Part III Reading Comprehension (40 minutes)

Section A

Directions: In this section, there is a passage with ten blanks. You are required to select one word for each blank from a list of choices given in a word bank following the passage. Read the passage through carefully before making your choices. Each choice in the bank is identified by a letter. Please mark the corresponding letter for each item on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre. You may not use any of the words in the bank more than once.

Neon (霓虹) is to Hong Kong as red phone booths are to London and fog is to San Francisco. When night falls, red and blue and other colors 26 a hazy (雾蒙蒙的) glow over a city lit up by tens of thousands of neon signs. But many of them are going dark, 27 by more practical, but less romantic, LEDs (发光二极管) .

Changing building codes, evolving tastes, and the high cost of maintaining those wonderful old signs have businesses embracing LEDs, which are energy 28 , but still carry great cost. “To me, neon represents memories of the past,”says photographer Sharon Blance, whose series Hong Kong Neon celebrates the city’s famous signs. “Looking at the signs now I get a feeling of amazement, mixed with sadness.”

Building a neon sign is an art practiced by 29 trained on the job to mold glass tubes into 30 shapes and letters. They fill these tubes with gases that glow when 31 . Neon makes orange, while other gases make yellow or blue. It takes many hours to craft a single sign.

Blance spent a week in Hong Kong and 32 more than 60 signs; 22 of them appear in the series that capture the signs lighting up lonely streets—an 33 that makes it easy to admire their colors and craftsmanship. “I love the beautiful, handcrafted, old-fashioned 34 of neon,”says Blance. The signs do nothing more than 35 a restaurant, theater, or other business, but do so in the most striking way possible.

Section B

Directions: In this section, you are going to read a passage with ten statements attached to it. Each statement contains information given in one of the paragraphs. Identify the paragraph from which the information is derived. You may choose a paragraph more than once. Each paragraph is marked with a letter. Answer the questions by marking the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2.

New Jersey School District Eases Pressure on Students, Baring an Ethnic Divide

A) This fall, David Aderhold, the chief of a high-achieving school district near Princeton, New Jersey, sent parents an alarming 16-page letter. The school district, he said, was facing a crisis. Its students were overburdened and stressed out, having to cope with too much work and too many demands. In the previous school year, 120 middle and high school students were recommended for mental health assessments and 40 were hospitalized. And on a survey administered by the district, students wrote things like, “I hate going to school,”and “Coming out of 12 years in this district, I have learned one thing: that a grade, a percentage or even a point is to be valued over anything else.”

B) With his letter, Aderhold inserted West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District into a national discussion about the intense focus on achievement at elite schools, and whether it has gone too far. At follow-up meetings, he urged parents to join him in advocating a “whole child” approach to schooling that respects “social-emotional development” and “deep and meaningful learning” over academics alone. The alternative, he suggested, was to face the prospect of becoming another Palo Alto, California, where outsize stress on teenage students is believed to have contributed to a number of suicides in the last six years.

C) But instead of bringing families together, Aderhold’s letter revealed a divide in the district, which has 9,700 students, and one that broke down roughly along racial lines. On one side are white parents like Catherine Foley, a former president of the Parent-Teacher-Student Association at her daughter’s middle school, who has come to see the district’s increasingly pressured atmosphere as opposed to learning. “My son was in fourth grade and told me, ‘I’m not going to amount to anything because I have nothing to put on my résumé,’ ” she said. On the other side are parents like Mike Jia, one of the thousands of Asian-American professionals who have moved to the district in the past decade, who said Aderhold’s reforms would amount to a “dumbing down” of his children’s education. “What is happening here reflects a national anti-intellectual trend that will not prepare our children for the future,” Jia said.

D) About 10 minutes from Princeton and an hour and a half from New York City, West Windsor and Plainsboro have become popular bedroom communities for technology entrepreneurs, researchers and engineers, drawn in large part by the public schools. From the last three graduating classes, 16 seniors were admitted to MIT. It produces Science Olympiad winners, classically trained musicians and students with perfect SAT scores.

E) The district has become increasingly popular with immigrant families from China, India and Korea. This year, 65 percent of its students are Asian-American, compared with 44 percent in 2007. Many of them are the first in their families born in the United States. They have had a growing influence on the district. Asian-American parents are enthusiastic supporters of the competitive instrumental music program. They have been huge supporters of the district’s advanced mathematics program, which once began in the fourth grade but will now start in the sixth. The change to the program, in which 90 percent of the participating students are Asian-American, is one of Aderhold’s reforms.

