Illiteracy may be considered more as an abstract concept than a condition. When a famous English writer used the (1)_____ over two hundred years ago, he was actually (2)_____ to people who could (3)_____ read Greek or Latin. (4)_____,it seems unlikely that university examiners had this sort of (5)_____ in mind when they reported on "creeping illiteracy" in a report on their students" final examination in 1988. (6)_____ the years, university lecturers have been (7)_____ of an increasing tendency towards grammatical sloppiness, poor spelling and general imprecision (8)_____ their students" ways of writing; and sloppy writing is all (9)_____ often a reflection of sloppy thinking. Their (10)_____ was that they had (11)_____ to do teaching their own subject (12)_____ teaching their undergraduates to write. Some lecturers believe that they have a (n) (13)_____ to stress the importance of maintaining standards of clear thinking (14)_____ the written word in a world dominated by (15)_____ communications and images. They (16)_____ on the connection between clear thinking and a form of writing that is not only clear, but also sensitive to (17)_____ of meaning. The same lecturers argue that undergraduates appear to be the victims of a "softening process" that begins (18)_____ the teaching of English in schools, but this point of view has, not (19)_____, caused a great deal of (20)_____.
A. Over
B. For
C. During
D. Within
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Illiteracy may be considered more as an abstract concept than a condition. When a famous English writer used the (1)_____ over two hundred years ago, he was actually (2)_____ to people who could (3)_____ read Greek or Latin. (4)_____,it seems unlikely that university examiners had this sort of (5)_____ in mind when they reported on "creeping illiteracy" in a report on their students" final examination in 1988. (6)_____ the years, university lecturers have been (7)_____ of an increasing tendency towards grammatical sloppiness, poor spelling and general imprecision (8)_____ their students" ways of writing; and sloppy writing is all (9)_____ often a reflection of sloppy thinking. Their (10)_____ was that they had (11)_____ to do teaching their own subject (12)_____ teaching their undergraduates to write. Some lecturers believe that they have a (n) (13)_____ to stress the importance of maintaining standards of clear thinking (14)_____ the written word in a world dominated by (15)_____ communications and images. They (16)_____ on the connection between clear thinking and a form of writing that is not only clear, but also sensitive to (17)_____ of meaning. The same lecturers argue that undergraduates appear to be the victims of a "softening process" that begins (18)_____ the teaching of English in schools, but this point of view has, not (19)_____, caused a great deal of (20)_____.
A. about
B. around
C. with
D. in
The following paragraphs are given in a wrong order. For Questions 41-45, you are required to reorganize these paragraphs into a coherent article by choosing from the list A-G. Some of the paragraphs have been placed for you. (10 points)A. Although it does not look appealing, in reality these people have good lives. Their jobs do not pay a fortune but they love them and their lives are stress-free. And no one would guess that they make so little because they live much Better than many of their friends who make a lot more. So if you want more money you have to count your pennies; there is no other way than to spend wisely.B. When it comes to money management you need to think long term. Money management is not only how you manage your money right now; it is how you will make sure your income and wealth will increase over time. In order to make more money, most Americans take the easiest route: get a second job. This is easy; it will give more money immediately, but it may come at a very high cost.C. Look at the case of Melissa and her husband. They own a nice home, beautifully decorated in a nice neighborhood, they have regular cars in good condition (though with more than 100K miles on each car), they dress well and travel to exotic destinations once a year. How do they do it They live wisely. They do not buy a new ear just because people say that after 100K miles a ear is good for nothing. Their cars look good and run well bemuse they take care of them. They are not planning on buying a new car anytime soon. This is a huge expense that they do not want to take; they own their cars right now and they do not want additional debt.D. If you have children, it may come at the cost of precious time with them or your family. If you are single and have no children, it may cost you peace and time for relaxation. But beyond that, it may cost you long term: not being able to pursue bigger dreams.E. You can save money in many ways including buying less, or buying cheaper, or even buying smarter. People who seem to have money for everything and still do not carry credit card debt should be admired.F. Money and career wise you have to be smart and not take the shortest path, but the best, high-value path. Beside what you do for a living, the money you save has to be invested well so that you have good returns. One of the best investments you can have is a home (unless you need to rent since you will be in a specific location only for a very short time). To pay rent is to literally put money down the drain. The home you buy has to be such that you can make profit in a few years so that you can buy a bigger home or a similar home and save the rest.G. In other words, if you devote your time to learn a new skill or start your own business, this will not give you money immediately, but in the long term it will give more money and personal satisfaction than a stupid second job.Order: B is the first paragraph and A is the last.
