C£®Because they tend to keep more food to themselves£®

D£®Because they benefit from using the information from other species£® Passage Three

Competition breeds excellence£®Ask anyone who pays attention to the car industry and they will tell you that the family-sedan segment is just brutal£¬with manufacturers fighting tooth and nail over every sale£®In fact£¬that market has become more competitive in recent years£®It used to just be the Camry and the Accord fighting for supremacy£¬but now you have new(Hyundai)and old(Ford)competitors£¬among others£¬joining the fight with interesting£¬well-made£¬compelling products£®It?s a great time to be shopping for a new family sedan£®

Compare that with the state of the tablet market today£®Hewlett-Packard is in retreat£®Research in Motion is in a holding pattern£®Motorola has been sold and its tablet is now an afterthought£®Samsung fights the good fight£¬but it trails Apple?s market share by 50 percentage points£®

Apple is not just ahead of the pack£¬it almost is the pack£®Now£¬some would say that this is also a simple result of economic laws at work£ºApple makes a superior product£¬therefore it gets most of the sales£®But what would be really great is that£¬Apple£¬Google£¬Microsoft£¬and H£®P£®£¬locked in an epic battle for tablet supremacy£¬are each releasing new and better products at a furious pace£¬and each dropping prices substantially at a steady clip£®

Apple is driving innovation and creativity with each upgrade of the iPad it releases£®But this isn?t about whether you prefer Apple or Android for your tablet£®This isn?t about picking sides£®As a consumer£¬I want there to be robust competition across the board£®I want Coke and Pepsi£¬Target and Wal-Mart£¬Engadget and Gizmodo£®

If you?re a fan of Apple£¬you want there to be a worthy rival to push it£¬to keep its feet to the fire£®If you don?t like Apple£¬you want someone else in the game so that Apple doesn?t suck all the air out of the room£®And you want Apple to do the same pushing and foot scorching to its competitor that another company would do to it£®

(29) The phrase ¡°fighting tooth and nail¡±(Para£®1)means that car makers are £® A£®competing fiercely with one another

B£®beating one another with their tooth and nail

C£®extremely careful about the family-sedan segment D£®paying more attention to their tooth and nail

(30) Why is it a great time to be shopping for a new family sedan? A£®Because competition is more interesting and compelling£® B£®Because Hyundai and Ford are joining the competition£®

C£®Because customers have enough quality cars to choose from£® D£®Because the Camry and the Accord are competing for supremacy

(31) What are the tablet makers strategically doing£¬facing the brutal competition? A£®Developing new products and reducing prices£® B£®Analyzing the results of the economic laws£® C£®Adapting to the furious pace of development£®

D£®Providing best possible services for their products£®

(32) The author brings in the pairs of Coke and Pepsi£®Target and Wal-Mart£¬Engadget and Gizmodo??(Para£®4)to make £® A£®a comparison B£®a contrast

C£®an abstraction D£®an exemplification

(33) What does the phrase ¡°to keep its feet to the fire¡± in the last paragraph mean? A£®To place Apple?s feet close to the fire£®

B£®To pressure Apple into intensifying its competition£® C£®To force Apple to dance hard on the fire£®

D£®To advise Apple to strategically drop its side products£®

(34) Why does the author start with the car industry before he focuses on tablet market? A£®Because he treats the car industry as the key point for his writing£® B£®Because the car industry is more important than tablet market£®

C£®Because he uses the car analogy for a more effective argumentation£® D£®Because the model of the car is far more popular in the market£® Passage Four

So what are books good for ? My best answer is that books produce knowledge by encasing it£®Books take ideas and set them down£¬transforming them through the limitations of space into thinking usable by others£®In 1959£¬C£®P£®Snow threw down the challenge of ¡°two cultures£®?? the scientific and the humanistic£¬pursuing their separate£¬unconnected lives within developed societies£®In the new-media ecology of the 21st century£¬we may not have closed that gap£¬but the two cultures of the contemporary world are the culture of data and the culture of narrative£®Narrative is rarely collective£®It isn?t infinitely expandable£®Narrative has a shape and a temporality£¬and it ends£¬just as our lives do£®Books tell stories£®Scholarly books tell scholarly stories£®

Storytelling is central to the work of the narrative-driven disciplines¡ªthe humanities and the nonquantitative social sciences¡ªand it is central to the communicative pleasures of reading£®Even argument is a form of narrative£®Different kinds of books are£¬of course£¬good for different things£®Some should be created only for download and occasional access£¬as in the case of most reference projects£¬which these days are born digital or at least given dual passports£®But scholarly writing requires narrative fortitude£¬on the part of writer and reader£®There is onthing wiki about the last set of Cambridge University Press monographs(רÖø)I purchased£¬and in each I encounter an individual speaking subject£®

Each single-author book is immensely particular£¬a story told as only one storyteller could recount it£®Scholarship is a collagist(Æ´Ìù»­¼Ò)£¬building the next road map of what we know book by book£®Stories end£¬and that£¬I think£¬is a very good thing£®A single authorial voice is a kind of performance£¬with an audience of one at a time£¬and no performance should outstay its welcome£®Because a book must end£¬it must have a shape£¬the arc of thought that demonstrates not only the writer?s command of her or his subject but also that writer?s respect for the reader£®A book is its own set of bookends£®

