Part A
Directions: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A,B, C or D. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET I. (40 points)
Text 1
We can make mistakes at any age. Some mistakes we make are about money. But most mistakes are about people. "Did Jerry really care when I broke up with Helen? .... When I got that great job, did Jim really feel good about it, as a friend? Or did he envy my luck?" "And Paul—why didn't pick up that he was friendly just because I had a car?" When we look back, doubts like these can make us feel bad. But when we look back, it' s too late.
Why do we go wrong about our friends or our enemies? Sometimes what people say hides their real meaning. And if we don' t really listen we miss the feeling behind the words. Suppose someone tells you, "You' re a lucky dog." That' s being friendly. But "lucky dog?" There's a bit of envy in those words. Maybe he doesn't see it himself. But bringing in the "dog" bit puts you down a little. What he may be saying is that the doesn't think you deserve your luck.
"Just think of all the things you have to be thankful for," is another noise that says one thing and means another. It could mean that the speaker is trying to get you to see your problem as part of your life as a whole. But is he? Wrapped up in this phrase is the thought that your problem isn’t important. It' s telling you to think of all the starving people in the world when you haven' t got a date for Saturday night.
How can you tell the real meaning behind someone' s words? One way is to take a good look at the person talking. Do his words fit the way he looks? Does what he says agree with the tone of voice?
His posture? The look in his eyes? Stop and think. The minute you spend thinking about the real meaning of what people to you may save another mistake.
21. This passage is mainly about______.
A. how to interpret what people say
B. what to do when you listen to others talking
C. how to avoid mistakes when you communicate with people
D. why we go wrong with people sometimes
To avoid the pain of a drilling that may last perhaps a minute or two, we demand the "needle"— a shot of novocaine (奴佛卡因) -that deadens the nerves around the tooth.
Now it' s true that the human body has developed its millions of nerves to be highly aware of what goes on both inside and outside of it. This helps us adjust to the world. Without our nerves—and our brain, which is a bundle of nerves— we wouldn't know what's happening. But we pay for our sensitivity. We can feel pain when the slightest thing is wrong with any part of our body. The history of torture is based on the human body being open to pain.
But there is a way to handle pain. Look at the Indian fakir(行僧) who sits on a bed of nails. Fakirs can put a needle right through an arm, and feel no pain; This ability that some humans have developed to handle pain should give us ideas about how the mind can deal with pain.
The big thing in withstanding pain is our attitude toward it. If the dentist says, "This will hurt a little, it helps us to accept the pain. By staying relaxed,' and by treating the pain as an interesting sensation, we' can handle the pain without falling apart. After all; although pain is an unpleasant sensation, it is still a sensation, and sensations are the stuff of life.
26. The passage is mainly about______.
A. how to stiffer pain
B. how to avoid pain
C. how to handle pain
D. how to stop pain
Part B
Directions: The following paragraphs are given in a wrong order. For Questions 41—45, you are required to reorganize these paragraphs into a coherent article by choosing from the list A - G to fill in each numbered box. The first and the last paragraphs have been placed for you in Boxes. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1. (10 points)
[A] These issues cut right across traditional religious dogma. Many people cling to the belief that the origin of life required a unique divine act. But ff life on Earth is not unique, the case for a miraculous origin would be undermined. The discovery of even a humble bacterium on Mars, if it could be shown to have arisen independently from Earth life would support the view that life emerges naturally.
[B] Contrary to popular belief, speculation that we are not alone in the universe is as old as philosophy itself. The essential steps in the reasoning were based on the atomic theory of the ancient Greek philosopher Democritus. First, the laws of nature are universal. Second, there is nothing special or privileged about Earth. Finally, if something is possible, nature tends to make it happen. Philosophy is one thing, filling in the physical details is another. Although astronomers increasingly suspect that bio-friendly planets may be abundant in the universe, the chemical steps leading to life remain largely mysterious.
[C] There is, however, a contrary view-one that is gaining strength and directly challenges orthodox biology. It is that complexity can emerge spontaneously through a process of self-organization, ff matter and energy have an inbuilt tendency to amplify and channel organized complexity, the odds against the formation of life and the subsequent evolution of intelligence could be drastically shortened. The relevance of self- organization to biology remains hotly debated. It suggests, however, that although the universe as a whole may be dying, an opposite, progressive trend may also exist as a fundamental property of nature. The emergence of extraterrestrial life, particularly-intelligent life, is a key test for these rival paradigms.
[D] Similar reasoning applies to evolution. According to the orthodox view, Darwinian selection is utterly blind. Any impression that the transition from microbes to man represents progress is pure chauvinism of our part. The path of evolution is merely a random walk through the realm of possibilities. If this is right, there can be no directionality, no innate drive forward; in particular, no push toward consciousness and intelligence. Should Earth be struck by an asteroid, destroying all higher life -forms, intelligent beings, still less humanoids, would almost certainly not arise next time around.
[E] Traditionally, biologists believed that life is a freak-the result of a zillion - to - on& accidental concatenation of molecules. It follows that the likelihood of its happening again elsewhere in the cosmos is infinitesimal. This viewpoint de- rives from the second law of thermodynamics, which predicts that the universe is dying - slowly and inexorably degenerating toward a state of total chaos. Life stumbles across this trend only because it is a pure statistical luck.
[F] Historically, the Roman Catholic church regarded any discussion of alien life as heresy. Speculating about other inhabited worlds was one reason philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in 1600. Belief that mankind has-a special relationship with God is central to the monotheistic religions. The existence of alien beings, especially if they were further advanced than humans intellectually and spiritually, would disrupt this cozy view.
[G] The discovery of life beyond earth would transform. not only our science but also our religions, our belief systems and our entire world view. For in a sense, the search for extraterrestrial life is really a search for ourselves - who we are and what our place is in the grand sweep of the cosmos.
Order:
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