Section I    VocabularyDirections: There are 20 incomplete sentences in this section. For each sentence there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. Choose the one that best completes the sentence and mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1.

1. 
The exhibition of paintings bored me to death. I wish I ______ to it.

2. 
There is some evidence ______ dishonesty may ebb and flow.

3. 
No longer are contributions to computer technology confined to any one country; ______ is this more true than in Europe.

4. 
It seems to me that the main requirement of an international language is that it ______ easily learned.

5. 
Whatever the causes, English is currently more widely spoken and written than any other language

6. 
The company management attempted to ______ information that was not favorable to them, but it was all in vain.

7. 
State financial support given ______ scholarships has stimulated the students to greater efforts.

8. 
In the darkness, it is difficult for us to ______ the tower from the other buildings around it.

9. 
If ______ and lodging are included in educational fees, a university student in the U.S. will need approximately $10,000 a year.

10. 
Some useful ideas were suggested while the social committee was ______ about the clubs program for the coming season.

11. 
To our ______, Geoffrey"s illness proved not to be as serious as we had feared.

12. 
Despite all the heated ______ they had, they remained the best of friends throughout their lives.

13. 
Built ______ natural materials, the houses are believed to be warm, comfortable and friendly places to live.

14. 
The lawyer advised him to drop the ______, since he stands little chance to win.

15. 
She ______ some important details in her account, which aroused the police"s suspicion.

16. 
The manager was very pleased with the increased ______ from the factory last month.

17. 
You would be ______ a risk to let your child go to school by himself.

18. 
The newcomer was ______ admittance to the classroom for not being properly dressed.

19. 
It is estimated that, currently, about 50000 species become ______ every year.

20. 
David likes country life and has decided to ______ farming.

Section II    ClozeDirections: Read the following passage. For each numbered blank there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. choices the best one and mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1.

In the late 1960"s, many people in North America turned their attention to environmental problems, and new steel-and-glass skyscrapers were widely criticized. Ecologists pointing (21) that a cluster of tall buildings in a city often overburdens public transportation and parking lot (22) .    Skyscrapers are also enormous (23) , and wasters, of electric power. In one recent year, the addition (24) 17 million square feet of skyscraper office space in New York City raised the (25) daily demand for electricity by 120,000 kilowatts-- enough to (26) the entire city of Albany for a day. Glass-wailed skyscraper can be especially (27) . The heat loss (or gain) through a wall of half-inch plate glass is more than ten times (28) through a typical masonry wall filled with insulation board. To lessen the strain (29) heating and air-conditioning equipment, (30) of skyscrapers have begun to use double-glazed panels of glass, and reflective glasses (31) with silver or gold mirror films that reduce (32) as well as heat gain. However, (33) skyscrapers raise the temperature of the surrounding air and (34) neighboring buildings. Skyscrapers put severe pressure on a city"s sanitation (35) , too. If fully occupied, the two World Trade Center towers in New York City would alone generate 2.25 million gallons of raw sewage each year--as (36) as a city the size of Stamford, Connecticut, which has a (37) of more than 109,000. Skyscrapers also (38) with television reception, block bird flyways, and obstruct air traffic.    Still, people (39) to build skyscrapers for all the reasons that they have always built them--personal ambition and the (40) of owners to have the largest possible amount of rentable space.

Section III    Reading ComprehensionDirections: Read the following four passages. Answer the questions below each passage by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1.

