has built homes, pavilions and churches, some of them permanent, using little more than cardboard tubes. “I was interested in weak materials,” says Ban, 42. “Whenever we invent a new material or new structural system, a new architecture comes out of it.” Ironically, Ban may be closer to the old modernist ideals than many who build today in glass and steel. He wants beauty to be attainable by the masses, even the poorest.
Ban first began to use the tubes in the 80’s, in exhibitions. Impressed by the material’s load-bearing capacity (he calls cardboard “improved wood”), he thought of them again in 1995, after the Kobe earthquake, and used donated 34-ply tubes to build a community hall and houses. Working with the United Nations, Ban has shaped paper log houses to Turkey and Rwanda. “Refugee shelter has to be beautiful,” he says. “Psychologically, refugees are damaged. They have to stay in nice places.”
But it’s not all about utility. Ban has managed to turn ugly-duckling cardboard into some gorgeous swans.. The Japanese pavilion he created for this year’s EXPO 2000 in Hanover, Germany, is a huge undulating grid of paper tubes enclosed, like a covered wagon, with a paper canopy. An eight-ton, 27-m-long lattice arch of tubes currently swoops over the garden at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, casting a thatch of ever changing shadows.
Ban’s designs touch the earth lightly in more ways than one. After EXPO 2000, his pavilion will be shipped to a recycling center to be returned to the pulp from whence it came. Just try that with bricks.
56. According to the first paragraph, the author suggests that C . A. buildings should be made out of sturdiest materials
B. buildings are always strong if they are built from the sturdiest materials C. some materials, seemingly weak, can build strong buildings D. sturdiest materials can not build strongest buildings
57. Whenever we invent a new material or new architectural system, a new architecture comes out of it. The underlined part means A . A. comes into being B. gets out of it
C. gets rid of it D. breaks away from it
58. The author says Ban may be closer to the old modernist ideals because C . A. he doesn’t build in glass and steel
B. paper tubes are not considered as modern materials
C. he gives the masses access to the beauty of architecture by using paper tubes D. even the poorest can afford houses made by paper tubes
59. What is the most important factor that caused Ban to use the paper tubes in buildings? A A. Beauty. B. Load-bearing capacity.
C. Rarity. D. Warmth brought about by the material.
60. “Just try that with bricks.” By this sentence, the author suggests that A . A. ironically, it is impossible for other materials to be recycled as people do with paper tubes B. people should try different ways to recycle building materials C. renovations should be made to recycle bricks
D. it is possible for bricks to be recycled the same way as paper tubes
Passage 3
Living standards have soared during the twentieth century, and economists expect them to continue rising in the decades ahead. Does that mean that we humans can look forward to increasing happiness?
Not necessarily, warns Richard A. Easterlin, an economist at the University of Southern California, in his new book, Growth Triumphant: the Twenty-first Century in Historical Perspective. Easterlin concedes that richer people are more likely to report themselves as being happy than poorer people are. But steady improvements in the American economy have not been accompanied by steady increases in people’s self-assessment of their own happiness. “There has been not improvement in average happiness in the United States over almost a half century—a period in which real GDP per capita more than doubled,” Easterlin reports.
The explanation for this paradox may be that people become less satisfied over time with a given level of income. In Easterlin’s words: “As incomes rise, the aspiration level does too, and the effect of this increase in aspirations is to vitiate the expected growth in happiness due to higher income.”
Money can buy happiness, Easterlin seems to be saying, but only if one’s accounts get bigger and other people aren’t getting more. His analysis helps to explain sociologist Lee Rainwater’s finding that American’s perception of the income “necessary to get along” rose between 1950 and 1986 in the same proportion as actual per capita income. We feel rich if we have more than our neighbors, poor if we have less, and feeling relatively well-off is equated with being happy.
Easterlin’s findings challenge psychologist Abraham Maslow’s “hierarchy of wants” as a reliable guide to future human motivation. Maslow suggested that as people’s basic material wants are satisfied they seek to achieve nonmaterial or spiritual goals. But Easterlin’s evidence points to the persistence of materialism.
