sample 2.doc

TEST FOR ENGLISH MAJORS-GRADE EIGHT (SAMPLE 2)-TIME LIMIT: 190 MINPART ILISTENING COMPREHENSION (30 MIN)SECTION AMINI-LECTUREIn this section you will hear a mini-lecture. You will hear the lecture ONCE ONLY. While listening, take notes on the important points. Your notes will not be marked, but you will need them to complete a gap-filling task after the mini-lecture. When the lecture is over, you will be given two minutes to check your notes, and another ten minutes to complete the gap-filling task on ANSWER SHEET ONE. Use the blank sheet for note-taking.SECTION BINTERVIEWIn this section you will hear everything ONCE ONLY. Listen carefully and then answer the questions that follow. Mark the correct answer to each question on your colored answer sheet.Questions 1 to 5 are based on an interview. At the end of the interview you will be given 10 seconds to answer each of the following five questions.Now listen to the interview.1. If after vigorous exercise, a persons pulse rate remains high for a long while, he or she_.A. has an unusually strong heart.B. must be suffering from some disease.C. should go to the hospital to have a check-up.D. needs to reduce the intensity of the exercise.2. One way in which exercise can improve our health is that it helps us to _.A.lose weight.B.sweat.C.build muscles.D.gain confidence.3. Dieting is not an effective way to lose weight unless _.A.it is accompanied by exercising.B.you drink nothing but skim milk.C.you avoid eating fatty meat.D. you take more vitamins when exercising.4.The problem with most Americans diet is that they_ .A.drink too much milk. B.drink too much alcohol.C.consume too much meat and sugar. D.dont get enough thiamine.5.According to Dr. Mirkin, drugs such as amphetamines cannot increase an athletes performance, because _ .A.they actually do harm to his or her healthB.they only stimulate his or her imaginationC.they increase his or her strength only temporarilyD.they actually slow down his or her reactionsSECTION CNEWS BROADCASTIn this section you will hear everything ONCE ONLY. Listen carefully and then answer the questions that follow. Mark the correct answer to each question on your answer sheet.Question 6 and 7 are based on the following news. At the end of the news item, you will be given 20 seconds to answer the question.Now listen to the news.6. According to many health experts HIV-AIDS _.A. is as great a problem as SARS.B. is a greater problem than SARS.C. is not as great problem as SARS.D. is the worst problem faced by China.7. Chinese doctor and longtime AIDS activist Wan Yanhai is _ Chinas battle against AIDS.A. satisfied withB.worried aboutC.ignorant ofD.grateful toQuestion 8 is based on the following news. At the end of the news item, you will be given 10 seconds to answer the question.Now listen to the news.8. According to news report, which of the following statements is NOT CORRECT?A. Uncontrolled woman trafficking has become a serious problem in Cyprus.B. The problem of woman trafficking may have some effect on the entry of Cyprus into EU.C. Many women trafficked from other countries are working legally as prostitutes in Cyprus.D. The government of Cyprus is to blame for woman trafficking.Question 9 is based on the following news. At the end of the news item, you will be given 10 seconds to answer the question.Now listen to the news.9. According to the estimate of WHO, _.A. 450 million people with mental disorders in the world are receiving the health care they needB. 450 million people in the world suffer from mental disorders.C. 450 million people with mental disorders in the world are ill-treated.D. half of countries in the world have laws protecting the mentally ill.Question 10 is based on the following news. At the end of the news item, you will be given 10 seconds to answer the question.Now listen to the news.10. The 14 suspected asylum seekers _ .A. have reached the Australian mainland and applied for refugee status.B. have been granted refugee status.C. are being detained by the Australian police.D. have been repatriated.PART IIREADING COMPREHENSION (30 MIN)In this section there are five passages followed by a total of 20 multiple-choice questions. Read the passages and then mark your answers on your colored answer sheet.TEXT A Since the buildup to the war with Iraq, British Prime Minister Tony Blair has taken it on the chin from the media. The British media ordinarily grill politicians, but in this case they have been particularly feisty, empowered by opinion polls that showed most Brits wanted nothing to do with invading Iraq. Until now the American media, which by nature are less aggressive than their British counterparts but probably are taking a lead from polls and politicians that supported the administrations war stance, have gone relatively easy on President Bush. But this week the media have hit the administration hard with questions about Bushs State of the Union statement that Iraq was acquiring uranium from Niger, one of the administrations justifications for war. And with the 2004 campaign heating up and Bushs approval rating dipping, his administration is being grilled harder than it has been in months. Experts say the questioning will get sharper as summer progresses. That Democrats are just now “beginning to get traction” on the justification for the war is an example of how differently politics are played in the U.S.A. than they are in Britain, says Martin Turner, Washington bureau chief of the BBC, where correspondents have been highly critical of the war and suspicious of administration claims that weapons of mass destruction exist in Iraq. In Britain, where a prime minister must defend himself every week before Parliament, the media take a “much more muscular approach to grilling