It is hard to box against a southpaw, as Apollo Creed found out when he fought Rocky Balboa in the first of an interminable series of movies. While "Rocky" is fiction, the strategic advantage of being left-handed in a fight is very real, simply because most right-handed people have little experience of fighting left-handers, but not vice versa. The orthodox view of human handedness is that it is connected to the bilateral specialisation of the brain that has concentrated language-processing functions on the left side of that organ. Because, long ago in the evolutionary past, an ancestor of humans underwent a contortion that twisted its head around 180°relative to its body, the left side of the brain controls the fight side of the body, and vice versa. In humans, the left brain is usually dominant. And on average, left-handers are smaller and lighter than right-handers. That should put them at an evolutionary disadvantage. Sporting advantage notwithstanding, therefore, the existence of left-handedness poses a problem for biologists. But Charlotte Faurie thinks he knows the answer. As any schoolboy could tell you, winning fights enhances your status. If, in prehistory, this translated into increased reproductive success, it might have been enough to maintain a certain proportion of left-handers in the population, by balancing the costs of being left-handed with the advantages gained in fighting. If that is tree, then there will be a higher proportion of left-handers in societies with higher levels of violence, since the advantages of being left-handed will be enhanced in such societies. Dr. Faurie set out to test this hypothesis. Fighting in modem societies often involves the use of technology, notably firms, that is unlikely to give any advantage to left-handers. So Dr. Faurie decided to confine his investigation to the proportion of left-handers and the level of violence in traditional societies. By trawling the literature, checking with police departments, and even going out into the field and asking people, Dr. Faurie found that the proportion of left-handers in a traditional society is, indeed, correlated with its homicide rate. One of the highest proportions of left-handers, for example, was found among the Yanomamo of South America. Raiding and warfare are central to Yanomamo culture. The murder rate is 4 per 1,000 inhabitants per year. And, according to Dr. Faufie, 22.6% of Yanomamo are left-handed. In contrast, Dioula-speaking people of Burkina Faso in West Africa are virtual pacifists. There are only 0.013 murders per 1,000 inhabitants among them and only 3.4% of the population is left-handed. While there is no suggestion that left-handed people are more violent than the right-handed, it looks as though they are more successfully violent. Perhaps that helps to explain the double meaning of the word "sinister". The double meaning of the word "sinister" refers to
A. left and inferior.
B. left and tricky.
C. left and vulnerable.
D. left and evil.
The planet"s wild creatures face a new threat—from yuppies, empty nesters, singletons and one parent families. Biologists studying the pressure on the planet"s dwindling biodiversity today report on a new reason for alarm. Although the rate of growth in the human population is decreasing, the number of individual households is exploding. Even where populations have actually dwindled—in some regions of New Zealand, for instance—the number of individual households has increased, bemuse of divorce, career choice, smaller families and longer lifespans. Jianguo Liu of Michigan State University and colleagues from Stanford University in California report in Nature, in a paper published online in advance, that a greater number of individual households, each containing on average fewer people, meant more pressure on natural resources. Towns and cities began to sprawl as new homes were built. Each household needed fuel to heat and light it; each household required its own plumbing, cooking and refrigeration. "In larger households, the efficiency of resource consumption will be a lot higher, because more people share things", Dr. Liu said. He and his colleagues looked at the population patterns of life in 141 countries, including 76 "hotspot" regions unusually rich in a variety of endemic wildlife. These hot spots included Australia, New Zealand, the US, Brazil, China, India, Kenya, and Italy. They found that between 1985 and 2000 in the "hotspot" parts of the globe, the annual 3.1% growth rate in the number of households was far higher than the population growth rate of 1.8%. "Had the average household" size remained at the 1985 level", the scientists report, "there would have been 155m fewer households in hotspot countries in 2000. Paradoxically, smaller households do not mean smaller homes. In Indian River County, Florida, the average area of a one-storey, single family house increased 33% in the past three decades". Dr. Liu"s work grew from the alarming discovery that the giant pandas living in China"s Wolong reserve were more at risk now than they were when the reserve was first established. The local population had grown, but the total number of homes had increased more swiftly, to make greater inroads into the bamboo forests. Gretchen Daily of Stanford, one of the authors, said: "We all depend on open space and wild places, not just for peace of mind but for vital services such as crop pollination, water purification and climate stabilization. The alarming thing about this study is the finding that, if family groups continue to become smaller and smaller, we might continue losing biodiversity—even if we get the aggregate human population size stabilized". Hotspot regions(Para. 2) refer to
A. tropical, zones.
B. places of scenic beauty.
C. areas with high population density.
D. regions rich in a variety of creatures.