One of the most pressing challenges that the United States--and indeed, the world--will face in the next few decades is how to alleviate the growing stress that human activities are placing on the environment. The consequences are just too great to ignore. Wildlife habitats are being degraded or disappearing altogether as new developments take up more land. Plant and animal species are becoming extinct at a greater rate now than at any time in Earth"s history. As many as 30 percent of the world"s fish stocks are overexploited. And the list goes on.     Yet, there is reason to have hope for the future. Advances in computing power and molecular biology are among the tremendous increases in scientific capability that are helping researchers gain a better understanding of these problems. Recent developments in science and technology could provide the basis for some major, and timely actions that would improve our understanding of how human activities affect the environment.     One priority for research is improving hydrological forecasting. It has been estimated that the world"s water use could triple in the next two decades. Already, widespread water shortages have occurred in parts of China, India, North Africa, and the Arabian Peninsula. The need for water also is taking its toll on freshwater ecosystems in the United States. Only 2 percent of the nation"s streams are considered in good condition, and close to 40 percent of native fish species are rare to extinct. Using a variety of new remote sensing tools, scientists can learn more about how precipitation affects water levels, how surface water is generated and transported, and how changes in the landscape affect water supplies.     To prevent outbreaks of infectious diseases in plants, animals, and humans, more study is needed on how pathogens, parasites, and disease-carrying species--as well as humans and other species they infect--are affected by changes in the environment. The overuse of antibiotics both in humans and in farm animals has contributed to the growth of antibiotic-resistant microorganisms.  Researchers  can take  advantage  of new technologies in genetics and computing to better monitor and predict the effects that environmental changes might have on disease outbreaks.     Humans have made alterations to Earth"s surface--such as tropical deforestation, reduction of surface and ground water, and massive development--so dramatic that they approach the levels of transformation that occurred during glacial periods. Such alterations cause changes in local and regional climate, and will determine the future of agriculture. Recent advances in data collection and analysis should be used to document and better understand the causes and consequences of changes in land cover and use.

Most human beings actually decide before they think. When any human being—executive, specialized expert, or person in the street—encounters a complex issue and forms an opinion, often within a matter of seconds, how thoroughly has he or she explored the implications of the various courses of action? Answer: not very thoroughly. Very few people, no matter how intelligent or experienced, can take inventory of the many branching possibilities, possible outcomes, side effects, and undesired consequences of a policy or a course of action in a matter of seconds. Yet, those who pride themselves on being decisive often try to do just that. And once their brains lock onto an opinion, most of their thinking thereafter consists of finding support for it.     A very serious side effect of argumentative decision making can be a lack of support for the chosen course of action on the part of the "losing" faction. When one faction wins the meeting and the others see themselves as losing, the battle often doesn"t end when the meeting ends. Anger, resentment, and jealousy may lead them to sabotage the decision later, or to reopen the debate at later meetings.     There is a better way. As philosopher Aldous Huxley said, "It isn"t who is right, but what is right, that counts."    The structured-inquiry method offers a better alternative to argumentative decision making by debate. With the help of the Internet and wireless computer technology, the gap between experts and executives is now being dramatically closed. By actually putting the brakes on the thinking process, slowing it down, and organizing the flow of logic, it"s possible to create a level of clarity that sheer argumentation can never march.     The structured-inquiry process introduces a level of conceptual clarity by organizing the contributions of the experts, then brings the experts and the decision makers closer together. Although it isn"t possible or necessary for a president or prime minister to listen in on every intelligence analysis meeting, it"s possible to organize the experts" information to give the decision maker much greater insight as to its meaning. This process may somewhat resemble a marketing focus group; it"s a simple, remarkably clever way to bring decision makers closer to the source of the expert information and opinions on which they must base their decisions.

