
benefits to start the waiting period over again on Jan. 1st. The 401 (k) plan
was also removed. On Thursday, acknowledging the complaints, MTV Networks
reinstated the 401 (k) plan and said freelancers who had worked consistently
since March would be eligible.
Fueled by a series of blog
posts on the media Web site Gawker-the first post was headlined "The Viacom
Permalance Slave System"-a loose cohort of freelancers created protest stickers
and distributed walkout fliers last week. Caroline O’Hare, a unit manager who
has worked for MTV for more than two years, said the new health care plan-with
higher deductibles and a $ 2,000 cap on hospital expenses each year-had provoked
outrage. "They think they can treat us like children that don’t have families,
mortgages or dreams of retirement," she said.
Outside
Viacom’s headquarters, several workers held posters with the words, "There’s too
many of us to ignore. " It was unclear how many freelancers are on the company’s
payroll; an MTV Networks’ spokeswoman said the figure was not known because it
rises and falls throughout the year. The company has 5,500 full-time employees,
excluding freelancers, around the world.
Two freelancers
and one full-time employee, who asked not to be identified for fear of
retribution, estimated that the percentage of freelancers in some departments
exceeded 75 percent. Another labor action is expected to take place outside
Viacom later this week. Members of the Writers Guild of America, who have been
on strike for five weeks, are expected to picket there on Thursday.
What can we infer from the assertion that "corporations were competing to see which could provide the most mediocre health care coverage" （）

A．Some benefits packages for full-time employees have already been a standard for freelancers.
B．Those who provide lesser health care coverage will be degraded in the industry evaluation.
C．Some companies use mediocre health care coverage as an edge in attracting freelancers.
D．It is a common practice for the companies not to provide adequate health care coverage for freelancers.
问答题

Part B
Directions:
In the following article, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 41-45, choose the most suitable one from the list A-G to fit into each of the numbered blanks. There are two extra choices, which do not fit in any of the blanks.
Long before man lived on the Earth, there were fishes, reptiles, birds, insects, and some mammals. Although some of these animals were ancestors of kinds living today, others are now extinct, that is, they have no descendants alive now. Nevertheless, we know a great deal about many of them because their bones and shells have been preserved in the rocks as fossils.
41.______That kind of rock in which the remains are found tells us much about the nature of the original land, often of the plants that grew on it, and even of its climate.
When an animal dies, the body, its bones, or shell, may often be carried away by streams into lakes or the sea and there get covered up by mud. If the animal lived in the sea its body would probably sink and be covered with mud. More and more mud would fall upon it until the bones or shell become embedded and preserved. 42．______Thus it follows that there must be many kinds of mammals, birds, and insects of which we know nothing,
43．______Later forms are more complex, and among these are the sea-lilies, relations of the star-fishes, which had long arms and were attached by a long stalk to the sea bed, or to rocks. There were also crab-like creatures, whose bodies were covered with a horny substance, The body segments each had two pairs of legs, one pair for walking on the sandy bottom, the other for swimming. The head was a kind of shield with a pair of compound eyes, often with thousands of lenses. They were usually an inch or two long but some were 2 feet.
The shellfish have a long history in the rock and many different kinds are known. Of these, the ammonites are very interesting and important. They have a shell composed of many chambers, each representing a temporary home of the animal. As the young grew larger it grew a new chamber and sealed off the previous one. Thousands of these can be seen in the rocks on the Dorset Coast.
The first animals with true backbones were fishes, first known in the rocks of 375 million years ago. About 300 million years ago the amphibians, the animals able to live both on land and in water, appeared. They were giant, sometimes 8 feet long, and many of them lived in the swampy pools in which our coal seam, or layer, formed. 44．______About 75 million years ago the Age of Reptiles was over and most of the groups died out. The mammals quickly developed, and we can trace the evolution of many familiar animals such as the elephant and horse. 45．______
[A] The best index fossils tend to be marine creatures. These animals evolved rapidly and spread over large areas of the world.
[B] The amphibians gave rise to the reptiles and for nearly 150 million years these were the principal forms of life on land, in the sea, and in the air.
[C] Many of the later mammals, though now extinct, were known to primitive man and were featured by him in cave paintings and on bone carvings.
[D] Nearly all of the fossils that we know were preserved in rocks formed by water action, and most of these are of animals that lived in or near water.
[E] The earliest animals whose remains have been found were all very simple kinds and lived in the sea.
[F] Many factors can influence how fossils are preserved in rocks. Remains of an organism may be replaced by minerals, dissolved by an acidic solution to leave only their impression, or simply reduced to a more stable form.
[G] From them we can tell their size and shape, how they walked, the kind of food they ate. Very occasionally the rocks show impression of skin, so that, apart from color, we can build up a reasonably accurate picture of an animal that died millions of years ago.

答案： E
单项选择题

Text 3
Remember Second Life, the virtual world that was supposed to become almost as important as the first one Now populated by no more than 84,000 avatars at a time, it has turned out to be a prime example of how short-lived Internet fads can be. Yet if many adults seem to have given up on virtual worlds, those that cater to children and teenagers are thriving. Several have even found a way to make money.
In America, nearly 10 million children and teenagers visit virtual worlds regularly, estimates eMarketer, a market researcher-a number the firm expects to increase to 15 million by 2013．As in January, there were 112 virtual worlds designed for under-18s with another 81 in development, according to Engage Digital Media, a market research firm.
All cater to different age groups and tastes. In Club Penguin, the market leader, which was bought by Disney in 2007 for a whopping $ 700 million, primary-school children can take on a penguin persona, fit out their own igloo and play games. Habbo Hotel, a service run from Finland, is a global hangout for teenagers who want to customise their own rooms and meet in public places to attend events. Gala Online, based in Silicon Valley, offers similar activities, but is visited mostly by older teens who are into Manga comics.
Not a hit with advertisers, these online worlds earn most of their money from the sale of virtual goods, such as items to spruce up an avatar or a private room. They are paid for in a private currency, which members earn by participating in various activities, trading items or buying them with real dollars.
This sort of stealth tax seems to work. At Gala Online, users spend more than $1 million per month on virtual items, says Craig Sherman, the firm’s chief executive. Running such a virtual economy is not easy, which is why Gaia has hired a full-time economist to grapple with problems that are well known in the real world, such as inflation and an unequal distribution of wealth.
There are other barriers that could limit the growth of virtual worlds for the young, but the main one is parents. Many do not want their offspring roaming virtual worlds, either because they are too commercial or are thought to be too dangerous. Keeping them safe is one of the biggest running costs, because their sponsors have to employ real people to police their realms.
Youngsters are also a fickle bunch, says Simon Levene of Accel Partners, a venture- capital firm. Just as children move from one toy to another, they readily switch worlds or social networks, often without saying goodbye.
Even so, Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst at eMarketer, believes "these worlds are a training ground for the three-dimensional web". If virtual worlds for adults, which so far have been able to retain only hardcore users, manage to hang on for a few years, they may yet have a second life.
Why do online games not mean "a hit with advertisers"