Even if a book is published in digital form£¬freed from its materiality£¬that shaping case of the codex(¹ÅÊéµÄ³­±¾)is the ghost in the knowledge-machine£®We are the case for books£®Our bodies hold the capacity to generate thousands of ideas£¬perhaps even a couple of full-length monographs£¬and maybe a trade book or two£®If we can get them right£¬books are luminous versions of our ideas£¬bound by narrative structure so that others can encounter those better£¬smarter versions of us on the page or screen£®Books make the case for us£¬for the identity of the individual as an embodiment of thinking in the world£®The heart of what even scholars do is the endless task of making that world visible again and again by telling stories£¬complicated and subtle

stories that reshape us daily so that new forms of know1edge can shine out£®

(35)According to the author£¬the narrative culture is £®

A£®connectable B£®infinitely expandable C£®collective D£®nonquantitative (36) Storytelling can be regarded as the essence of all the following EXCEPT £® A£®the humanities B£®the reference books

C£®the social sciences D£®the pleasures of reading

(37) What does the phrase ¡°nothing wiki about??(Para£®2)mean according to the passage? A£®Nothing casual about£®

B£®Nothing stimulating about£® C£®Nothing referential about£® D£®Nothing controversial about£®

(38) Why is each single-author book immensely particular according to the passage? A£®Because it enriches and restructures our knowledge in its own way£® B£®Because it puts together the particular stories we need£® C£®Because it tells single-handedly how we should perform£®

D£®Because it helps to make the map for our travel in particular places£® (39) We may think highly of a writer if his or her work helps £® A£®to haunt us like a ghost in the knowledge-machine B£®to publish books in a narrative structure C£®to review a book on the page or screen

D£®to illuminate us in a new form of knowledge

(40) Why does the writer think that even argument is a form of narrative? A£®Because it can be accessed and downloaded anywhere anytime£® B£®Because it is born digital or it might have dual passports£®

C£®Because it has the 1imitation of time both for the writer and the reader£® D£®Because it will remain a better and smarter version for us on the page£® Section B

Directions£ºIn this section£¬you are required to read one quoted blog and the comments on it£®The blog and comments are followed by questions or unfinished statements£¬each with four suggested answers A£¬B£¬C and D£®Choose the best answer and mark your answer on the answer sheet.

¡°Years ago£¬a friend of mine observed that 80 percent of the people in this country have too much self-esteem and 20 percent have much too little£®That struck me as pretty accurate£¬but psychologists will tell you that self-esteem is not a constant£®People?s appraisal of their own worth varies£®£®£®£®I have the impression that more people have unstable self-esteem than before£®I say this because some of the traditional standards people used to measure their own worth have eroded(middle class respectability)£¬whereas more people now seem to measure themselves against celebrities and superstars£®It would be interesting to know if anybody has studied changes in the criteria we use to measure self-worth£®?? Comment1£º

You bring up an interesting point because I do believe values and beliefs have changed£®It would be very interesting to see the criteria used for self-worth£®I find it hard to believe that only

20£¥of people have low self-esteem£®I?ve been following Brene Brown?s thoughts on the subject of self-worth£¬and low self-worth (on some level) seems much more common£® Comment 2£º

If the quality of one?s self-esteem is going to be judged by comparisons with those who are celebrities and superstars£¬then the entire exercise is really pointless£® Comment 3£º

Self-esteem solution£ºA happy marriage£® Comment 4£º?

Ego(self-worth)is proportionate to wealth£®The more wealth£¬the more self-worth£® Comment 5£º

Benjamin Franklin said it best£¬and it applies to all facets of life£®¡°Contentment will make a poor man rich just as discontent will make a rich man poor.¡± It does not mean not try to do your best£¬or be the richest£®It simply means once you?ve done your best be content with yourself£¬just as if you don?t give your best effort discontent is sure to follow£® Comment 6£º

I?ve ??retired?? from 30 years of expensive£¬if interesting£¬??personal growth?? and ¡°self-improvement£®¡±much probably motivated by trying to ¡°fix¡± myself£®Hanging out with friends at a local cafe is way more satisfying£® Comment 7£º

A related concept you may be interested in is the ¡° sociometer theory\of self-esteem£¬pioneered by Mark Leary(Wake Forest)£®Basically it states that our self-esteem is determined by the amount of perceived social acceptance£¯rejection£¬and that determination is full of cognitive biases and errors£®Awesome stuff£®

(41) The main idea of the quoted blog is that £®

A£®most people in the country have too much self-esteem B£®it is urgent to help those who have too little self-esteem

C£®the criteria for people to measure their self-worth are changing D£®the traditional standards make people feel unstable

(42)Among all the comments£¬which of the following choices brings in authoritative sources in their discussion?

A£®Comment 1 and Comment 2£® B£®Comment 3 and Comment 5£® C£®Comment 1 and Comment 7£® D£®Comment 4 and Comment 6£®

(43)What all the commentators try to respond to in their writing is A£®the respect for the traditional values B£®the standards of self-worth measurement C£®marriage£¬celebrities and social activities D£®ego£¬contentment and social judgment

(44) Why does the writer of Comment 5 try to clarify Benjamin Franklin?s saying? A£®Because Franklin?s saying is universally applicable£®

B£®Because contentment means ¡°rich¡± and discontent means ¡°poor.?? C£®Because if you do your best£¬you will be the richest£®

D£®Because misunderstandings might occur of Franklin?s saying£®