Section 2 Reading Comprehension(In this section you will find after each of the passages a number of questions or unfinished statements about the passage, each with 4 (A, B, C and D) choices to answer the question or complete the statement You must choose the one which you think fits best Blacken the corresponding letter as required on your machine-scoring ANSWER SHEET.)
1.Why do readers of New Scientist continue to get steamed up about race? After all, it can be used as an innocuous technical term by anthropologists.But all too often discussions of “race” lead to “racism”，and tempers begin to fray.Before the 18th century, race merely described a group of common cultural origin, not one defined by immutable characteristics.Unfortunately, this usage changed as the Western powers colonized Asia and Africa and needed a way to characterize the peoples they subjected as not only different，but inferior. A long list of scientists helped to “classify” the races.Among them were some of the famous names of the 18th and 19th centuries: Linnaeus, Cuvier, Haeckel, Huxley and Buffon.Although their classifications rarely agreed, many accepted that the races were fundamentally different and could be arranged with Caucasians at the top. Only after the Darwinian evolution and the emergence of genetics did the notion of a league table start to crumble.By the 1940s, UNESCO could emphatically state: "Racism falsely claims that there is a scientific basis for arranging groups hierarchically in terms of psychological and cultural characteristics that are immutable and innate.” That groups cannot be arranged hierarchically does not mean that anthropologists cannot set up classifications which divide people into different groups, or that such classifications will not be useful, as several of our latter writers point out.For example, they can provide vital tools (along with language distribution) to reconstruct the prehistoric movements of peoples.Where genetic data are available, these reconstructions can be greatly refined. In other contexts, such classifications are misleading.Many of the differences they record (including facial features, skin and hair color) are most probably superficial adaptations to local climate.Although useful as indicators of the origin of different groups, they imply nothing fundamental about differences between them. Attempts to assess more important differences between groups (of any number of cognitive abilities, for example) always come to the same very well-known conclusion ——that the differences between individuals within one racial group are much larger than the differences between the average members of two such groups. What this means is that it is impossible to say anything about a particular individual’s ability because of his or her race (however, defined) because the spread of variation within a race is larger than the average difference between races.Racism can thus receive no support from science, even though a classification of races can be scientifically useful. Lay people sometimes put more faith in the concept of race than scientists do, perhaps because they believe they can quite easily identify a person's race or even nationality.But it's not that easy: our correspondent from Le Vesinet, for example, identified some of the people in our recent feature (“Genes in Black and White”）as Australian, Sicilian, Sumatran and Brazilian.In fact, they came from Sweden, Greece, the Central African Republic and Russia.
【正确答案-参考解析】：参加考试可见2.Now online provision is transforming higher education, giving the best universities a chance to widen their catch, opening new opportunities for the agile, and threatening doom for the slow and average.The roots are decades old.Britain’s Open University started teaching via radio and television in 1971.MIT and others have been posting lectures on the Internet for a decade. But the change in 2012 has been electrifying.Two start-ups, both spawned by Stanford University, are recruiting students at an astonishing rate for 6tmassive open online courses59 or MOOCs.In January, Sebastian Thrun, a computer-science professor there, announced the launch of Udacity.It started to offer courses the next month — a nanosecond by the standards of old-style university decision-making.In April, two of Mr.Thrun’s ex-colleagues launched a rival, Coursera.At first, it offered online courses from four universities.By August, it had signed up 1 million students, now boasting over 2 million.Harvard and MIT announced they would launch edX, a non-profit venture.Other schools have joined, too. One spur is economic and political pressure to improve productivity in higher education.The cost per student in the U.S.has risen at almost five times the rate of inflation since 1983.For universities beset by heavy debts, smaller taxpayer subsidies and a cyclical decline in enrollment, online courses mean better tuition, higher graduation rates and lower-cost degrees.New technology also gives the innovative a chance to shine against their rivals. MOOCs are more than good university lectures available online.The real innovation comes from integrating academic talks with interactive coursework, such as automated tests, quizzes and even games.Real-life lectures have no pause，rewind (or fast_forward) buttons;MOOCs let students learn at their own pace, typically with short, engaging videos.The cost of the courses can be spread over huge numbers of students.MOOCs enrich education for worldwide students, especially the cash-strapped, and those dissatisfied with what their own colleges are offering.But for others, especially in poor countries, online education opens the door to yearning for opportunities. Some of Europe's best schools are determinedly unruffled.Oxford says that MOOCs “will not prompt it to change anything’’，adding that it “does not see them as revolutionary in anything other than scale”.Cambridge even says it is “nonsense” to see MOOCs as a rival; it is “not in the business of online education”.Such universities are likely to continue to attract the best (and richest) applicants who want personal tuition and the whiff of research in the air.For these places, MOOCs are chiefly a marketing opportunity. To compete head-on with established providers, MOOCs must not just teach but also provide credible qualifications.The vast majority of Coursera, Udacity and edX offerings do not provide a degree.This may be one reason for MOOCs’ high dropout rates.Another worry is that online tests are open to cheating and plagiarism.Peer grading even if honest, may be flawed.
【正确答案-参考解析】：参加考试可见Section 3 Cloze Test(In the following passage, there are 20 blanks representing words that are missing from the context.Below the passage，each blank has 4 choices marked by letters A, B, C and D respectively.There is only ONE right answer.Blacken the corresponding letter as required on your machine-scoring ANSWER SHEET.)
1.Hunted as the wild turkey is，it has developed a high degree of ingenuity in escaping from its pursuers.It appears to have learned a game of make-________(91).When caught________(92) close quarters, it puts on the tame and________(93) demeanor of the domesticated bird. Dr.Wheaton mentions a case________(94) two hunters of his acquaintance came suddenly upon a________(95) of five in the road.They seemed quite________(96)，walked deliberately in front of the two gunners,________(97) a fence, and disappeared slowly ________(98) a low hill.Then they________(99) to their legs, and presently to their wings, and soon placed a wide________(100) between themselves and their dupes.The chagrin of the sportsmen may be imagined.The________(101) had made a game of them.Such birds Wheaton would have called________(102) civilized”. Yet turkeys are wise in some respects and foolish in others.In old times, at ________(103), great numbers were caught in ________(104) built of logs, the only entrance________(105) which was through a shallow, narrow trench.The________(106) birds, following the com which had been scattered in the trench, ________(107) through the entrance; when perhaps half a dozen of them were inside, and the bait was all eaten, they tried in________(108) to get out through the top or sides of the pen, never once looking down and passing ________(109) by the way they had come in, even though they might remain in the trap for several days, or until they________(110) of hunger.
【正确答案-参考解析】：参加考试可见