politicians”, Turner says. Here, the BBC is often regarded as a rather impolite member of the Washington press corps. We tend to ask questions in a different way than they are asked on the Sunday political programs. In London, Michael Goldfarb, senior correspondent for National Public Radio affiliate WBUR in Boston, says his British counterparts talk about “how astonishing the ride has been for Bush” and how the Bush administration “manages the news like its nobodys business”. Here they call Blair “Bushs poodle”. But then again, he says, British media “simply dont hold to the American notion of objectivity and certainly not impartiality”. ABC anchor Peter Jennings, who reported from London in the 70s and 80s, says he has “always been struck by how much more aggressive the British press is. Theyre simply much more aggressive.” In the U.S.A., “there is no doubt that the press is aware of the influence of a powerful president, and the press is aware to some extent that it is in competition for public opinion, so there is always stress between a powerful president and the press.” But in the past week, with debate over the war heating up, it led several of Jennings World News Tonight broadcasts. “Our reporters sense some deep concern about what is happening.”11.The text is primarily concerned with A. the moderate tone of American media. B. the different questions reporters put to country leaders. C. the aggressive nature of British media. D. the embarrassed British and U.S. leaders after the war in Iraq. 12.From the first sentence of the text we learn that the British Prime Minister A. has had a hard time with the media. B. has won some favor with the media. C. gets enough support for his war initiative from the public. D. has countered allegations on him mercilessly through the media. 13.It is implied in paragraphs 2 and 3 that Bush might lose a second term if A. he did not remedy the mistake he made in the State of Union statement. B. the media continued to side with the Democrats against the war in Iraq. C. the BBC correspondents in Washington kept putting aggressive questions to him. D. he could not come up with evidence in favor of his justification for the war.14.The reaction of an American correspondent to British media can be best described as one of A. disgust. B. surprise. C. contempt. D. admiration. TEXT B In their world of darkness, it would seem likely that some of the animals might have become blind, as has happened to some cave fauna. So, indeed, many of them have, compensating for the lack of eyes with marvelously developed feelers and long, slender fins and processes with which they grope their way, like so many blind men with canes, their whole knowledge of friends, enemies, or food coming to them through the sense of touch. The last traces of plant life are left behind in the thin upper layer of water, for no plant can live below about 600 feet even in very clear water, and few find enough sunlight for their food-manufacturing activities below 200 feet. Since no animal can make its own food, the creatures of the deeper waters live a strange, almost parasitic existence of utter dependence on the upper layers. These hungry carnivores prey fiercely and relentlessly upon each other, yet the whole community is ultimately dependent upon the slow rain of descending food particles from above. The components of this never-ending rain are the dead and dying plants and animals from the surface, or from one of the intermediate layers. For each of the horizontal zones or communities of the sea that lie between the surface and the sea bottom, the food supply is different and in general poorer than for the layer above. Pressure, darkness, and silence are the conditions of life in the deep sea. But we know now that the conception of the sea as a silent place is wholly false. Wide experience with hydrophones and other listening devices for the detection of submarines has proved that, around the shore lines of much of the world, there is the extraordinary uproar produced by fishes, shrimps, porpoises and probably other forms not yet identified. There has been little investigation as yet of sound in the deep, offshore areas, but when the crew of the Atlantis lowered a hydrophone into deep water off Bermuda, they recorded strange mewing sounds, shrieks, and ghostly moans, the sources of which have not been traced. But fish of shallower zones have been captured and confined in aquaria, where their voices have been recorded for comparison with sounds heard at sea, and in many cases satisfactory identification can be made. During the Second World War the hydrophone network set up by the United States Navy to protect the entrance to Chesapeake Bay was temporarily made useless when, in the spring of 1942, the speakers at the surface began to give forth, every evening, a sound described as being like “a pneumatic drill tearing up pavement”. The extraneous noises that came over the hydrophones completely masked the sounds of the passage of ships. Eventually it was discovered that the sounds were the voices of fish known as croakers, which in the spring move into Chesapeake Bay from the offshore wintering grounds. As soon as the noise had been identified and analyzed, it was possible to screen it out with an electric filter, so that once more only the sounds of ships came through the speakers. 15.Many underwater animals cannot see because A. the lack of light has gradually eliminated their capacity to see. B. they use sound waves instead of light to navigate in the darkness. C. they have learned to survive without seeing their enemies or their prey. D. their sense of touch has eliminated their need to see. 16.According to the text, which of the following is NOT a use for a hydrophone? A. To listen to the sound of undersea fauna. B. To search for unknown species of fish and other creatures. C. To monitor the passing of surface vessels. D. To detect submerged submarines. 