A．The advertisers do not have appropriate ways to advertise in the online world.
B．Online game companies do not want to cooperate with the advertisers.
C．The profit pattern of online games does not leave much space for them.
D．The advertisers deem that online games will not be a rising industry.
单项选择题


Part A
Directions:
Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D．
Text 1
It is the world’s fourth-most-important food crop, after maize, wheat and rice. It provides more calories, more quickly, using less land and in a wider range of climates than any Other plant. It is, of Course, the potato.
The United Nations has declared 2008 the International Year of the Potato. It hopes that greater awareness of the merits of potatoes will contribute to the achievement of its Millennium Development Goals, by helping to alleviate poverty, improve food security and promote economic development. It is always the international year of this or month of that. But the potato’s unusual history means it is well worth celebrating by readers of The Economist because the potato is intertwined with economic development, trade liberalisation and globalisation.
Unlikely though it seems, the potato promoted economic development by underpinning the industrial revolution in England in the 19th century. It provided a cheap source of calories and was easy to cultivate, so it liberated workers from the land. Potatoes became popular in the north of England, as people there specialised in livestock farming and domestic industry, while farmers in the south (where the soil was more suitable ) concentrated on wheat production. By a happy accident, this concentrated industrial activity in the regions where coal was readily available, and a potato-driven population boom provided ample workers for the new factories. Friedrich Engels even declared that the potato was the equal of iron for its "historically revolutionary role".
The potato promoted free trade by contributing to the abolition of Britain’s Corn Laws-the cause which prompted the founding of The Economist in 1843. The Corn Laws restricted imports of grain into the United Kingdom in order to protect domestic wheat producers. Landowners supported the laws, since cheap imported grain would reduce their income, but industrialists opposed them because imports would drive down the cost of food, allowing people to spend more on manufactured goods. Ultimately it was not the eloquence of the arguments against the Corn Laws that led to their abolition-and more’s the pity. It was the tragedy of the Irish potato famine of 1845, in which 1million Irish perished when the potato crop on which they subsisted succumbed to blight. The need to import grain to relieve the situation in Ireland forced the government, which was dominated by landowners who backed the Corn Laws, to reverse its position.
This paved the way for liberalisation in other areas, and free trade became British policy. As the Duke of Wellington complained at the time, "rotten potatoes have done it all. "
In the form of French fries, served alongside burgers and Coca-Cola, potatoes are now an icon of globalisation. This is quite a turnaround given the scepticism which first greeted them on their arrival in the Old World in the 16th century. Spuds were variously thought to cause leprosy, to be fit only for animals, to be associated with the devil or to be poisonous. They took hold in 18th century Europe only when war and famine meant there was nothing else to eat; people then realised just how versatile and reliable they were. As Adam Smith, one of the potato’s many admirers, observed at the time, "The very general use which is made of potatoes in these kingdoms as food for man is a convincing proof that the prejudices of a nation, with regard to diet, however deeply rooted, are by no means unconquerable. " Mashed, fried, boiled and roast, a humble tuber changed the world, and free-trading globalisers everywhere should celebrate it.
According to the text, which of the following is NOT true about Britain’s Corn Laws

A．These laws were ultimately abolished after a fierce argument in the Parliament.
B．Landowners supported the laws because domestic products were more expensive, and then they could gain more.
C．Industrialists opposed the laws because cheap imported grains would help them develop the market.
D．Irish potato famine of 1845 directly forced the government to reverse its position of sustaining these laws.
问答题

Part C
Directions:
Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese. Your translation should be written clearly .
It is hard to get a grip on food. The UN’s World Health Organisation worries about diminishing supplies and increased prices in poor countries; recent riots and near-riots in Haiti, Bangladesh and Egypt were sparked by the growing cost of wheat and rice. But, as Paul Roberts observes in "The End of Food", the developed world has lived through "a near miraculous period during which the things we ate seemed to grow only more plentiful, more secure, more nutritious, and simply better. " 46． In the second half of the 20th century, world output of corn, wheat and cereal crops more than tripled. Yet there is not enough to feed the rich, the aspirational and the poor in the world. A golden age has been transformed quite suddenly into a global crisis.
Mr Roberts insists that modern agribusiness is unsustainable and becoming more so. "Precisely at the moment in history when we need to shift our system of food production into overdrive, our agricultural engine is breaking down," he says. The industry has taken cheap oil for granted. Oil fuels transportation and farm machinery, and natural gas is the basis of synthetic nitrogen production ( prices have tripled since 2002). Agriculture accounts for three- quarters of freshwater use, and water is becoming an increasingly scarce and expensive resource. Climate change makes some old assumptions about farming redundant. 47．A combination of these factors, he says, will ultimately force a complete rethinking of the way we make food.
For years government subsidies held down grain prices, making food cheaper. 48．Water was also plentiful-it takes 1,000 tonnes of water to produce a tonne of grain-and an ingenious process known as Haber-Bosch makes synthetic nitrogen fertiliser easily available to grain farmers. Ruthless price-cutting at supermarkets means consumers have grown accustomed to eating too much. (In the late 19th century, Europeans already thought Americans ate three or four times more than was necessary. ) The most damaging consequence is that by 2000 31% of American adults were obese, with another 16% defined as overweight. American airlines spend $ 275 million a year more on fuel simply to lift the heavier passengers. Mr Roberts claims that every year obesity causes 400,000 premature deaths in America. Food has become as deadly as tobacco.
A fruitful start would be to halve the size of portions in all American restaurants, but most consumers are reluctant rethinkers. 49．Eating organic product could be a partial solution, although one study suggests that the cost of avoiding intensive farm chemicals would mean a 31% increase in food prices. Government scientists believe that genetically modified crops might be the only way out of the crisis, but a majority of consumers are reluctant to listen.
Is there a model for the future 50．Fashionably, Mr. Roberts believes that a local system based on easily obtainable seasonal foods that do not need to be transported huge distances would form part of a solution. The economics and greenery of this are far from proven. Mr Roberts can find only one country that has made "serious efforts" in this direction: Cuba, hardly a comforting example. The coming food crisis, warns the author, is as intractable as global warming, and no less urgent.

