Passage One

Questions 1 to 5 are based on the following passage.

The Nile made Egypt’s civilization possible. The river is more than 400 miles long. In its fertile valley crops are grown for food and cotton for clothing. Mud from the river bottom makes good bricks for houses. Thus ways of getting food, clothing and shelter were close for the Egyptians.

The Nile is a highway for the people of Egypt. Flat bottomed boats and large narrow barges carry products from one city to another. There are also passenger boats on the Nile, carrying people up and down the river. In ancient times huge blocks of stones were floated down the river on barges. These stones are used in making buildings and monuments.

For thousands of years the Egyptians have depended on the Nile for their crops. The land on both sides of the Nile is desert, where crops cannot be raised. But crops grow well in the Nile Valley. In fact, several different crops are often grown on the same land during the same year.

Once the Nile flooded each year, overflowed its banks, and carried rich soil in land every summer. These floods were caused by early summer rains.

At present there is a series of dams in the Nile. Water raises high in the river each summer as usual. The people do not let the Nile flood, however. They store the water behind dams. It is now possible to use the water as needed, not just at flood time.

In the past ______.

A. there was rain all the year long,

B. the Nile flooded every year,

C. the Nile became deeper and deeper after each rainfall,

D. the Nile was not a long river

Egyptians have grown crops well ______.

A. on both sides of the Nile,

B. on the land near the desert area,

C. in the Nile valley,

D. far away from the desert area

In the valley of the Nile ______.

A. bricks for houses are made,

B. different crops are raised on the same land,

C. only cotton can grow well,

D. people grow all crops except cotton

“The Nile is a highway for the people of Egypt” means ______.

A. cars and trucks can move as fast as possible along it,

B. the river bottom can serve as a road in dry season,

C. the river is an important water transportation line in Egypt,

D. on the river there are a lot of boats and people

Which of the following can best summarize the passage?

A. The Nile is the source of flood.,

B. The Nile is a highway for the people in Egypt.,

C. The flat bottomed boats have been used.,

D. The Nile made Egypt’s civilization possible.

Passage Two

Questions 6 to 10 are based on the following passage.

Sleep plays a major role in preparing the body for an alert and productive tomorrow. But sleep is not a period of inactivity. The sleeping brain is highly active at various times during the night, performing numerous “house keeping tasks”. These keep us alive and aid our ability to think and remember. Sleep also energizes the body and brain. Most people spend one-third of their lives sleeping and this will affect the other two-thirds in terms of alertness, energy, moods, body weight, perception, memory, thinking, reaction time, productivity and performance.

To limit sleep means our health and daytime potential are significantly reduced. So, good sleep strategies are essential in order to feel energized day after day. There is no strategy which works for everyone, so each person needs to experiment. One important thing is that you shouldn’t worry too much if you go a few nights without a lot of sleep. It won’t ruin your life. On any given night, one in four people can’t sleep properly and everyone suffers from a lack of sleep at some time.

How does one minimize this problem? It is really quite simple. The first thing you must do is to reduce stress as much as possible. Stress is part of everyday life and, while we can never be entirely without stress, it can be managed. This means taking control of your life and focusing on what is important. One sleeping strategy is to sit in a comfortable position, close your eyes and relax all your muscles, breathing easily through your nose. Continue this for ten to twenty minutes. This should help you reduce stress and sleep better. Or, you can try getting plenty of exercise, because a tired body is likely to sleep better.

According to the passage, sleep is important because ______.

A. it is a period of complete inactivity for the brain,

B. it helps us understand what we have already achieved,

C. it makes us more effective when we are awake,

D. it helps us to lose weight

Methods of getting enough sleep ______.

A. vary between men and women,

B. are the same for everybody,

C. vary from person to person,

D. are based on your job

According to the passage, being unable to sleep ______.

A. affects young children the most,

B. affects everybody at some time,

C. is worse for those who have relaxing lives,

D. is likely to ruin people’s life

A simple strategy to sleep better is to ______.

A. work harder than you could,

B. put your stress under control,

C. breathe through your nose,

D. sleep on a chair instead of bed

After a lot of physical exercise, ______.

A. you should find stress increases dramatically,

B. you will become out of breath,

C. you should be able to enjoy better sleep,

D. you will not need to sleep for some time

Passage Three

Questions 11 to 15 are based on the following passage.