17.Animals that live near the bottom of the sea are most likely to be carnivorous because A. they have developed sharp teeth and strong jaws with which to kill their prey. B. plants that grow far below the surface are not edible. C. animals cannot make their own food, so they eat each other. D. most surface vegetation is eaten before it sinks to the bottom of the sea. 18.Which of the following statements about the state of oceanographic research does the text most clearly support? A. Undersea research is still incomplete. B. Technology used in undersea studies is still in a very primitive stage of development. C. More undersea research is conducted near shore than in midocean. D. Military researchers have made several momentous discoveries about undersea life. TEXT C Cancer researchers are learning to read genes like a crystal ball to predict how patients will respond to cancer therapy, who will suffer the worst side effects and what treatments may be best for a particular patient. Foreseeing the outcome of treatment, and knowing with certainty which drugs are best for individual patients, have long been the goals of cancer researchers. For at least 40 years, oncologists have puzzled over why some patients respond so well to chemotherapy while others obtain modest benefits or none at all. The discovery decades ago that linked a chromosome abnormality to one form of leukemia paved the way for the development of the drug Gleevec by Druker and the ability to identify the patients most likely to benefit. More recently, with the wealth of knowledge from the Human Genome Project, researchers have been able to develop even more specific tools to create genetic profiles of tumors and match those profiles with the right drugs. The tools also help determine which patients are most likely to experience the worst side effects of specific types of chemotherapy and guide them to other treatments. Researchers from the University of Chicago studied alterations of the UGT1A1 gene, associated with an increased chance of chemotherapy side effects. Mark Ratain and his team studied 61 colon cancer patients receiving irinotecan and learned that patients with alterations of the gene labeled as 7/7 were most likely to suffer severe losses of white blood cells. Patients with the 6/7 alteration type had intermediate side effects, and patients with the 6/6 type had none. Scientists at the Massachusetts General Hospital examined genes that normally have the ability to repair damage to DNA in cells called XPD and XRCC1. The number of variations in these genes indicates how long a patient is likely to survive. Sarada Gurubhagavatula and her team studied variations of these genes in 103 patients diagnosed with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer. Patients with a total of three variations in the genes survived a median of 6.8 months; those with two variations survived 11 months; patients with one variation survived 16.6 months; and those with no variations survived 20.4 months. Gurubhagavatula says the variations could be identified and those with the worst predicted outcomes put on chemotherapy regimens that offer better odds of survival. Scientists at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and Genomic Health Inc. have developed a way to test lung tumors for genetic profiles associated with responses to the new lung cancer drug Iressa. The drug has been shown to shrink tumors in 10% to 12% of patients with advanced lung cancer. David Agus at Cedar-Sinai found a pattern of 185 genes that are turned off and on in a manner that correlates with response to Iressa or to a lack of response. When used commercially, the test will target patients most likely to benefit and will allow patients to make other choices if the negative profile is found. 19.The text is mainly about A. the search for effective cancer treatment drugs. B. the goals of cancer therapy. C. the success in reading genes. D. the advances in cancer treatment. 20.The achievements from Human Genome Project enable researchers to A. diagnose a chromosome abnormality more accurately. B. develop cancer treatment drugs like Gleevec. C. administer cancer treatment with less side effect. D. come up with chemotherapy as an effective tool for cancer treatment. 21.The purpose of the author in mentioning the three researches is to A. make a contrastive analysis of them. B. illustrate the achievements in cancer therapy. C. present the similarities and differences between them. D. show how altered genes can cause cancer. 22.Sarada and her team are convinced that A. research on genes offers them greater predictive power. B. lung cancer is caused by variation of genes. C. patients can survive lung cancer by altering their genes. D. chemotherapy can save even the worst lung cancer patients. TEXT D Discussion of the assimilation of Puerto Ricans in the United States has focused on two factors: social standing and the loss of national culture. In general, excessive stress is placed on one factor or the other, depending on whether the commentator is North American or Puerto Rican. Many North American social scientists, such as Oscar Handlin, Joseph Fitzpatrick, and Oscar Lewis, consider Puerto Ricans as the most recent in a long line of ethnic entrants to occupy the lowest rung on the social ladder. Such a “sociodemographic” approach tends to regard assimilation as a benign process, taking for granted increased economic advantage and inevitable cultural-integration, in a supposedly egalitarian context. However, this approach fails to take into account the colonial na