答案： 水资源也比较充足——尽管生产一吨粮食就需要1000吨水——而且利用哈伯-博施法的发明，使得农民们可以获得廉价的氮肥。[分...
单项选择题

Text 4
Scores of workers from MTV Networks walked off the job yesterday afternoon, filling the sidewalk outside the headquarters of its corporate parent, Viacom, to protest recent changes in benefits. The walkout highlighted the concerns of a category of workers who are sometimes called permalancers: permanent freelancers who work like full-time employees but do not receive the same benefits.
Waving signs that read "Shame on Viacom," the workers, most of them in their 20s, demanded that MTV Networks reverse a plan to reduce health and dental benefits for freelancers beginning On Jan. 1st. In a statement, MTV Networks noted that its benefits program for full-time employees had also undergone changes, and it emphasized that the plan for freelancers was still highly competitive within the industry. Many freelancers receive no corporate benefits. But some of the protesters asserted that corporations were competing to see which could provide the most mediocre health care coverage. Matthew Yonda, who works at Nickelodeon, held a sign that labeled the network "Sick-elodeon. " "I’ve worked here every day for three years-I’m not a freelancer," Mr. Yonda said. "They just call us freelancers in order to bar us from getting the same benefits as employees. "
The changes to the benefits package were announced last Tuesday. Freelancers were told that they would become eligible for benefits after 160 days of work, beginning in January. While that eased previous eligibility rules, which required freelancers to work for 52 weeks before becoming eligible, it would have required all freelancers not yet eligible for benefits to start the waiting period over again on Jan. 1st. The 401 (k) plan was also removed. On Thursday, acknowledging the complaints, MTV Networks reinstated the 401 (k) plan and said freelancers who had worked consistently since March would be eligible.
Fueled by a series of blog posts on the media Web site Gawker-the first post was headlined "The Viacom Permalance Slave System"-a loose cohort of freelancers created protest stickers and distributed walkout fliers last week. Caroline O’Hare, a unit manager who has worked for MTV for more than two years, said the new health care plan-with higher deductibles and a $ 2,000 cap on hospital expenses each year-had provoked outrage. "They think they can treat us like children that don’t have families, mortgages or dreams of retirement," she said.
Outside Viacom’s headquarters, several workers held posters with the words, "There’s too many of us to ignore. " It was unclear how many freelancers are on the company’s payroll; an MTV Networks’ spokeswoman said the figure was not known because it rises and falls throughout the year. The company has 5,500 full-time employees, excluding freelancers, around the world.
Two freelancers and one full-time employee, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution, estimated that the percentage of freelancers in some departments exceeded 75 percent. Another labor action is expected to take place outside Viacom later this week. Members of the Writers Guild of America, who have been on strike for five weeks, are expected to picket there on Thursday.
What does the word "reinstate" (Line 6, Paragraph 3) most probably mean

A．redesign
B．repair
C．restore
D．reset
问答题

Part B
Directions:
In the following article, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 41-45, choose the most suitable one from the list A-G to fit into each of the numbered blanks. There are two extra choices, which do not fit in any of the blanks.
Long before man lived on the Earth, there were fishes, reptiles, birds, insects, and some mammals. Although some of these animals were ancestors of kinds living today, others are now extinct, that is, they have no descendants alive now. Nevertheless, we know a great deal about many of them because their bones and shells have been preserved in the rocks as fossils.
41.______That kind of rock in which the remains are found tells us much about the nature of the original land, often of the plants that grew on it, and even of its climate.
When an animal dies, the body, its bones, or shell, may often be carried away by streams into lakes or the sea and there get covered up by mud. If the animal lived in the sea its body would probably sink and be covered with mud. More and more mud would fall upon it until the bones or shell become embedded and preserved. 42．______Thus it follows that there must be many kinds of mammals, birds, and insects of which we know nothing,
43．______Later forms are more complex, and among these are the sea-lilies, relations of the star-fishes, which had long arms and were attached by a long stalk to the sea bed, or to rocks. There were also crab-like creatures, whose bodies were covered with a horny substance, The body segments each had two pairs of legs, one pair for walking on the sandy bottom, the other for swimming. The head was a kind of shield with a pair of compound eyes, often with thousands of lenses. They were usually an inch or two long but some were 2 feet.
The shellfish have a long history in the rock and many different kinds are known. Of these, the ammonites are very interesting and important. They have a shell composed of many chambers, each representing a temporary home of the animal. As the young grew larger it grew a new chamber and sealed off the previous one. Thousands of these can be seen in the rocks on the Dorset Coast.
The first animals with true backbones were fishes, first known in the rocks of 375 million years ago. About 300 million years ago the amphibians, the animals able to live both on land and in water, appeared. They were giant, sometimes 8 feet long, and many of them lived in the swampy pools in which our coal seam, or layer, formed. 44．______About 75 million years ago the Age of Reptiles was over and most of the groups died out. The mammals quickly developed, and we can trace the evolution of many familiar animals such as the elephant and horse. 45．______
[A] The best index fossils tend to be marine creatures. These animals evolved rapidly and spread over large areas of the world.
[B] The amphibians gave rise to the reptiles and for nearly 150 million years these were the principal forms of life on land, in the sea, and in the air.
[C] Many of the later mammals, though now extinct, were known to primitive man and were featured by him in cave paintings and on bone carvings.
[D] Nearly all of the fossils that we know were preserved in rocks formed by water action, and most of these are of animals that lived in or near water.
[E] The earliest animals whose remains have been found were all very simple kinds and lived in the sea.
[F] Many factors can influence how fossils are preserved in rocks. Remains of an organism may be replaced by minerals, dissolved by an acidic solution to leave only their impression, or simply reduced to a more stable form.
[G] From them we can tell their size and shape, how they walked, the kind of food they ate. Very occasionally the rocks show impression of skin, so that, apart from color, we can build up a reasonably accurate picture of an animal that died millions of years ago.

