Passage 1

Questions 1 to 5 are based on the following passage.

     I was bom in a pleasant old colonial house built near 1750, and bought by my grandfather sixty or seventy years ago. He joined a group of acquaintances who were engaged in the flourishing West Indian trade of that time. For many years he kept and extended his interests in shipping, building ships and buying large quantities of timber, and sending it down the river and then to the sea. The business was still in existence in my early childhood, so I came in contact with the up-country people who sold timber as well as with the sailors and shipmasters of the other side of the business. I used to linger about the busy country stores, and listen to the lively country talk.

In my grandfather’s business household，my father had taken to his book，as old people said, and gone to college and begun that devotion to the study of medicine which only ended with his life. He gave me my first and best knowledge of books by his own delight and dependence upon them, and ruled my early attempts at writing by his good taste. "Don't try to write about people and things, tell them just as they are!" How often my young ears heard these words without comprehending them! But while I was too young and thoughtless to share in an enthusiasm for Sterne or Fielding, and Smollett or Don Quixote, my mother and grandmother were leading me into the pleasant ways of Pride and Prejudice, and The Scenes of Clerical Life, and the delightful stories of Mrs. Oliphant.

When the time came that my own world of imagination was more real to me than any other, I was sometimes perplexed at my father's directing my attention to certain points of interest in the character or surroundings of our acquaintances. I cannot help believing that he recognized, long before I did myself, in what direction the current of purpose in my life was setting. Now, as I write my sketches of country life, I remember again and again the wise things he said, and the sights he made me see. I may have inherited something of my father’s knowledge of human nature, but my father never lost a chance of trying to teach me to observe. I owe a great deal to his patience with a little girl given far more to dreams than to accuracy, and with perhaps too little natural sympathy for the dreams of others.

Passage 2

Questions 6 to 10 are based on the following passage.

   Educating girls quite possibly yields a higher rate of return than any other investment available in the developing world. Women’s education may be unusual territory for economists，but enhancing women’s contribution to development is actually as much an economic as a social issue. And economics, with its emphasis on incentives (激励)，provides an explanation for why so many girls are deprived of an education.

Parents in low-income countries fail to invest in their daughters because they do not expect them to make an economic contribution to the family; girls grow up only to marry into somebody else's family and bear children. Girls are thus seen as less valuable than boys and are kept at home to do housework while their brothers are sent to school—the prophecy (预言）becomes self-fulfilling，trapping women in a vicious circle (恶性循环）of neglect.

An educated mother, on the other hand, earns more and faces an entirely different set of choices. She is likely to have fewer but healthier children and insist on the development of all her children, ensuring that her daughters are given a fair chance. The education of her daughters then makes it much more likely that the next generation of girls, as well as of boys, will be educated and healthy. The vicious circle is thus transformed into a virtuous circle.

Few will dispute that educating women has great social benefits, but it has enormous economic advantages as well. Most obviously, there is the direct effect of education on the wages of female workers. Wages rise by 10 to 20 percent for each additional year of schooling. Such big returns are impressive by the standard of other available investments, but they are just the beginning.

Passage 3

Questions 11 to 15 are based on the following passage.

   The history of the U.S. from Lincoln’s death to the wave of assassinations in the 1960s can be seen as a struggle to realize Lincoln’s vision of a society whose citizens are not held back by parentage or origin. The struggle to secure this chance for all Americans has been bitter and bloody, and it is far from over. After Lincoln's death, the Fourteenth Amendment promised that the Federal Union would guarantee the rights of all persons against violation by the states. However, this guarantee was exploited by business corporations while remaining a hollow promise to millions of actual persons. Women did not get the vote until five amendments later, and their legal rights were often lost in marriage. As for blacks, political equality remained mostly something unreal until the passage of the Voting Rights Act one hundred years after Lincoln’s death.

The struggle to realize Lincoln's ideal was undertaken not only by workers against capital but also by immigrants against the political system. In less than one human life span following the Civil War, the U.S. absorbed a great number of immigrants who formed the next wave of what Lincoln had called "prudent and penniless" beginners. They found that social services were forgotten by a political system that ran on graft (腐败). The risk of injury，disease，and early death were largely ignored, forcing millions to rely on themselves, on family, and on the charity of friends.