Every body gets sick. Disease and injury make us suffer throughout our lives, until finally some attack on the body brings our existence to an end. Fortunately, most of us in modern industrialized societies can take relatively good health for granted most of the time. In fact, we tend to fully realize the importance of good health only when we or those close to us become seriously ill. At such times we keenly appreciate the ancient truth that health is our most precious asset, one for which we might readily give up such rewards as power, wealth, or fame.

Because ill health is a universal problem, affecting the individual and society, the human response to sickness is always socially organized. No society leaves the responsibility for maintaining health and treating ill health entirely to the individual. Each society develops its own concepts of health and sickness and authorizes certain people to decide who is sick and how the sick should be treated. Around this focus there arises, over time, a number of standards, values, groups, statuses, and roles: in other words, an institution. To the sociologist, then, medicine is the institution concerned with the maintenance of health and treatment of disease.

In the simplest pre-industrial societies, medicine is usually an aspect of religion. The social arrangements for dealing with sickness are very elementary, often involving only two roles: the sick and the healer (治疗者). The latter is typically also the priest, who relies primarily on religious ceremonies, both to identify and to treat disease: for example, bones may be thrown to establish a cause; songs may be used to bring about a cure. In modern industrialized societies, on the other hand, the institution has become highly complicated and specialized, including dozens of roles such as those of brain surgeon, druggist, hospital administrator, linked with various organizations such as nursing homes, insurance companies, and medical schools. Medicine, in fact, has become the subject of intense sociological interest precisely because it is now one of the most pervasive and costly institutions of modern society.

Which of the following statements is true according to Paragraph 1 ?

A. Nowadays most people believe they can have fairly good health.,

B. Human life involves a great deal of pain and suffering.,

C. Most of us are aware of the full value of health.,

D. Ancient people believed that health was more expensive than anything else.

The word “authorize” in Paragraph 2 means“______”.

A. make way for,

B. give power to,

C. write an order for,

D. make it possible for

In Paragraph 2, we learn that the sociologist regards medicine as ______.

A. a system whose purpose is to treat disease and keep people healthy,

B. a universal problem that affects every society,

C. a social responsibility to treat ill health,

D. a science that focuses on the treatment of disease

According to Paragraph 3, which of the following is NOT true?

A. In the past, bones might be used to decide why people fell ill.,

B. In pre-industrial societies priests sometimes treated patients by singing.,

C. Modern medicine is so complicated that sociology no longer has a place in it.,

D. There were only two roles in an elementary medical system, the patient and the one who tried to cure him.

The author of this passage is mainly concerned with ______.

A. sociological aspects in medicine,

B. medical treatment of diseases,

C. the development of medical science,

D. the role of religion in medicine

Passage Four

Questions 16 to 20 are based on the following passage.

English people are less genetically diverse today than they were in the days of the Vikings, possibly due to two deadly diseases that swept their country centuries ago, a new study says.

The study compared DNA from ancient and modem Englanders and found that the country has a smaller gene pool than it did a thousand years ago.

The findings come in contrast to modem England’s reputation as a cultural melting pot, where in many major cities you are as likely to hear Urdu from India or Yoruba from Nigeria being spoken on the streets as English. 

Rus Hoelzel, a geneticist from the Britain’s University of Durham, and his colleagues obtained DNA samples from the skeletal remains of 48 ancient Britons who lived between A. D. 300 and 1000. The researchers studied the DNA, which was passed down from mothers to their children. By comparing the DNA with that of thousands of people from various ethnic backgrounds living in England today, they found that genetic diversity was greater in the ancient population. The team also compared the ancient DNA with samples from people living in continental Europe and the Middle East, and found a similar lack of genetic variety.

One possible explanation for this narrowing of diversity might be two major outbreaks of plague that swept England and much of Europe — the Black Death (1347 — 1351) and the Great Plague (1665 — 1666).

The Black Death epidemic is estimated to have killed as much as 50 percent of the population of Europe. Three centuries later, a fifth of the population of London died in the Great Plague. However, these diseases didn’t kill randomly, Hoelzel explained. “The plague killed some people while others remained resistant,” he said.

Eske Willerslev, a specialist in ancient DNA from the University of Copenhagen, said he is surprised by the findings but agrees that the historic epidemics may explain the loss in diversity.

Since the diseases, it appears that England hasn’t been able to make up the loss to the gene pool, despite the high rate of immigration into the country over the past 200 years.