答案： B
单项选择题

Text 2
Twenty-seven years ago, Egypt revised its secular constitution to enshrine Muslim sharia as "the principal source of legislation". To most citizens, most of the time, that seeming contradiction-between secularism and religion-has not made much difference. Nine in ten Egyptians are Sunni Muslims and expect Islam to govern such things as marriage, divorce and inheritance. Nearly all the rest profess Christianity or Judaism, faiths recognised and protected in Islam. But to the small minority who embrace other faiths, or who have tried to leave Islam, it has, until lately, made an increasingly troubling difference.
Members of Egypt’s 2,000-strong Bahai community, for instance, have found they cannot state their religion on the national identity cards that all Egyptians are obliged to produce to secure such things as driver’s licenses, bank accounts, social insurance and state schooling. Hundreds of Coptic Christians who have converted to Islam, often to escape the Orthodox sect’s ban on divorce, find they cannot revert to their original faith. In some cases, children raised as Christians have discovered that, because a divorced parent converted to Islam, they too have become officially Muslim, and cannot claim otherwise.
Such restrictions on religious freedom are not directly a product of sharia, say human- rights campaigners, but rather of rigid interpretations of Islamic law by over-zealous officials. In their strict view, Bahai belief cannot be recognised as a legitimate faith, since it arose in the 19th century, long after Islam staked its claim to be the final revelation in a chain of prophecies beginning with Adam. Likewise, they brand any attempt to leave Islam, whatever the circumstances, as a form of apostasy, punishable by death.
But such views have lately been challenged. Last year Ali Gomaa, the Grand Mufti, who is the government’s highest religious adviser, declared that nowhere in Islam’s sacred texts did it say that apostasy need be punished in the present rather than by God in the afterlife. In the past month, Egyptian courts have issued two rulings that, while restricted in scope, should ease some bothersome strictures.
Bahais may now leave the space for religion on their identity cards blank. Twelve former Christians won a lawsuit and may now return to their original faith, on condition that their identity documents note their previous adherence to Islam.
Small steps, perhaps, but they point the way towards freedom of choice and citizenship based on equal rights rather than membership of a privileged religion.
What progress has now been made toward religious freedom

A．They can revert to their original faith freely, as long as it is clearly stated on their ID cards that they used to be in Islam.
B．People may be freely reverted to their original faith, on condition that their children remain in Islam.
C．To those who converted to Islam, only their children can be reverted to their original faith.
D．The government has officially declared that such restriction on religious freedom would be abolished.
单项选择题


Part A
Directions:
Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D．
Text 1
It is the world’s fourth-most-important food crop, after maize, wheat and rice. It provides more calories, more quickly, using less land and in a wider range of climates than any Other plant. It is, of Course, the potato.
The United Nations has declared 2008 the International Year of the Potato. It hopes that greater awareness of the merits of potatoes will contribute to the achievement of its Millennium Development Goals, by helping to alleviate poverty, improve food security and promote economic development. It is always the international year of this or month of that. But the potato’s unusual history means it is well worth celebrating by readers of The Economist because the potato is intertwined with economic development, trade liberalisation and globalisation.
Unlikely though it seems, the potato promoted economic development by underpinning the industrial revolution in England in the 19th century. It provided a cheap source of calories and was easy to cultivate, so it liberated workers from the land. Potatoes became popular in the north of England, as people there specialised in livestock farming and domestic industry, while farmers in the south (where the soil was more suitable ) concentrated on wheat production. By a happy accident, this concentrated industrial activity in the regions where coal was readily available, and a potato-driven population boom provided ample workers for the new factories. Friedrich Engels even declared that the potato was the equal of iron for its "historically revolutionary role".
The potato promoted free trade by contributing to the abolition of Britain’s Corn Laws-the cause which prompted the founding of The Economist in 1843. The Corn Laws restricted imports of grain into the United Kingdom in order to protect domestic wheat producers. Landowners supported the laws, since cheap imported grain would reduce their income, but industrialists opposed them because imports would drive down the cost of food, allowing people to spend more on manufactured goods. Ultimately it was not the eloquence of the arguments against the Corn Laws that led to their abolition-and more’s the pity. It was the tragedy of the Irish potato famine of 1845, in which 1million Irish perished when the potato crop on which they subsisted succumbed to blight. The need to import grain to relieve the situation in Ireland forced the government, which was dominated by landowners who backed the Corn Laws, to reverse its position.
This paved the way for liberalisation in other areas, and free trade became British policy. As the Duke of Wellington complained at the time, "rotten potatoes have done it all. "
In the form of French fries, served alongside burgers and Coca-Cola, potatoes are now an icon of globalisation. This is quite a turnaround given the scepticism which first greeted them on their arrival in the Old World in the 16th century. Spuds were variously thought to cause leprosy, to be fit only for animals, to be associated with the devil or to be poisonous. They took hold in 18th century Europe only when war and famine meant there was nothing else to eat; people then realised just how versatile and reliable they were. As Adam Smith, one of the potato’s many admirers, observed at the time, "The very general use which is made of potatoes in these kingdoms as food for man is a convincing proof that the prejudices of a nation, with regard to diet, however deeply rooted, are by no means unconquerable. " Mashed, fried, boiled and roast, a humble tuber changed the world, and free-trading globalisers everywhere should celebrate it.
Why were potatoes at last accepted by Europeans

A．They changed their diet to a more diversified trend.
B．French fries swept all over the world alongside burgers and Coca-Cola.
C．Potatoes saved them when war and famine stroke Europe in 18th century.
D．It became very important goods for Europe in trading with Asia.
单项选择题