Science is an enterprise concerned with gaining information about causality, or the relationship between cause and effect. A simple example of a cause is the movement of a paddle as it strikes a ping-pong ball; the effect is the movement of the ball through the air. In psychology and other sciences, the word "cause" is often replaced by the term "independent variable". This term implies that the experimenter is often "free" to vary the independent variable as he or she desires (for example, the experimenter can control the speed of the paddle as it strikes the ball). The term "dependent variable" replaces the word "effect", and this term is used because the effect depends on some characteristic of the independent variable (the flight of the ball depends on the speed of the paddle). The conventions of science demand that both the independent and dependent variables be observable events, as is the case in the ping-pong example. In the case of biorhythm theory, the independent variable is the number of days that have elapsed between a person"s date of birth and some test day. The dependent variable is the person"s level of performance on some specified task on the test day. Notice that although the experimenter is not free to choose a birthday for a given individual, persons with different dates of birth can be tested on the same day, or a single subject can be tested on several different days.   In order to predict the relationship between independent and dependent variables, many scientific theories make use of what are called intervening variables. Intervening variables are purely theoretical concepts that cannot be observed directly. To predict the flight of a ping-pong ball, Newtonian physics relies on a number of intervening variables, including force, mass, air resistance, and gravity. You can probably anticipate that the intervening variables of biorhythm theory are the three bodily cycles with their specified time periods. It should be emphasized that not all psychological theories include intervening variables, and some psychologists object to their use precisely because they are not directly observable.   The final major component of a scientific theory is its syntax, or the rules and definitions that state how the independent and dependent variables are to be measured, and that specify the relationships among independent variables, intervening variables, and dependent variables. It is the syntax of biorhythm theory that describes how to use a person"s birthday to calculate the current status of the three cycles. The syntax also relates the cycles to the dependent variable, performance, by stating that positive cycles should cause high levels of performance whereas low or critical cycles should cause low performance levels. To summarize, the components of a scientific theory can be divided into four major categories: independent variables, dependent variables, intervening variables, and syntax.

Less than 40 years ago in the United States, it was common to change a one-dollar bill for a dollar"s worth of silver. That is because the coins were actually made of silver. But those days are gone. There is no silver in today"s coins. When the price of the precious metal rises above its face value as money, the metal will become more valuable in other uses. Silver coins are no longer in circulation because the silver in coins is worth much more than their face value. A silver firm could find that it is cheaper to obtain silver by melting down coins than by buying it on the commodity markets. Coins today are made of an alloy of cheaper metals.     Gresham"s Law, named after Sir Thomas Gresham, argues that "good money" is driven out of circulation by "bad money". Good money differs from bad money because it has higher commodity value.     Gresham lived in the 16th century in England where it was common for gold and silver coins to be debased.  Governments did this by mixing cheaper metals with gold and silver. The governments could thus make a profit in coinage by issuing coins that had less precious metal than the face value indicated. Because different mixings of coins had different amounts of gold and silver, even though they bore the same face value, some coins were worth more than others as commodities. People who dealt with gold and silver could easily see the difference between the "good" and the "had" money. Gresham observed that coins with a higher content of gold and silver were kept rather than being used in exchange, or were melted down for their precious metal. In the mid-1960s when the U. S. issued new coins to replace silver coins, Gresham"s law went right in action.

Section IV    TranslationDirections: In this section there is a passage in English. Translate the passage into Chinese and write your translation on ANSWER SHEET 2.