F) Asian-American students have been eager participants in a state program that permits them to take summer classes off campus for high school credit, allowing them to maximize the number of honors and Advanced Placement classes they can take, another practice that Aderhold is limiting this school year. With many Asian-American children attending supplementary instructional programs, there is a perception among some white families that the elementary school curriculum is being sped up to accommodate them.

G) Both Asian-American and white families say the tension between the two groups has grown steadily over the past few years, as the number of Asian families has risen. But the division has become more obvious in recent months as Aderhold has made changes, including no-homework nights, an end to high school midterms and finals, and an initiative that made it easier to participate in the music program.

H) Jennifer Lee, professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine, and an author of The Asian American Achievement Paradox, says misunderstandings between first-generation Asian-American parents and those who have been in this country longer are common. What white middle-class parents do not always understand, she said, is how much pressure recent immigrants feel to boost their children into the middle class. “They don’t have the same chances to get their children internships (实习职位) or jobs at law firms,” Lee said. “So what they believe is that their children must excel and beat their white peers in academic settings so they have the same chances to excel later.”

I) The issue of the stresses felt by students in elite school districts has gained attention in recent years as schools in places like Newton, Massachusetts, and Palo Alto have reported a number of suicides. West Windsor-Plainsboro has not had a teenage suicide in recent years, but Aderhold, who has worked in the district for seven years and been chief for the last three years, said he had seen troubling signs. In a recent art assignment, a middle school student depicted (描绘) an overburdened child who was being scolded for earning an A, rather than an A+, on a math exam. In the image, the mother scolds the student with the words, “Shame on you!” Further, he said, the New Jersey Education Department has flagged at least two pieces of writing on state English language assessments in which students expressed suicidal thoughts.

J) The survey commissioned by the district found that 68 percent of high school honor and Advanced Placement students reported feeling stressed about school “always or most of the time.” “We need to bring back some balance,” Aderhold said. “You don’t want to wait until it’s too late to do something.”

K) Not all public opinion has fallen along racial lines. Karen Sue, the Chinese-American mother of a fifth-grader and an eighth-grader, believes the competition within the district has gotten out of control. Sue, who was born in the United States to immigrant parents, wants her peers to dial it back. “It’s become an arms race, an educational arms race,” she said. “We all want our kids to achieve and be successful. The question is, at what cost?”

36．Aderhold is limiting the extra classes that students are allowed to take off campus.

37．White and Asian-American parents responded differently to Aderhold’s appeal

38．Suicidal thoughts have appeared in some students’ writings.

39．Aderhold’s reform of the advanced mathematics program will affect Asian-American students most.

40．Aderhold appealed for parents’ support in promoting an all-round development of children, instead of focusing only on their academic performance.

41．One Chinese-American parent thinks the competition in the district has gone too far.

42．Immigrant parents believe that academic excellence will allow their children equal chances to succeed in the future.

43．Many businessmen and professionals have moved to West Windsor and Plainsboro because of the public schools there.

44．A number of students in Aderhold’s school district were found to have stress-induced mental health problems.

45．The tension between Asian-American and white families has increased in recent years.

Section C

Directions: There are 2 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A), B), C) and D). You should decide on the best choice and mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre.

Passage One

Questions 46 to 50 are based on the following passage.

Living in an urban area with green spaces has a long-lasting positive impact on people’s mental well-being, a study has suggested. UK researchers found moving to a green space had a sustained positive effect, unlike pay rises or promotions, which only provided a short-term boost. Co-author Mathew White, from the University of Exeter, UK, explained that the study showed people living in greener urban areas were displaying fewer signs of depression or anxiety. “There could be a number of reasons,” he said, “for example, people do many things to make themselves happier: they strive for promotion or pay rises, or they get married. But the trouble with those things is that within six months to a year, people are back to their original baseline levels of well-being. So these things are not sustainable; they don’t make us happy in the long term. We found that for some lottery (彩票) winners who had won more than £500,000 the positive effect was definitely there, but after six months to a year, they were back to the baseline.”