Text 3
Remember Second Life, the virtual world that was supposed to become almost as important as the first one Now populated by no more than 84,000 avatars at a time, it has turned out to be a prime example of how short-lived Internet fads can be. Yet if many adults seem to have given up on virtual worlds, those that cater to children and teenagers are thriving. Several have even found a way to make money.
In America, nearly 10 million children and teenagers visit virtual worlds regularly, estimates eMarketer, a market researcher-a number the firm expects to increase to 15 million by 2013．As in January, there were 112 virtual worlds designed for under-18s with another 81 in development, according to Engage Digital Media, a market research firm.
All cater to different age groups and tastes. In Club Penguin, the market leader, which was bought by Disney in 2007 for a whopping $ 700 million, primary-school children can take on a penguin persona, fit out their own igloo and play games. Habbo Hotel, a service run from Finland, is a global hangout for teenagers who want to customise their own rooms and meet in public places to attend events. Gala Online, based in Silicon Valley, offers similar activities, but is visited mostly by older teens who are into Manga comics.
Not a hit with advertisers, these online worlds earn most of their money from the sale of virtual goods, such as items to spruce up an avatar or a private room. They are paid for in a private currency, which members earn by participating in various activities, trading items or buying them with real dollars.
This sort of stealth tax seems to work. At Gala Online, users spend more than $1 million per month on virtual items, says Craig Sherman, the firm’s chief executive. Running such a virtual economy is not easy, which is why Gaia has hired a full-time economist to grapple with problems that are well known in the real world, such as inflation and an unequal distribution of wealth.
There are other barriers that could limit the growth of virtual worlds for the young, but the main one is parents. Many do not want their offspring roaming virtual worlds, either because they are too commercial or are thought to be too dangerous. Keeping them safe is one of the biggest running costs, because their sponsors have to employ real people to police their realms.
Youngsters are also a fickle bunch, says Simon Levene of Accel Partners, a venture- capital firm. Just as children move from one toy to another, they readily switch worlds or social networks, often without saying goodbye.
Even so, Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst at eMarketer, believes "these worlds are a training ground for the three-dimensional web". If virtual worlds for adults, which so far have been able to retain only hardcore users, manage to hang on for a few years, they may yet have a second life.
Which of the following may NOT be the barriers to limit the growth of virtual worlds

A．Inflation and unequal distributions of wealth can also happen in the virtual world.
B．The virtual world could grow complicated enough to force employment of special staff to manage it.
C．Parents would keep their children from the online games in order to keep them safe.
D．The online game companies will have to keep the virtual world safe, at some rather high cost.
问答题

Part C
Directions:
Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese. Your translation should be written clearly .
It is hard to get a grip on food. The UN’s World Health Organisation worries about diminishing supplies and increased prices in poor countries; recent riots and near-riots in Haiti, Bangladesh and Egypt were sparked by the growing cost of wheat and rice. But, as Paul Roberts observes in "The End of Food", the developed world has lived through "a near miraculous period during which the things we ate seemed to grow only more plentiful, more secure, more nutritious, and simply better. " 46． In the second half of the 20th century, world output of corn, wheat and cereal crops more than tripled. Yet there is not enough to feed the rich, the aspirational and the poor in the world. A golden age has been transformed quite suddenly into a global crisis.
Mr Roberts insists that modern agribusiness is unsustainable and becoming more so. "Precisely at the moment in history when we need to shift our system of food production into overdrive, our agricultural engine is breaking down," he says. The industry has taken cheap oil for granted. Oil fuels transportation and farm machinery, and natural gas is the basis of synthetic nitrogen production ( prices have tripled since 2002). Agriculture accounts for three- quarters of freshwater use, and water is becoming an increasingly scarce and expensive resource. Climate change makes some old assumptions about farming redundant. 47．A combination of these factors, he says, will ultimately force a complete rethinking of the way we make food.
For years government subsidies held down grain prices, making food cheaper. 48．Water was also plentiful-it takes 1,000 tonnes of water to produce a tonne of grain-and an ingenious process known as Haber-Bosch makes synthetic nitrogen fertiliser easily available to grain farmers. Ruthless price-cutting at supermarkets means consumers have grown accustomed to eating too much. (In the late 19th century, Europeans already thought Americans ate three or four times more than was necessary. ) The most damaging consequence is that by 2000 31% of American adults were obese, with another 16% defined as overweight. American airlines spend $ 275 million a year more on fuel simply to lift the heavier passengers. Mr Roberts claims that every year obesity causes 400,000 premature deaths in America. Food has become as deadly as tobacco.
A fruitful start would be to halve the size of portions in all American restaurants, but most consumers are reluctant rethinkers. 49．Eating organic product could be a partial solution, although one study suggests that the cost of avoiding intensive farm chemicals would mean a 31% increase in food prices. Government scientists believe that genetically modified crops might be the only way out of the crisis, but a majority of consumers are reluctant to listen.
Is there a model for the future 50．Fashionably, Mr. Roberts believes that a local system based on easily obtainable seasonal foods that do not need to be transported huge distances would form part of a solution. The economics and greenery of this are far from proven. Mr Roberts can find only one country that has made "serious efforts" in this direction: Cuba, hardly a comforting example. The coming food crisis, warns the author, is as intractable as global warming, and no less urgent.

