Section B
Directions: Read the following three passages. Each passage is followed by veral questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. Choo the one that fits best according to the information given in the passage you have just read.
(C)
Here‘s the scary thing about the identity-theft ring that the feds cracked last week: there was nothing any of its estimated 40,000 victims could have done to prevent it from happening. This was an inside job, according to court documents. A lowly help-desk worker at Teledata Communications, a software firm that helps banks access credit reports online, allegedly (据说）stole passwords for tho reports and sold them to a group of 20 thieves at $60 a pop. That allowed the gang to cherry-pick consumers with good credit and apply for all kinds of accounts in their names. Cost to the victims: $3 million and rising.
Even scarier is that this, the largest identity-theft bust to date, is just a drop in the bit bucket. More than
700,000 Americans hav e their credit hijacked every year. It‘s one of crime‘s biggest growth markets. A name, address and Social Security number--which can often be found on the Web--is all anybody needs to apply for a bogus（伪造的）line of credit. Credit companies make $1.3 trillion annually and lo less than 2% of that revenue（收入）to fraud, so there‘s little financial incentive for them to make the application process more cure. As it stands now, it‘s up to you to protect your identity.
The good news is that there are plenty of steps you can take. Most credit thieves are opportunists, not well-organized gangs. A lot of them go Dumpster diving for tho millions of ―pre-approved‖ credit-card mailings that go out every day. Others steal wallets and return them, taking only a Social Security number. Shredding your junk mail and leaving your Social Security card at home can save a lot of agony later.
But the most effective way to keep your identity clean is to check your credit reports once or twice a year. There are three major credit-report outfits: Equifax (), Trans-Union () and Experian (). All allow you to order reports online, which is a lot better than wading through voice-mail hell on their 800 lines. Of the three, I found TransUnion‘s website to be the cheapest and most comprehensive--laying out state-by-state prices,
rights and tips for consumers in easy-to-read fashion.
小鱼汤If you‘re lucky enough to live in Colorado, Georgia, Maryland, Massachutts, New Jery or Vermont, you are entit led to one free report a year by law. Otherwi it‘s going to cost $8 to $14 each time. Avoid rvices that offer to monitor your reports year-round for about $70; that‘s $10 more than the going rate among thieves. If you think you‘re a victim of identity theft, you can ask for fraud alerts to be put on file at each of the three credit-report companies. You can also download a theft-report form v/idtheft, which, along with a local police report, should help when irate creditors come knocki ng. Just don‘t expect justice. That audacious help-desk worker was one of the fewer than 2% of identity thieves who are ever caught.
63. The expression ―inside job‖(Line 2, Paragraph 1) most probably means ___________.
A. a crime committed by a person working for the victim
B. a crime that should be punished verely
C. a crime that does great harm to the victim
D. a crime that pos a great threat to the society
四大文明古国是哪四国64. You can protect your identity in the following way except ___________.
A. destroying your junk mail
B. leaving your Social Security card at home
C. visiting the credit-report website regularly
D. obtaining the free report from the government
65. It is easy to have credit-theft becau ____________.
A. More people are using credit rvice
B. The application program is not safe enough
C. Creditors usually disclo their identity
D. Creditors are not careful about their identity
66. The best title of the text is ____________.
A. The danger of credit-theft
B. The loss of the creditors
C. How to protect your good name
D. Why the creditors lo their identity Keys: 63-66: A D B C
Section B
Directions: Read the following three passages. Each passage is followed by veral questions or
unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. Choo the one that fits best according to the information given in the passage you have just read.
(C)
All across America, students are anxiously finishing their "What I Want To Be .." college applicationessays, advid to focus on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) by experts and parents who insist that's the only way to become workforce ready. But two recent studies of workplace success contradict the traditional wisdom about "hard skills".
Google originally t its hiring systems to sort for computer science students with top grades from top science universities. In 2013, Google decided to test its hiring theory by quickly dealing with large amounts hiring, firing, and promotion data collected since the company's establishment.
Project Oxygen shocked everyone by concluding that, among the eight most important qualities ofGoogle's top employees, STEM capability comes in dead last. The ven top characteristics of success atGoogle are all soft skills: being a good coach; communicating and listening well; posssing comprehensioninto others, being supportive of one's colleagues; being a good critical thinker and problem solver, and beingable to make connections across complex ideas.