 To some who watched the immigrants pour in, it seemed that America would have to reorganize itself according to the multicultural principle that we hear so much about today. The term “multiculturalism” was popularized by Horace Kallen. He wrote in his book The Nation in 1915 that with the growth of large immigrant communities, the rate of mixed marriage would drop (he was wrong) and the likelihood of a new American race would decline. The U.S., he predicted, would turn into a democracy of nationalities in which "selfhood is ancestrally determined." To other observers，however，the country was simply sliding into disorder, as it seemed to Henry Adams in 1905 when he looked out of the club window on the turmoil of Fifth Avenue and felt himself in the disorderly Rome as witnessed by Emperor Diocletian.

Passage 4

Questions 16 to 20 are based on the following passage.

   Some estimates are that as many as 8% of adolescents suffer from depression at some time during any one-year period, making it much more common than, for example, eating disorders, which seem to get more attention as a source of adolescent misery.

   Even among psychiatrists and other mental health care professionals, the extent of the disability caused by depression is vastly underestimated. The World Health Organization has found that major depression is the single greatest cause of disability in the world—more than twice as many people are disabled by depression as by the second leading cause of disability，iron-deficiency anemia (贫血症).Other diseases and disorders may get more press coverage or more research money, or more sympathy and concern from a well-meaning public, but major depression causes more long term human misery than any other single disease.

When I was a resident in psychiatry，we believed that true depression was rare among teenagers, or that insofar as it existed, it was just a normal phase of adolescent development with no lasting consequences. It didn’t take long after I began treating troubled kids to see that this couldn't possibly be true. Research over recent decades has confirmed my impression. These beliefs, if any still holds them, are false and dangerous. In fact, early onset of depression is not normal, and can predict numerous unhappy life events for youngsters, including school failure, teenage pregnancy, and suicide attempts.

Although depression is increasingly common today, it is among the oldest diseases recorded in the history of medicine. As early as the fourth century, the symptoms of “melancholia” were well known. In other words，depression was first thought of as an exclusively physical illness-the loss of appetite， sleeplessness，irritability，and general depression was believed to have a physical，not a psychological cause. It wasn’t until the nineteenth century-when the term depression was invented to substitute for melancholia-that a psychological understanding of the illness began to develop. Eventually this psychological explanation of depression would become the only one, although today it no longer is. We now know that depression has both psychological and physical symptoms, and that both psychological and medical treatments can help to alleviate them.

Passage 5

Questions 21 to 25 are based on the following passage.

   People in the developed countries are living longer. In 2005 in the U.S. the average lifespan was 77.6 years, as against 54 years in 1920 and just 34 years in 1780. By 2050 it is estimated that the average lifespan will be in the mid 80's. By 2025 in the developed countries the share of the population over 60 will be 26 percent.

This increasing longevity is starting to impact on public finances, economic growth and general living standards. This impact is greater in countries with low employment rates, such as countries in the European Union, of which Italy is a good example. In addition, as baby boomers (those bom from 1946 to 1960) reach retirement age, there is increasing pressure on social security systems and public funds for retirement and health care expenses. Economists are increasingly questioning the sustainability of the European social model with its current high welfare standards.

“Active aging” is now being advanced by policy experts. The current division of life into three cycles—education, employment and retirement—should be changed. According to these experts, governments need to remove barriers that prevent older people from continuing to work and should extend the average working life. Schemes for lifelong learning need to be established to keep the aging workforce equipped with up-to-date job skills.

The U.S. agricultural firm Monsanto is encouraging the government to allow it to introduce “phased retirement” for its workforce. Back in 1991 the company set up a Resource Re-entry Centre (RRC). Monsanto found it difficult to hire qualified temporary administrative assistants. Through the RRC it began to offer this work to retired administrative workers. The centre now sources human resources amongst its retired workforce for a diverse range of projects. In so doing, the company retains the skills, knowledge and social networks of its workers. Much of the work is project-based and highly flexible. Over 60 percent of the projects are given to workers over 60. A key feature of the scheme is workers' access to cost-effective computer-based training to maintain and update job skills. The centre strives to educate company managers regarding the cost efficiency and quality of the work achieved by the service.