答案： 进食有机食物或许能在一定程度上解决问题，可一项研究表明，如果要避免大量使用农业化学肥料，粮食价格将要上涨31%。[分析]...
单项选择题

Text 4
Scores of workers from MTV Networks walked off the job yesterday afternoon, filling the sidewalk outside the headquarters of its corporate parent, Viacom, to protest recent changes in benefits. The walkout highlighted the concerns of a category of workers who are sometimes called permalancers: permanent freelancers who work like full-time employees but do not receive the same benefits.
Waving signs that read "Shame on Viacom," the workers, most of them in their 20s, demanded that MTV Networks reverse a plan to reduce health and dental benefits for freelancers beginning On Jan. 1st. In a statement, MTV Networks noted that its benefits program for full-time employees had also undergone changes, and it emphasized that the plan for freelancers was still highly competitive within the industry. Many freelancers receive no corporate benefits. But some of the protesters asserted that corporations were competing to see which could provide the most mediocre health care coverage. Matthew Yonda, who works at Nickelodeon, held a sign that labeled the network "Sick-elodeon. " "I’ve worked here every day for three years-I’m not a freelancer," Mr. Yonda said. "They just call us freelancers in order to bar us from getting the same benefits as employees. "
The changes to the benefits package were announced last Tuesday. Freelancers were told that they would become eligible for benefits after 160 days of work, beginning in January. While that eased previous eligibility rules, which required freelancers to work for 52 weeks before becoming eligible, it would have required all freelancers not yet eligible for benefits to start the waiting period over again on Jan. 1st. The 401 (k) plan was also removed. On Thursday, acknowledging the complaints, MTV Networks reinstated the 401 (k) plan and said freelancers who had worked consistently since March would be eligible.
Fueled by a series of blog posts on the media Web site Gawker-the first post was headlined "The Viacom Permalance Slave System"-a loose cohort of freelancers created protest stickers and distributed walkout fliers last week. Caroline O’Hare, a unit manager who has worked for MTV for more than two years, said the new health care plan-with higher deductibles and a $ 2,000 cap on hospital expenses each year-had provoked outrage. "They think they can treat us like children that don’t have families, mortgages or dreams of retirement," she said.
Outside Viacom’s headquarters, several workers held posters with the words, "There’s too many of us to ignore. " It was unclear how many freelancers are on the company’s payroll; an MTV Networks’ spokeswoman said the figure was not known because it rises and falls throughout the year. The company has 5,500 full-time employees, excluding freelancers, around the world.
Two freelancers and one full-time employee, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution, estimated that the percentage of freelancers in some departments exceeded 75 percent. Another labor action is expected to take place outside Viacom later this week. Members of the Writers Guild of America, who have been on strike for five weeks, are expected to picket there on Thursday.
Why did the MTV Networks’ spokeswoman say the number of freelancers was unclear

A．The figure rises and falls all over the year.
B．The company wants to keep it as a secret so that they can better stand the protest.
C．As they are only freelancers, their payrolls are not included in the financial system of the company.
D．They do not want to treat freelancers the same as full-time employees.
单项选择题

Text 2
Twenty-seven years ago, Egypt revised its secular constitution to enshrine Muslim sharia as "the principal source of legislation". To most citizens, most of the time, that seeming contradiction-between secularism and religion-has not made much difference. Nine in ten Egyptians are Sunni Muslims and expect Islam to govern such things as marriage, divorce and inheritance. Nearly all the rest profess Christianity or Judaism, faiths recognised and protected in Islam. But to the small minority who embrace other faiths, or who have tried to leave Islam, it has, until lately, made an increasingly troubling difference.
Members of Egypt’s 2,000-strong Bahai community, for instance, have found they cannot state their religion on the national identity cards that all Egyptians are obliged to produce to secure such things as driver’s licenses, bank accounts, social insurance and state schooling. Hundreds of Coptic Christians who have converted to Islam, often to escape the Orthodox sect’s ban on divorce, find they cannot revert to their original faith. In some cases, children raised as Christians have discovered that, because a divorced parent converted to Islam, they too have become officially Muslim, and cannot claim otherwise.
Such restrictions on religious freedom are not directly a product of sharia, say human- rights campaigners, but rather of rigid interpretations of Islamic law by over-zealous officials. In their strict view, Bahai belief cannot be recognised as a legitimate faith, since it arose in the 19th century, long after Islam staked its claim to be the final revelation in a chain of prophecies beginning with Adam. Likewise, they brand any attempt to leave Islam, whatever the circumstances, as a form of apostasy, punishable by death.
But such views have lately been challenged. Last year Ali Gomaa, the Grand Mufti, who is the government’s highest religious adviser, declared that nowhere in Islam’s sacred texts did it say that apostasy need be punished in the present rather than by God in the afterlife. In the past month, Egyptian courts have issued two rulings that, while restricted in scope, should ease some bothersome strictures.
Bahais may now leave the space for religion on their identity cards blank. Twelve former Christians won a lawsuit and may now return to their original faith, on condition that their identity documents note their previous adherence to Islam.
Small steps, perhaps, but they point the way towards freedom of choice and citizenship based on equal rights rather than membership of a privileged religion.
What is the main purpose of this text

A．To introduce the status quo of religious freedom in Egypt.
B．To ask for help in alleviating the restricted religious freedom in Egypt.
C．To force the government into action of some changes.
D．To promote the idea that freedom of choice and citizenship shall be based on equal rights rather than membership of a privileged religion.
单项选择题

Text 3
Remember Second Life, the virtual world that was supposed to become almost as important as the first one Now populated by no more than 84,000 avatars at a time, it has turned out to be a prime example of how short-lived Internet fads can be. Yet if many adults seem to have given up on virtual worlds, those that cater to children and teenagers are thriving. Several have even found a way to make money.
In America, nearly 10 million children and teenagers visit virtual worlds regularly, estimates eMarketer, a market researcher-a number the firm expects to increase to 15 million by 2013．As in January, there were 112 virtual worlds designed for under-18s with another 81 in development, according to Engage Digital Media, a market research firm.
All cater to different age groups and tastes. In Club Penguin, the market leader, which was bought by Disney in 2007 for a whopping $ 700 million, primary-school children can take on a penguin persona, fit out their own igloo and play games. Habbo Hotel, a service run from Finland, is a global hangout for teenagers who want to customise their own rooms and meet in public places to attend events. Gala Online, based in Silicon Valley, offers similar activities, but is visited mostly by older teens who are into Manga comics.
Not a hit with advertisers, these online worlds earn most of their money from the sale of virtual goods, such as items to spruce up an avatar or a private room. They are paid for in a private currency, which members earn by participating in various activities, trading items or buying them with real dollars.
This sort of stealth tax seems to work. At Gala Online, users spend more than $1 million per month on virtual items, says Craig Sherman, the firm’s chief executive. Running such a virtual economy is not easy, which is why Gaia has hired a full-time economist to grapple with problems that are well known in the real world, such as inflation and an unequal distribution of wealth.
There are other barriers that could limit the growth of virtual worlds for the young, but the main one is parents. Many do not want their offspring roaming virtual worlds, either because they are too commercial or are thought to be too dangerous. Keeping them safe is one of the biggest running costs, because their sponsors have to employ real people to police their realms.
Youngsters are also a fickle bunch, says Simon Levene of Accel Partners, a venture- capital firm. Just as children move from one toy to another, they readily switch worlds or social networks, often without saying goodbye.
Even so, Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst at eMarketer, believes "these worlds are a training ground for the three-dimensional web". If virtual worlds for adults, which so far have been able to retain only hardcore users, manage to hang on for a few years, they may yet have a second life.
What can we infer from Simon Levene’s comments

