听力原文: A country's latitude, or distance from the equator, has an important effect on its climate. In places located at low latitudes, or near the equator, like Ecuador and northern Brazil, the amount of sunshine changes the least during the year. At mid-latitudes, in places like Japan or Argentina, there is more sunshine in the summer than in the winter. (29) The greatest change occurs at the highest latitudes, in places like northern Canada or Alaska. In these places, the nights are very long for half the year and the days are very long during the other half. At the North or South Pole, sunlight lasts the longest during the summer. But light and heat are the most intense at the equator.
Latitude and distance from the sea also affect climate. The thin air in high mountain areas absorbs less of the sun's heat than the thicker air at sea level.
The daily change in temperature also increases with distance from the sea.
(30) Snow and rain are very important to climate. Snow reflects as much as eighty or ninety percent of the heat from the sun, and makes the weather even colder. But a large forest area can reflect as little as five percent of the sun's heat. This makes the weather warmer.
Of course, the general effects of climate do not explain everything about the weather. For example, (31) both the driest place in the world and the place with the most rainy days are located in Chile. Calama, in the Atacama Desert. has had no rain for over 400 years. But during the year 1916, it rained in Bahia, Felix, Chile for 348 days.
(30)
At low latitudes.
B. At mid-latitudes.
C. At high latitudes.
D. At any latitude.
Section B
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.
It's a brand new world--a world built around brands. Hard-charging, noise-making, culture-shaping brands are everywhere. They're on supermarket shelves, of course, but also in business plans for network company startups and in the names of sports complexes. Brands are infiltrating (渗透) people's everyday lives--by sticking their logos on clothes, in concert programs, on subway station walls, even in elementary school classrooms.
We live in an age in which CBS newscasters wear Nike jackets on the air, in which Burger King and McDonald's open kiosks(小亭) in elementary school lunchrooms. But as brands reach (and then overreach) into every aspects of our lives, the companies behind them invite more questions, deeper scrutiny--and an inevitable backlash by consumers.
"Our intellectual lives and our public spaces are being taken over by marketing--and that has real implications for citizenships" says author and activists Naomi Klien. "It's important for any healthy culture to have public space--a place where people are treated as citizens instead of as consumers. We've completely lost that space."
Since the mid-1980s, as more and more companies have shifted from being about products to being about ideas. Starbucks isn't selling coffee; It's selling community! Those companies have poured more and more resources into marketing campaigns.
To pay for those campaigns, those same companies figured out ways to cut costs elsewhere, for example, by using contract labor at home and low-wage labor in developing countries. Contract laborers are hired on a temporary, per-assignment basis, and employers have no obligation to provide any benefits (such as health insurance) or long-term job security. This saves companies money but obviously puts workers in vulnerable situations. In the United States, contract labor has given rise to so-called McJobs, which employers and workers alike pretend are temporary--even though these jobs are usually held by adults who are trying to support families.
The massive expansion of marketing campaigns in the 1980s coincided with the reduction of government spending for schools and for museums. This made those institutions much too willing, even eager, to partner with private companies. But companies took advantage of the needs of those institutions, reaching too far, and overwhelming the civic space with their marketing agendas.
How can brands infiltrate people's daily life?
A. By having their logos printed in people' clothes.
By having their brands reaching in primary schools.
C. By finding means to put their products on supermarket shelves.
D. By putting relative information of their products on public places.
听力原文:W:School will start soon.I'm still looking for a room to rent.Can you help me?
M:How about trying Smith's? They usually have the detailed information,and you may choose.
Q:Where will the woman probably go?
(17)
A. To the school.
B. To her classmate.
C. To an accommodation agency.
D. To a bank.
听力原文: (32) How men first learnt to invent words is unknown, in other words, the origin of language is a mystery. All we really know is that men, unlike animals, (33) somehow invented certain sounds to express thoughts and feel hugs, actions and things, so that they could communicate with each other, and that later they agreed upon certain signs, called letters, which could be combined to represent those sounds, and which could be written down. Those sounds, whether spoken, or written in letters we call words. (34) The power of words, then, lies in their associations--the things they bring up before our minds. Words become filled with meaning for us by experience, and the longer we live, the more certain words recall to us the glad and sad events of our past, and the more we read and learn, the more the number of words that mean something to us increases.
Great writers are those who not only have great thoughts but also express these thoughts in words which appeal powerfully to our minds and emotions. This charming and telling use of words is what we call literery style. Above all, (35) the real poet is a master of words. He can convey his meaning in words which sing like music, and which by then position and association can move men to tears. We should therefore learn to choose our words carefully and use them accurately, or they will make our speech silly and vulgar.
(33)
A legend handed down from the past.
B. A matter that is hidden or secret.
C. A question difficult to answer.
D. A problem not yet solved.