试题库在线考试题库-历年真题模拟试题及答案-考博英语在线试题测试中心-希赛网

东北大学

Directions: Write on the Answer Sheet a composition of at least 200 words based on the following statements. You should supply an appropriate title for your composition.Online gambling (网上赌博) is widespread now. It has done a lot of harm to our society as well as to the individuals. In your opinion, what steps can be taken to deal with the problem?

Passage One⑴None of the much flaunted appeals of cigarette advertisers, such as superior taste and mildness, induces us to become smokers or to choose one brand in preference to another. Despite the emphasis put on such qualities by advertisers, they are minor considerations. This is one of the first facts we discovered when we asked several hundred people from all walks of life, why they liked to smoke cigarettes. Smoking is as much a psychological pleasure as it is a physiological satisfaction.What is the nature of this psychological pleasure? It can be traced to the universal desire for self-expression. (2) None of us ever completely outgrows our childhood. We are constantly hunting for the carefree enjoyment we knew as children. As we grew older, we had to subordinate our pleasures to work and to the necessity for unceasing effort. Smoking, for many of us, then, became a substitute for our early habit of following the whims of the moment; it becomes a legitimate excuse for interrupting work and snatching a moment of pleasure.Most of us are hungry for rewards. We want to be patted on the back. A cigarette is a reward that we can give ourselves as often as we wish. When we have done anything well, for instance, we can congratulate ourselves with a cigarette, which certifies, in effect, that we have been “good boys.”Passage Two(3) There is increasing media coverage surrounding carbon footprints. Businesses are facing mounting stakeholder pressure to show their commitment to measuring and reducing carbon emissions. As awareness amongst consumers is growing, organizations are being asked to report on the activities they are undertaking to reduce their carbon footprint. Until recently, most carbon offsets were commonly done by planting trees.Yet how effective are new trees in offsetting the carbon footprint? A new study suggests that the location of the new trees is an important factor when considering such carbon offset projects. (4) Planting and preserving forests in the tropics is more likely to slow down global warming. But the study concludes that planting new trees in certain parts of the planet may actually warm the Earth. The new study, which combines climate and carbon-cycle effects of large-scale deforestation in a fully interactive three-dimensional climate-carbon model, confirms that planting more tropical rainforests could help slow global warming worldwide.The research, led by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory atmospheric scientist Govindasamy Bala, appears in the April 9-13 online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.According to the study, new forests in mid-to high-latitude locations could actually create a net warming. Specifically, more trees in mid-latitude locations like the United States and most of Europe would only create marginal benefits from a climate perspective. But those extra trees in the boreal forests of Canada, Scandinavia and Siberia could actually be counterproductive, Bala said.Forests affect climate in three different ways: they absorb the greenhouse gas ― carbon dioxide — from the atmosphere and help keep the planet cool; they evaporate water to the atmosphere and increase cloudiness, which also helps keep the planet cool; and they are dark and absorb sunlight (the albedo effect), warming the Earth. Previous climate change mitigation strategies that promote planting trees have taken only the first effect into account.“Our study shows that only tropical rainforests are strongly beneficial in helping slow down global warming,” Bala said. “It is a win-win situation in the tropics because trees in the tropics, in addition to absorbing carbon dioxide, promote convective clouds that help to cool the planet. In other locations, the warming from the albedo effect either cancels or exceeds the net cooling from the other two effects.”The study concludes that by the year 2100, forests in mid-and high-latitudes will make some places up to 10 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than would have occurred if the forests did not exist.(5) The authors caution that the cooling from deforestation outside the tropics should not be viewed as a strategy for mitigating climate change. “Preservation of ecosystems is a primary goal of preventing global warming, and the destruction of ecosystems to prevent global warming would be a counterproductive and perverse strategy.” Said Ken Caldeira, from the Carnegie Institution and a co-author of this report.