A．Young people will usually change games.
B．Young people are only attracted by the novelties in the games.
C．Game companies will have to use various measures to keep young people continuing playing their games.
D．Current prosperity of online games market may not last long due to the capriciousness of young people.
问答题

Part B
Directions:
In the following article, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 41-45, choose the most suitable one from the list A-G to fit into each of the numbered blanks. There are two extra choices, which do not fit in any of the blanks.
Long before man lived on the Earth, there were fishes, reptiles, birds, insects, and some mammals. Although some of these animals were ancestors of kinds living today, others are now extinct, that is, they have no descendants alive now. Nevertheless, we know a great deal about many of them because their bones and shells have been preserved in the rocks as fossils.
41.______That kind of rock in which the remains are found tells us much about the nature of the original land, often of the plants that grew on it, and even of its climate.
When an animal dies, the body, its bones, or shell, may often be carried away by streams into lakes or the sea and there get covered up by mud. If the animal lived in the sea its body would probably sink and be covered with mud. More and more mud would fall upon it until the bones or shell become embedded and preserved. 42．______Thus it follows that there must be many kinds of mammals, birds, and insects of which we know nothing,
43．______Later forms are more complex, and among these are the sea-lilies, relations of the star-fishes, which had long arms and were attached by a long stalk to the sea bed, or to rocks. There were also crab-like creatures, whose bodies were covered with a horny substance, The body segments each had two pairs of legs, one pair for walking on the sandy bottom, the other for swimming. The head was a kind of shield with a pair of compound eyes, often with thousands of lenses. They were usually an inch or two long but some were 2 feet.
The shellfish have a long history in the rock and many different kinds are known. Of these, the ammonites are very interesting and important. They have a shell composed of many chambers, each representing a temporary home of the animal. As the young grew larger it grew a new chamber and sealed off the previous one. Thousands of these can be seen in the rocks on the Dorset Coast.
The first animals with true backbones were fishes, first known in the rocks of 375 million years ago. About 300 million years ago the amphibians, the animals able to live both on land and in water, appeared. They were giant, sometimes 8 feet long, and many of them lived in the swampy pools in which our coal seam, or layer, formed. 44．______About 75 million years ago the Age of Reptiles was over and most of the groups died out. The mammals quickly developed, and we can trace the evolution of many familiar animals such as the elephant and horse. 45．______
[A] The best index fossils tend to be marine creatures. These animals evolved rapidly and spread over large areas of the world.
[B] The amphibians gave rise to the reptiles and for nearly 150 million years these were the principal forms of life on land, in the sea, and in the air.
[C] Many of the later mammals, though now extinct, were known to primitive man and were featured by him in cave paintings and on bone carvings.
[D] Nearly all of the fossils that we know were preserved in rocks formed by water action, and most of these are of animals that lived in or near water.
[E] The earliest animals whose remains have been found were all very simple kinds and lived in the sea.
[F] Many factors can influence how fossils are preserved in rocks. Remains of an organism may be replaced by minerals, dissolved by an acidic solution to leave only their impression, or simply reduced to a more stable form.
[G] From them we can tell their size and shape, how they walked, the kind of food they ate. Very occasionally the rocks show impression of skin, so that, apart from color, we can build up a reasonably accurate picture of an animal that died millions of years ago.

答案： C
问答题

Part C
Directions:
Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese. Your translation should be written clearly .
It is hard to get a grip on food. The UN’s World Health Organisation worries about diminishing supplies and increased prices in poor countries; recent riots and near-riots in Haiti, Bangladesh and Egypt were sparked by the growing cost of wheat and rice. But, as Paul Roberts observes in "The End of Food", the developed world has lived through "a near miraculous period during which the things we ate seemed to grow only more plentiful, more secure, more nutritious, and simply better. " 46． In the second half of the 20th century, world output of corn, wheat and cereal crops more than tripled. Yet there is not enough to feed the rich, the aspirational and the poor in the world. A golden age has been transformed quite suddenly into a global crisis.
Mr Roberts insists that modern agribusiness is unsustainable and becoming more so. "Precisely at the moment in history when we need to shift our system of food production into overdrive, our agricultural engine is breaking down," he says. The industry has taken cheap oil for granted. Oil fuels transportation and farm machinery, and natural gas is the basis of synthetic nitrogen production ( prices have tripled since 2002). Agriculture accounts for three- quarters of freshwater use, and water is becoming an increasingly scarce and expensive resource. Climate change makes some old assumptions about farming redundant. 47．A combination of these factors, he says, will ultimately force a complete rethinking of the way we make food.
For years government subsidies held down grain prices, making food cheaper. 48．Water was also plentiful-it takes 1,000 tonnes of water to produce a tonne of grain-and an ingenious process known as Haber-Bosch makes synthetic nitrogen fertiliser easily available to grain farmers. Ruthless price-cutting at supermarkets means consumers have grown accustomed to eating too much. (In the late 19th century, Europeans already thought Americans ate three or four times more than was necessary. ) The most damaging consequence is that by 2000 31% of American adults were obese, with another 16% defined as overweight. American airlines spend $ 275 million a year more on fuel simply to lift the heavier passengers. Mr Roberts claims that every year obesity causes 400,000 premature deaths in America. Food has become as deadly as tobacco.
A fruitful start would be to halve the size of portions in all American restaurants, but most consumers are reluctant rethinkers. 49．Eating organic product could be a partial solution, although one study suggests that the cost of avoiding intensive farm chemicals would mean a 31% increase in food prices. Government scientists believe that genetically modified crops might be the only way out of the crisis, but a majority of consumers are reluctant to listen.
Is there a model for the future 50．Fashionably, Mr. Roberts believes that a local system based on easily obtainable seasonal foods that do not need to be transported huge distances would form part of a solution. The economics and greenery of this are far from proven. Mr Roberts can find only one country that has made "serious efforts" in this direction: Cuba, hardly a comforting example. The coming food crisis, warns the author, is as intractable as global warming, and no less urgent.