Tho characteristics sound more like what one gains as an English or theater major than as a programmer.Could it be that top Google employees were succeeding despite their technical training, not becau ofit? After bringing in more experts to dive even deeper into the data, the company enlarged its previous hiringpractices to include humanities majors, artists, and even the MBAs (Master of Business Administration).
Project Aristotle, a study relead by Google this past spring, further supports the importance of soft skillven in high-tech environments. Project Aristotle analyzes data on inventive and productive tea
ms. Googletakes pride in its A-teams, asmbled with top scientists, each with the most specialized knowledge and able tothrow down one creative idea after another. Its data analysis revealed, however, that the company's mostimportant and productive new ideas come from B-teams comprid of employees who don't always have to bethe smartest people in the room.
Project Aristotle shows that the best teams at Google exhibit a range of soft skills: equality, generosity,curiosity toward the ideas of your teammates, understanding, and emotional intelligence. And topping the list:emotional safety. To succeed, each and every team member must
feel confident speaking up and makingmistakes. They must know they are being heard.
STEM skills are vital to the world we live in today, but technology alone, as Steve Jobs famously insisted,is not enough. We desperately need tho who are educated to the human, cultural, and social as well as thecomputational.
63. The underlined word:―contradict‖most probably means ―____________‖.
A. add to
如何培养自信心B. back up
C. bring about
D. conflict with
64. Google conducted the studies of workplace success in order to ____________.
A. determine what makes a workplace-ready student
B. check whether its hiring system rves the purpo
C. prove soft skills are more important than hard ones
D.impress its competitors with the employees‘ excellence
65. What can be inferred from Project Aristotle?
A. Emotional safety enables people to express themlves freely.
B. Listening and hearing helps develop problem-solving abilities.
C. L earning from mistakes doesn‘t necessarily mean improvement.
D. Tho without specialized knowledge can also make inventions.
66. Which of the following is the best title for the passage?戏曲角色
A. STEM skills our society needs for better education
B. The principal focus students have on application essays
我的妹妹C. The surprising thing Google learned about its employees
D. The soft skills Google programmers lack for career growth
Keys:63-66: DAAD
Section C
Directions：Read the passage carefully. Fill in each blank with a proper ntence given in the box. Each ntence can be ud only once. Note that there are two more ntences than you need.
(C)
王郁文―Two centuries ago, Lewis and Clark left St. Louis to explore the new lands acquired in the Louisiana Purcha,”George W. Bush said, announcing his desire for a program to nd men and
women to Mars. ―They made that journey in the spirit of discovery. America has ventured forth into space for the same reasons.‖
Yet there are vital differences between Lewis and Clark‘s expedition and a Mars mission. First, they were headed to a place where hundreds of thousands of people were already living. Second, they were certain to discover places and things of immediate value to the new nation. Third, their venture cost next to nothing by today‘s standards. A Mars mission may be the single most expensive non-wartime undertaking in U.S. history.
Appealing as the thought of travel to Mars is, it does not mean the journey makes n, even considering the human calling to explore. And Mars as a destination for people makes absolutely no n with current technology.台式机硬盘拆卸
Prent system for getting from Earth‘s surface to low-Earth orbit are so fantastically expensive that merely launching the 1,000 tons or so of spacecraft and equipment a Mars mission would require could be accomplished only by cutting health-care benefits, education spending, or other important p我是丑小鸭
rograms --- or by raising taxes. Abnt some remarkable discovery, astronauts, geologists, and biologists once on Mars could do little more than analyze rocks and feel awestruck （敬畏的）staring into the sky of another world. Yet rocks can be analyzed by automated probes without risk to human life, and at a tiny fraction of the cost of nding people.
It is interesting to note that when President Bush unveiled his proposal, he listed the recent major achievements of space exploration pictures of evidence of water on Mars, discovery of more than 100 planets outside our solar system, and study of the soil of Mars. All the accomplishments came from automated probes or automated space telescopes. Bush‘s proposal, which calls for“reprogramming”some of NASA‘s prent budget into the Mars effort, might actually lead to a reduction in such unmanned science --- the one aspect of space exploration that‘s working really well.
Rather than spend hundreds of billions of dollars to hurl tons toward Mars using current technology, why not take a decade or two or however much time is required rearching new launch systems and advanced propulsion（推进力）? If new launch systems could put weight into orbit affordably, and advanced propulsion could speed up that long, slow transit to Mars, the dream of stepping onto the red planet might become reality. Mars will still be there when the technology is ready.