1. 
(1) China and the United States signed a historic agreement yesterday that will pave the way for Beijing to enter the World Trade Organization (WTO), 13 years after it applied to join. While Beijing has still to complete negotiations with other WTO members, the US was the toughest party to deal with. The agreement, and after six gruelling days and nights of negotiations, opens the way for China to join the world"s principle trading body and is the mainland"s most important economic event since December 1979. When it switched from state planning and isolationism to reform and the open-door policy. Zhang Ligang, chief executive of e-Long com, an Internet start-up firm that was illegal when it was founded last week but become legal yesterday with the lifting of a ban on foreign investment in the Net, summed up the day. "If we say that Deng Xiaoping opened China to the world in 1979, we can say that this time China has entered the world" (2) The chief US negotiator, Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky, described the deal as "profoundly important" , "absolutely comprehensive" and an excellent one for American business. At a meeting with Ms Barshevfsky yesterday afternoon, President Jiang Zemin called the deal "good, historic and realistic, and a win-win for both sides which showed that both countries saw the issue from a strategic view point.    China"s entry into the WTO will have profound ramifications for the country, binding her to international trading rules and encouraging foreign firms to invest by providing a system less based on rule by the idiosyncrasies of an official and more on transparent laws and regulations. It will accelerate a process of closing money-losing and over-manned state companies and moving labor and capital into market-driven businesses.   In the short term, it will drive up unemployment as inefficient, capital-intensive state industries are  shut down. (3) It also marks a vital victory for Prime Minister Zhu Rongji, the main proponent, along with Mr Jiang, of China"s membership, who offered a similar deal in Washington in April. The war in Yugoslavia, in which Beijing sided with Sebia, and the Nato bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, froze negotiations from until September. (4) For Mr Zhu, WTO membership will serve as a motor for reform of state companies, banking, insurance, securities and other industries. At a news conference just before she left China, Ms Barshefsky said the support of the two presidents had been crucial. Presidents Bill Clinton and Jiang Zemin met in Auckland and agreed to put the talks back on track, with a deadline of the next round of WTO talks that will begin in Seattle on November 30. Beijing will eliminate non-tariff quotas within five years, some in two to three years. It will cut tariffs on imported cars from the current 80-100 percent to 25 percent by 2006 and allow foreign financial institutions to finance the purchase of cars. It will allow 49 percent foreign investment in telecommunications firms from the date of entry, rising to 50 percent in two years, and will allow foreign banks to conduct local currency business with domestic companies two years after accession and with domestic individuals five years after.    Beijing also agreed to lift a ban on foreign investment in the Internet. (5) In return, Beijing received a concession on textiles, with Washington backing down from its demand that quotas on China"s exports remain until 2010. Instead they will end in 2005, but with an "anti-import surge" mechanism remaining for a further four years, to prevent a flood of experts.

Section V    Writing

1. 
8分钟的发言，4次被掌声打断，这是出现在3月7日政协全体会议上的一幕。直陈当前房地产弊端的政协委员梁季阳，收获了在场几千人的掌声，而掌声背后，是人们的敬意。     这格外热烈的掌声，再次说明：代表委员只有敢讲话、会讲话，才能切实履行好参政议政职能，也才能真正赢得信任和尊重。     敢讲话，意味着正视现实、直面问题。经过30余年改革开放，中国进入了发展的重要战略机遇期和社会矛盾凸显期，出现了一系列新情况新问题，前进中所面对的困难和风险“世所罕见”。“逆水行舟，不进则退”，我们必须正视问题，努力改进，方能不断前行。     要直面这些问题，需要深入地思考，更需要担当的勇气。发现问题，建言献策，是代表委员的职责所系。这更需要代表委员们放下“情面”的包袱，本着对国家和人民负责的态度，积极议政建言。     敢讲话的同时，还要会讲话。好的提案，直面问题只是一方面，提出有针对性的建议才是关键。很多问题并不难发现，人人都能谈两句，但两会不是摆“龙门阵”，不能停留于夸夸其谈，博取公众眼球。     会讲话，不是擅辩论术、懂修辞学，而要建立在深入思考、广泛调研的基础上。在利益结构多元、利益诉求多样的今天，任何一个社会问题的背后，都会涉及不同群体利益的协调与平衡。因此，代表委员要保持良好的工作作风，时时深入到社会生活一线，广泛取证调研，在充分考虑不同群体利益的基础上，进行深入全面的分析，提出建设性的改进方案，推动问题的实质性改善。     良药苦口，忠言逆耳。对于代表委员的意见建议，各级政府和相关部门应该充分重视，发扬民主作风，虚心听取。唯有这样，背负着亿万人民殷切期望的代表委员们，才能够最终履行好自己的职责，造福国家，造福人民。  中文摘要：在3月7日政协全体会议上，热烈的掌声说明了代表委员只有敢讲话、会讲话，才能真正赢得信任和尊重。经过30余年改革开放，中国进入了发展的重要战略机遇期和社会矛盾凸显期，出现了一系列新情况新问题，直面这些问题，需要深入的思考，发现问题，建言献策，这是代表委员的职责所系。对于代表委员的意见建议，各级政府和相关部门应该充分重视，虚心听取。唯有这样，背负着亿万人民殷切期望的代表委员们，才能够最终履行好自己的职责，造福国家，造福人民。