Dr. White said his team wanted to see whether living in greener urban areas had a lasting positive effect on people’s sense of well-being or whether the effect also disappeared after a period of time. To do this, the team used data from the British Household Panel Survey compiled by the University of Essex.

Explaining what the data revealed, he said: “What you see is that even after three years, mental health is still better, which is unlike many other things that we think will make us happy.” He observed that people living in green spaces were less stressed, and less stressed people made more sensible decisions and communicated better.

With a growing body of evidence establishing a link between urban green spaces and a positive impact on human well-being, Dr. White said, “There’s growing interest among public policy officials, but the trouble is who funds it. What we really need at a policy level is to decide where the money will come from to help support good quality local green spaces.”

46．According to one study, what do green spaces do to people?

A) Improve their work efficiency

B) Add to their sustained happiness

C) Help them build a positive attitude towards life

D) Lessen their concerns about material well-being

47．What does Dr. White say people usually do to make themselves happier?

A) Earn more money

B) Settle in an urban area

C) Gain fame and popularity

D) Live in a green environment

48．What does Dr. White try to find out about living in a greener urban area?

A) How it affects different people

B) How strong its positive effect is

C) How long its positive effect lasts

D) How it benefits people physically

49．What did Dr. White’s research reveal about people living in a green environment?

A) Their stress was more apparent than real

B) Their decisions required less deliberation

C) Their memories were greatly strengthened

D) Their communication with others improved

50．According to Dr. White, what should the government do to build more green spaces in cities?

A) Find financial support

B) Improve urban planning

C) Involve local residents in the effort

D) Raise public awareness of the issue

Passage Two

Questions 51 to 55 are based on the following passage.

You probably know about the Titanic, but it was actually just one of three state-of-the-art (最先进的) ocean ships back in the day. The Olympic class ships were built by the Harland & Wolff ship makers in Northern Ireland for the White Star Line company. The Olympic class included the Olympic, the Britannic and the Titanic. What you may not know is that the Titanic wasn’t even the flagship of this class. All in all, the Olympic class ships were marvels of sea engineering, but they seemed cursed to suffer disastrous fates.

The Olympic launched first in 1910, followed by the Titanic in 1911, and lastly the Britannic in 1914. The ships had nine decks, and White Star Line decided to focus on making them the most luxurious ships on the water.

Stretching 269.13 meters, the Olympic class ships were wonders of naval technology, and everyone thought that they would continue to be so for quite some time. However, all suffered terrible accidents on the open seas. The Olympic got wrecked before the Titanic did, but it was the only one to survive and maintain a successful career of 24 years. The Titanic was the first to sink after famously hitting a huge iceberg in 1912. Following this disaster, the Britannic hit a naval mine in 1916 and subsequently sank as well.

Each ship was coal-powered by several boilers constantly kept running by exhausted crews below deck. Most recognizable of the ship designs are the ship’s smoke stacks, but the fourth stack was actually just artistic in nature and served no functional purpose. While two of these ships sank, they were all designed with double hulls (船体) believed to make them “unsinkable”, perhaps a mistaken idea that led to the Titanic’s and the Britannic’s tragic end.

The Olympic suffered two crashes with other ships and went on to serve as a hospital ship and troop transport in World War I. Eventually, she was taken out of service in 1935, ending the era of the luxurious Olympic class ocean liners.

51．What does the passage say about the three Olympic class ships?

A) They performed marvellously on the sea

B) They could all break the ice in their way

C) They all experienced terrible misfortunes

D) They were models of modern engineering

52．What did White Star Line have in mind when it purchased the three ships?

A) Their capacity of sailing across all waters

B) The utmost comfort passengers could enjoy

C) Their ability to survive disasters of any kind

D) The long voyages they were able to undertake

53．What is said about the fourth stack of the ships?

A) It was a mere piece of decoration

B) It was the work of a famous artist

C) It was designed to let out extra smoke

D) It was easily identifiable from afar

54．What might have led to the tragic end of the Titanic and the Britannic?

A) Their unscientific designs.

B) Their captains’ misjudgment.

C) The assumption that they were built with the latest technology.

D) The belief that they could never sink with a double-layer body.

55．What happened to the ship Olympic in the end?

A) She was used to carry troops

B) She was sunk in World War I

C) She was converted into a hospital ship

D) She was retired after her naval service