When bread prices rose, Vladkhleb, a bakery, asked the krai and city for help in holding down prices. Here is a letter it wrote, published in the Vladivostok Times Sept. 9, 2007Dear Residents of Vladivostok:The staff and Board of Directors of Vladkhleb can’t keep silent in the current wild situation when prices for all existing products are skyrocketing unbelievably. And while we somewhat indifferently watch enormous figures on price tags for delicacy products, every kopeck of extra charge for the staples causes a real panic. We perfectly realize that, and that’s why we have kept bread prices affordable for all this time. Even after the rise of prices we have tried to keep the past prices for as long as possible.At the moment all our reserves are exhausted. Stocks of bread-baking ingredients such as flour, sugar, butter and the like are running out. To buy what we need at reasonable prices is virtually impossible today.However, we cannot temporize. We all need bread every day, which means we will be forced to buy everything we need at much higher prices. What this means perhaps doesn’t need to be explained.The cost of bread closely depends on ingredients. Another financial crisis has led to a 50%－300% increase of prices for butler, vegetable oil, all types of margarine, yeast and other as of September 1. All these prices continue to grow every hour.Because of this, Vladkhleb came to the critical point where it is necessary to raise prices of its products. Otherwise, we will just destroy a most powerful bread enterprise. Should Vladkhleb shut down, the bread price will get out of hand.Our economists projected the situation for the near future considering the growing flour cost. With the cost of flour at 2.18 rubles per kilogram at the start of September, the retail bread price was to be 4.36 rubles. With an increase of flour cost to 4 rubles per kilogram, bread price will grow to 6.17 rubles. Further growth will be possible.So it turns out that bread may rank with delicacy products. Is there another way out? Yes. It is already put into practice by leaders of other cities and regions. For example, Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov used the press in the very first days of the crisis to tell the residents that he had decided to subsidize the bread industry so that not to allow prices for this type of food to rise. There were no objections. So did Khabarovsk ― there they pay subsidies for bread baking ingredients.Incidentally, the city and krai administrations already have the experience of supporting our plants. Rather than artificially holding back prices, they employed loans and waivers and the like. At this point all the city and krai offices of authority as well as deputies at all levels could consider our propositions such as:Granting waivers on taxes to krai and city budgets;Establishing lower prices for electric and thermal energy for a program of bread production;Facilitating in reception of customs duty and tax waivers from the federal government for imported grain;Recovery of Pacific Fleet’s debts in the amount of 6 million rubles (calculated as of August 2007) for supplied products;Lowering rent for premises and plots.Any of these possible measures will help Vladkhleb contain the growth of prices for its products. Despite of our SOS signal, no measures have been taken as yet. We have found ourselves in the same situation as any of you. We see the situation changing steadily for the worse. We will not cope with that alone.We see one recourse: Raise the bread price minimally and cancel our free plastic bag service. But what is next? This is the concern of all the 700 employees and the board of Vladkhleb.Every extra kopeck in the cost of bread upsets you and us very much. Making our sincere apologies for a forced increase of the bread price, we hope for your understanding and support. Today and tomorrow we are with you, as usual.The Staff and Board of Vladkhleb1.In this open letter Vladkhleb explains to the people of Vladivostok that （）.2.A possible solution to the crisis, Vladkhleb suggests is （）.3.“So it turns out that bread may rank with delicacy products,” means （）.4.Vladkhleb has decided not to shut down because, they say, （）.5.One of Vladkhleb propositions to the local authorities “Recovery of Pacific Fleet’s debts in the amount of 6 million rubles (calculated as of August 2007) for supplied products.” Means （）.