“Despite a general level of affluence never before realized in the history of the world,” Easterlin observes, “material concerns in the wealthiest nations today are as pressing as ever and the pursuit of material needs as intense.” The evidence suggests there is no evolution toward higher order goals. Rather, each step upward on the ladder of economic development merely stimulates new economic desires that lead the chase ever onward. Economists are accustomed to deflating the money value of national income by the average level of prices to obtain “real” income. The process here is similar—real income is being deflated by rising material aspiration, in this case to yield essentially constant subjective economic well-being. While it would be pleasant to envisage a world free from the pressure of material want, a more realist projection, based on the evidence, is of a world in which generation after generation thinks it needs only another 10% to 20% more income to be perfectly happy.
Needs are limited, but not greed. Science has developed no cure for envy, so our wealth boosts our happiness only briefly while shrinking that of our neighbors. Thus the outlook for the future is gloomy in Easterlin’s view.
“The future, then, to which the epoch of modern economic growth is leading is one of never ending economic growth, a world in which ever growing abundance is matched by ever rising aspirations, a world in which cultural difference is leveled in the constant race to achieve the good life of the material plenty; it is a world founded on belief in science and the power of rational inquiry and in the ultimate capacity of humanity to shape its own destiny. The irony is that in this last respect the lesson of history appears to be otherwise: that there is no choice. In the end, the triumph of
economic growth is not a triumph of humanity over material wants; rather, it is the triumph of material wants over humanity.”
61. The author claims that the higher living standard does not necessarily mean increasing happiness.T
62. Steady improvement is always accompanied by steady increases in people’s happiness.F 63. The higher the aspiration level is, the happier the people will be.F
64. Easterlin’s findings can be used as evidence to support divergent views.F
65. Economy can’t keep a sustained development because it is constantly deflated by the rising material aspiration.T
Passage 4
I love shopping, even if it is just window-shopping. Shopping in the States is always a pleasant experience. There are different types of shops that operate to cater to your different needs. To buy groceries, you can go to the convenience store, the supermarket or the mass merchandiser (such as Wal-Mart). To buy some clothes and big-ticket items, you can go to the mall or factory outlets. I go to two places most often, the supermarket and the mall.
In almost every city or large town, you can find several big-chain supermarkets. They have more than a dozen checkouts and are one-stop shops since you can buy almost everything there: food, cosmetics, clothes, medicine, etc. You name it. With the development of technology, some of these supermarkets have installed the automatic checkout lanes for customers. I was so thrilled the first time I used the automatic checkout lane. Most packaged goods have barcodes and you just scan them on the scanning machine when you checkout. Some items, such as produce (vegetables and fruits), do not have barcodes on them. You need to input their label numbers, which can be found on the list glued to the scanning machine. These automatic checkout lanes help the stores reduce their labor cost and increase their efficiency. Every grocery store has promotions on different kinds of products every week. Usually you can find a store weekly newspaper with featured promotions for that particular week. I am a bargain hunter, forward-buying a lot of daily products if I feel I need them in the future. Once, I saw a featured promotion on Panteen 2-in-1 shampoo plus conditioner. Although I did not need it at that time, I felt it was a good deal. So I decided to buy two bottles. However, I couldn’t find any such Panteen on the shelf. I went to a sales clerk and asked if he could find any for me. He told me that the store was out of the stock and it would not have any in until the next week. The unfortunate thing was that by then the promotion would be over. However, the clerk told me that I could go to the customer service counter and I would be given a rain-check, which would guarantee the promotion price for me on that particular item. In the following week, with the rain-check, I bought the products at the last week’s promotion price.
Another time, I bought two bags of salad at a grocery store. When I scanned them, the screen showed a different price from what the store advertised. Out of curiosity, I went to the customer service counter and asked why. The lady who helped me went to the shelf to double-check the price. When she came back, she apologized to me, saying that the store didn’t scan the price properly. According to the internal policy of the store, if the customer found out a scanning problem, he would get the product for free as an award for him or a penalty to the store. When I left the store with the two bags of free salad, I marveled at the honesty of the store clerk. If she had not told me, I
would never have had any chance to know that the store had this internal policy.