答案： 按照普遍的观点，Roberts认为建立一咱以容易获取的应季食物为基础的本地体系，以使食物不需要长距离运输，将会是解决方案...
单项选择题

Text 4
Scores of workers from MTV Networks walked off the job yesterday afternoon, filling the sidewalk outside the headquarters of its corporate parent, Viacom, to protest recent changes in benefits. The walkout highlighted the concerns of a category of workers who are sometimes called permalancers: permanent freelancers who work like full-time employees but do not receive the same benefits.
Waving signs that read "Shame on Viacom," the workers, most of them in their 20s, demanded that MTV Networks reverse a plan to reduce health and dental benefits for freelancers beginning On Jan. 1st. In a statement, MTV Networks noted that its benefits program for full-time employees had also undergone changes, and it emphasized that the plan for freelancers was still highly competitive within the industry. Many freelancers receive no corporate benefits. But some of the protesters asserted that corporations were competing to see which could provide the most mediocre health care coverage. Matthew Yonda, who works at Nickelodeon, held a sign that labeled the network "Sick-elodeon. " "I’ve worked here every day for three years-I’m not a freelancer," Mr. Yonda said. "They just call us freelancers in order to bar us from getting the same benefits as employees. "
The changes to the benefits package were announced last Tuesday. Freelancers were told that they would become eligible for benefits after 160 days of work, beginning in January. While that eased previous eligibility rules, which required freelancers to work for 52 weeks before becoming eligible, it would have required all freelancers not yet eligible for benefits to start the waiting period over again on Jan. 1st. The 401 (k) plan was also removed. On Thursday, acknowledging the complaints, MTV Networks reinstated the 401 (k) plan and said freelancers who had worked consistently since March would be eligible.
Fueled by a series of blog posts on the media Web site Gawker-the first post was headlined "The Viacom Permalance Slave System"-a loose cohort of freelancers created protest stickers and distributed walkout fliers last week. Caroline O’Hare, a unit manager who has worked for MTV for more than two years, said the new health care plan-with higher deductibles and a $ 2,000 cap on hospital expenses each year-had provoked outrage. "They think they can treat us like children that don’t have families, mortgages or dreams of retirement," she said.
Outside Viacom’s headquarters, several workers held posters with the words, "There’s too many of us to ignore. " It was unclear how many freelancers are on the company’s payroll; an MTV Networks’ spokeswoman said the figure was not known because it rises and falls throughout the year. The company has 5,500 full-time employees, excluding freelancers, around the world.
Two freelancers and one full-time employee, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution, estimated that the percentage of freelancers in some departments exceeded 75 percent. Another labor action is expected to take place outside Viacom later this week. Members of the Writers Guild of America, who have been on strike for five weeks, are expected to picket there on Thursday.
Which of the following is NOT true according to the text

A．Government may intervene in this dispute.
B．Strike will continue and labours union may intervene.
C．Companies decided to compromise with these freelancers.
D．Some freelancers have filed law suits against Viacom.
单项选择题

Text 3
Remember Second Life, the virtual world that was supposed to become almost as important as the first one Now populated by no more than 84,000 avatars at a time, it has turned out to be a prime example of how short-lived Internet fads can be. Yet if many adults seem to have given up on virtual worlds, those that cater to children and teenagers are thriving. Several have even found a way to make money.
In America, nearly 10 million children and teenagers visit virtual worlds regularly, estimates eMarketer, a market researcher-a number the firm expects to increase to 15 million by 2013．As in January, there were 112 virtual worlds designed for under-18s with another 81 in development, according to Engage Digital Media, a market research firm.
All cater to different age groups and tastes. In Club Penguin, the market leader, which was bought by Disney in 2007 for a whopping $ 700 million, primary-school children can take on a penguin persona, fit out their own igloo and play games. Habbo Hotel, a service run from Finland, is a global hangout for teenagers who want to customise their own rooms and meet in public places to attend events. Gala Online, based in Silicon Valley, offers similar activities, but is visited mostly by older teens who are into Manga comics.
Not a hit with advertisers, these online worlds earn most of their money from the sale of virtual goods, such as items to spruce up an avatar or a private room. They are paid for in a private currency, which members earn by participating in various activities, trading items or buying them with real dollars.
This sort of stealth tax seems to work. At Gala Online, users spend more than $1 million per month on virtual items, says Craig Sherman, the firm’s chief executive. Running such a virtual economy is not easy, which is why Gaia has hired a full-time economist to grapple with problems that are well known in the real world, such as inflation and an unequal distribution of wealth.
There are other barriers that could limit the growth of virtual worlds for the young, but the main one is parents. Many do not want their offspring roaming virtual worlds, either because they are too commercial or are thought to be too dangerous. Keeping them safe is one of the biggest running costs, because their sponsors have to employ real people to police their realms.
Youngsters are also a fickle bunch, says Simon Levene of Accel Partners, a venture- capital firm. Just as children move from one toy to another, they readily switch worlds or social networks, often without saying goodbye.
Even so, Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst at eMarketer, believes "these worlds are a training ground for the three-dimensional web". If virtual worlds for adults, which so far have been able to retain only hardcore users, manage to hang on for a few years, they may yet have a second life.
What may "stealth tax" in "This sort of stealth tax seems to work" refer to

A．Online world promotes transaction without seeing the currencies, thus boosting the consumption.
B．Things in the online world do not need to be taxed, and then is cheaper than actual ones.
C．Companies have already paid the tax for the players.
D．People buy things in the online world in a largely unnoticed way, either by himself or by others.
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