The modem England’s reputation as “a cultural melting pot” (Para. 3) most probably means ______.

A. English people speak many different languages,

B. England has a population of many different cultural origins,

C. England is famous for exporting melting pot,

D. England has a close diplomatic relationship with India and Nigeria

The DNA comparison between modern and ancient English people reveals ______.

A. great changes have taken place in the genetic contents in the DNA,

B. DNA differs among different people from different ethnic backgrounds,

C. there is less DNA diversity in modern Englishmen than in their ancestors,

D. modern Englishmen has the same DNA diversity as their ancestors

According to the passage, which of the following statements is NOT true?

A. The ancient DNA used in this study was gathered from the bones of the ancient British people.,

B. The genetic information carried by DNA is passed to children from fathers.,

C. Although modern England has high immigration rate, it still suffers from poor genetic variety.,

D. England, European continent and Middle East all suffer from lack of genetic variety.

The two deadly diseases, namely the Black Death and the Great Plague ______.

A. affected England more than any other countries in Europe,

B. broke out between the thirteenth century and the sixteenth century,

C. took less than half of the population away in England,

D. left some people alive with resistance for the diseases

It can be inferred from the passage that ______.

A. Willerslev was not prepared to see the lack of genetic variety in modern England,

B. many immigrants moved to England to seek a new life after the two diseases,

C. the gene bank will need to introduce more new genes to make up for its losses,

D. England will need to immigrate more people to make up its gene loss

Passage Five

Questions 21-25 are based on the following passage.

Du Bois was a sociological and educational pioneer who challenged the established system of education that tended to restrict rather than to advance the progress of black Americans. He challenged what is called the “Tuskegee machine” of Booker T. Washington, the leading educational spokesperson of the blacks in the US. A sociologist and historian, Du Bois called for a more determined and activist leadership than Washington provided.

Unlike Washington, whose roots were in southern black agriculture, Du Bois’s career spanned both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line. He was a native of Massachusetts, received his undergraduate education from Fisk University in Nashville, did his graduate study at Harvard University, and directed the Atlanta University Studies of Black American Life in the South. Du Bois approached the problem of racial relations in the United States from two dimensions: as a scholarly researcher and as an activist for civil rights. Among his works was the famous empirical (经验主义的) sociological study, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study, in which he examined that city’s black population and made recommendations for the school system. Du Bois’s Philadelphia study was the pioneer work on urban blacks in America.

Du Bois had a long and active career as a leader in the civil rights movement. He helped to organize the Niagara Movement in 1905, which led to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), established in 1909. From 1910 until 1934, Du Bois edited The Crisis, the major journal of the NAACP In terms of its educational policy, the NAACP position was that all American children and youth should have genuine equality of educational opportunity. This policy, which Du Bois helped to formulate, stressed the following themes: (1) public schooling should be free and compulsory for all American children; (2) secondary schooling should be provided for all youth; (3) higher education should not be monopolized by any special class or race.

As a leader in education, Du Bois challenged not only the tradition of racial segregation in the schools but also the accommodationist (妥协的;迁就的) ideology of Booker T. Washington. The major difference between the two men was that Washington sought change that was evolutionary in nature and did not upset the social order, whereas Du Bois demanded immediate change. Du Bois believed in educated leadership for blacks, and he developed a concept referred to as the “talented tenth”, according to which 10 percent of the black population would receive a traditional college education in preparation for leadership.

Compared with Booker T. Washington, Du Bois’s political stand was ______.

A. less popular,

B. more radical,

C. less aggressive,

D. more conservative

According to the text, Du Bois worked as all of the following EXCEPT ______.

A. an editor,

B. an educator,

C. a scholar,

D. an official

It is Du Bois’s belief that ______.

A. the blacks have a priority in terms of education,

B. higher education should be free for all races,

C. everyone has an equal right to education,

D. development in education should be gradual

Which of the following statements is true according to the passage?

A. Washington would not appreciate the idea of overthrowing social order.,

B. Racial separation is an outcome of accommodationist ideology.,

C. Washington would not support a determined and activist leadership.,

D. The Philadelphia Negro is a book on blacks in American South.

It can be inferred from the last paragraph that ______.

A. many blacks are prepared for leadership,

B. Du Bois was in favor of “elite education” for blacks,

C. Washington and Du Bois had never been friends,

D. only the top 10 percent are worth educating