A shopping mall in the States is composed of many individual specialty shops and nation wide chain stores, such as Sears and JC Penny. What impresses me most when shopping in the mall is its return policy. No matter what you buy, shoes, pants or big-ticket items such as TV and VCR, if you find some problems with them or simply do not like them any longer, you can return them within 30 days. You won’t be challenged at the customer service counter as long as you have your receipt. Of course there are some people who might take the advantage of this return policy, especially when they need something for a momentary use. That’s why you can always find a long line of people waiting to return their goods right after Christmas.
Then the cliché that “the customer is God” rings true to me when I shop in the States. Sometimes I believe that at a certain corner of the world there is a god seeing to the benefits of the customer.
66. All products can go through the automatic checkout lane though some of them don’t have barcodes.F
67. The quality of products on promotion is not guaranteed. F
68. Scanning problem will be corrected by the customer himself. F 69. Customer will get some money as award for finding out errors. F 70. Never has anyone taken the advantage of return policy. F
IV. Translate the following sentences into English, using the words or expressions given in brackets. (10%)
71.科学家们已成功分离出具有单项已知功能的单个而明显的基因。(isolate, function) Scientists have already isolated the genes which have the single known function.
72. 通讯技术的每一个进步都是人类交往的亲密程度的一种倒退。(advance, setback) Each advance of communicating technology is a setback of people’s intimacy. 73.这件事对我很有益，使我从此不再多愁善感。（keep from） It is useful for me to keep me from sensitivity. 74.这些学生错误地以为，若他们讲得不像美国人，就是讲得不好，所以也就不敢讲。(falsely, accordingly, be fearful of)
Those students falsely believed that if they cannot speak like Americans ,they are not good English speaker and accordingly they are fearful of speaking. 75.使我感到惊奇的是，托玛斯太太的忠告真管事儿。(to my…) To my surprise, the suggestion from Mrs.Tomas is really useful. V. Translate the following sentences into Chinese. (10%)
76. It is impossible to identify and isolate an “English” culture that is common to all the speakers of English.
辨认和分离出让所有说英语的人都认同的英语文化是不可能的。
77. A President should be imbued with a sense of responsibility for the nation. 总统应该对于国家充满责任感。
78. Parents can help teens focus by making education relevant to their lives and by understanding how they learn best.
家长们可以关注孩子们的生活来教育他们，也可以关注他们擅长学什么来理解他们。
79. Science has developed no cure for envy, so our wealth boosts our happiness only briefly while
shrinking that of our neighbors.
科技不能治愈妒忌，因此我们的财富只能在短期增加我们的幸福感和对我们的邻国施压。 80. At first they refused but I managed to bring them around to my way of thinking. 开始他们是拒绝的，但是后来我把他们带到了我的思路中。 VI. Writing (15%)
For this part, you are allowed thirty minutes to write a composition on the topic MY IDEA OF OPPORTUNITY. You should write at least 120 words and base your opinions on sound proofs or facts. The following points may serve as a framework.
(1)你认为机会是什么？是不是每个人都有机会? (2)你认为怎样才能抓住机会？
MY IDEA OF OPPORTUNITY
The air we breathe is so freely available that we take it for granted. Yet without it we could not survive more than a few minutes. For the most part, the same air is available to everyone, and everyone needs it. Some people use the air to sustain them while they sit around and feel sorry for themselves. Others breathe in the air and use the energy it provides to make a magnificent life for themselves.
Opportunity is the same way. It is everywhere. Opportunity is so freely available that we take it for granted. Yet opportunity alone is not enough to create success. Opportunity must be seized and acted upon in order to have value. So many people are so anxious to \the work. That's impossible.
Just as you need air to breathe, you need opportunity to succeed. It takes more than just breathing in the fresh air of opportunity, however. You must make use of that opportunity. That's not up to the opportunity. That's up to you. It doesn't matter what \
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