The Planning Commission asserts that the needed reduction in acute care hospital beds can best be accomplished by closing the smaller hospitals, mainly voluntary and proprietary. This strategy follows from the argument that closing entire institutions saves more money than closing the equivalent number of beds scattered throughout the health system.The issue is not the simple. Larger hospitals generally are designed to provide more complex care. Routine care at large hospitals costs more than the same care given at smaller hospitals. Therefore, closure of all the small hospitals would commit the city to paying considerably more for inpatient care delivered at acute care hospitals than would be the case with a mixture of large and small institutions. Since reimbursement rates at the large hospitals are now based on total costs, paying the large institutions a lower rate for routine care would simply raise the rates for complex care by a comparable amount. Such a reimbursement rate adjustment might make the charges for each individual case more accurately reflect the actual costs, but there would be no reduction in the total costs.There is some evidence that giant hospitals are not the most efficient. Service organizations —and medical care remains largely a service industry ― frequently find that savings of scale have an upper limit. Similarly, the quality of routine care in the very largest hospitals appears to be less than optimum. Also, the concentration of all hospital beds in a few locations may affect the access to care.Thus simply closing the smaller hospitals will not necessarily save money or improve the quality of care.Since the fact remains that there are too many acute care hospital beds in the city, the problem is to devise a proper strategy for selecting and urging the closure of the excess beds, however many it may turn out to be.The closing of whole buildings within large medical centers had many of the cost advantages of closing the whole of small institutions, because the fixed costs can also be reduced in such cases. Unfortunately, many of the separate buildings at medical centers are special use facilities, the relocation of which is extremely costly. Still, a search should be made for such opportunities.The current lack of adequate ambulatory care facilities raises another possibility. Some floors or other large compact areas of hospitals could be transferred from inpatient to ambulatory uses. Reimbursement of ambulatory services is chaotic, but the problem is being addressed. The overhead associated with the entire hospital should not be charged even prorate to the ambulatory facilities. Even if it were, the total cost would probably be less than that of building of a new facility. Many other issues would also need study, especially the potential over-centralization of ambulatory services.The Planning Commission language seems to imply that one reason for closing smaller hospitals is that they are “mainly voluntary and proprietary”, thus, preserving the public hospital system by making the rest of the hospital system absorb the needed cuts. It is important to preserve the public hospital system for many reasons, but the issue should be faced directly and not hidden behind arguments about hospital size if indeed that was the meaning.1.The best title for the passage would be （）.2.The Planning Commission is accused by the author of being （）.3.The author’s purpose in discussing ambulatory care is to （）.4.With which of the following is the author least likely to agree?5.How does the author feel that his suggestions for closing inpatient beds could impact on the ambulatory care system?

Well, no gain without pain, they say. But what about pain without gain? Everywhere you go in America, you hear tales of corporate revival. What is harder to establish is whether the productivity revolution that businessmen assume they presiding over is for real.The official statistics are mildly discouraging. They show that, if you lump manufacturing and services together, productivity has grown on average by 1.2% since 1997. That is somewhat faster than the average during the previous decade. And since 2001, productivity has increased by 2% a year, which is more than twice the 1988-1997 average. The trouble is that part of the recent acceleration is due to the usual rebound that occurs at this point in a business cycle, and so is not conclusive evidence of a revival in the underlying trend. There is, as the treasury secretary says, a “disjunction” between the mass of business anecdote that points to a leap in productivity and the picture reflected by the statistics.Some of this can be easily explained. New ways of organizing the workplace — all that re-engineering and downsizing — are only one contribution to the overall productivity of an economy, which is driven by many other factors such as joint investment in equipment and machinery, new technology, and investment in education and training. Moreover, most of the changes that companies make are intended to keep them profitable, and this need not always mean increasing productivity: switching to new markets or improving quality can matter just as much.Two other explanations are more speculative. First, some of the business restructuring of recent years may have been ineptly done. Second, even if it was well done, it may have spread much less widely than people suppose.Leonard Schlesinger, a Harvard academic and former chief executive of Au Bon Pain, a rapidly growing chain of bakery cafes, says that much “re-engineering” has been crude. In many cases, lie believes, the loss of revenue has been greater than the reductions in cost. His colleague, Michael Beer, says that far too many companies have applied re-engineering in a mechanistic fashion, chopping out costs without giving sufficient thought to long-term profitability. BBDO’s Allen Rosenshine is blunter. He dismisses a lot of the work of re-engineering consultants as mere rubbish — “the worst sort of ambulance-chasing.”81.According to the author, the American economic situation is （）.82.The official statistics on productivity growth （）.83.The author raises the question “What about pain without gain?” because （）.84.What does the word “blunter” (para.5, line 6) mean?85.Which of the following statements is NOT mentioned in the passage?

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