Directions:

　　Read the following text. Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark A，B，C or D on the ANSWER SHEET. (10 points)

　　In our contemporary culture, the prospect of communicating with—or even looking at—a stranger is virtually unbearable. Everyone around us seems to agree by the way they fiddle with their phones, even without a 1 on a subway.

　　It’s a sad reality—our desire to avoid interacting with other human beings—because there’s 2 to be gained from talking to the stranger standing by you. But you wouldn’t know it， 3 into your phone. This universal protection sends the 4 : “Please don’t approach me.”

　　What is it that makes us feel we need to hide 5 our screens?

　　One answer is fear, according to Jon Wortmann, executive mental coach. We fear rejection，or that our innocent social advances will be 6 as “weird.” We fear we’ll be 7 .We fear we’ll be disruptive.

　　Strangers are inherently 8 to us，so we are more likely to feel 9 when communicating with them compared with our friends and acquaintances. To avoid this uneasiness, we 10 to our phones. “Phones become our security blanket,” Wortmann says. “They are our happy glasses that protect us from what we perceive is going to be more 11 .”

　　But once we rip off the bandaid，tuck our smartphones in our pockets and look up，it doesn’t 12 so bad. In one 2011 experiment，behavioral scientists Nicholas Epley and Juliana Schroeder asked commuters to do the unthinkable: Start a 13 . They had Chicago train commuters talk to their fellow 14 . “When Dr. Epley and Ms. Schroeder asked other people in the same train station to 15 how they would feel after talking to a stranger, the commuters thought their 16 would be more pleasant if they sat on their own,” The New York Times summarizes. Though the participants didn’t expect a positive experience, after they 17 with the experiment, “not a single person reported having been embarrassed.”

　　18 , these commutes were reportedly more enjoyable compared with those without communication, which makes absolute sense, 19 human beings thrive off of social connections. It’s that 20 : Talking to strangers can make you feel connected.

　　1. A. ticket B. permit C.signal D. record

　　2. A. nothing B. little C.another D. much

　　3. A. beaten B. guided C.plugged D. brought

　　4. A. message B. code C.notice D. sign

　　5. A. under B. beyond C. behind D. from

　　6. A. misinterpreted B. misapplied C. misadjusted D. mismatched

　　7. A. fired B. judged C. replaced D. delayed

　　8. A. unreasonable B. ungrateful C. unconventional D. unfamiliar

　　9. A. comfortable B. anxious C. confident D. angry

　　10. A. attend B. point C. take D. turn

　　11. A. dangerous B. mysterious C. violent D. boring

　　12. A. hurt B. resist C. bend D. decay

　　13. A. lecture B. conversation C. debate D. negotiation

　　14. A. trainees B. employees C. researchers D. passengers

　　15. A. reveal B. choose C. predict D. design

　　16. A. voyage B. flight C. walk D. ride

　　17. A. went through B. did away C. caught up D. put up

　　18. A. In turn B. In particular C.In fact D. In consequence

　　19. A. unless B. since C. if D. whereas

　　20. A. funny B. simple C. logical D. rare

　　Section Ⅱ Reading Comprehension

　　Part A

　　Directions:

　　Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by chosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answers on the ANSWER SHEET. (40 points)

　　Text 1

　　A new study suggests that contrary to most surveys, people are actually more stressed at home than at work. Researchers measured people’s cortisol, which is a stress marker, while they were at work and while they were at home and found it higher at what is supposed to be a place of refuge.

　　“Further contradicting conventional wisdom, we found that women as well as men have lower levels of stress at work than at home,” writes one of the researchers, Sarah Damaske. In fact women say they feel better at work. She notes. “It is men, not women, who report being happier at home than at work.” Another surprise is that the findings hold true for both those with children and without, but more so for nonparents. This is why people who work outside the home have better health.

　　What the study doesn’t measure is whether people are still doing work when they’ re at home, whether it is household work or work brought home from the office. For many men, the end of the workday is a time to kick back. For women who stay home, they never get to leave the office. And for women who work outside the home, they often are playing catch-up-with-household tasks. With the blurring of roles, and the fact that the home front lags well behind the workplace in making adjustments for working women, it’s not surprising that women are more stressed at home.

　　But it’s not just a gender thing. At work, people pretty much know what they’re supposed to be doing: working, making money, doing the tasks they have to do in order to draw an income. The bargain is very pure. Employee puts in hours of physical or mental labor and employee draws out life-sustaining moola.

　　On the home front, however, people have no such clarity. Rare is the household in which the division of labor is so clinically and methodically laid out. There are a lot of tasks to be done, there are inadequate rewards for most of them. Your home colleagues—your family—have no clear rewards for their labor; they need to be talked into it, or if they’re teenagers, threatened with complete removal of all electronic devices. Plus, they’re your family. You cannot fire your family. You never really get to go home from home.

　　So it’s not surprising that people are more stressed at home. Not only are the tasks apparently infinite, the co-workers are much harder to motivate.

　　21. According to Paragraph 1, most previous surveys found that home____.

　　A. was an unrealistic place for relaxation B. generated more stress than the workplace

　　C. was an ideal place for stress measurement D.offered greater relaxation than the workplace

　　22. According to Damaske, who are likely to be the happiest at home?

　　A. Working mothers. B. Childless husbands.

　　C. Childless wives. D. Working fathers.

　　23. The blurring of working women’s roles refers to the fact that____.

　　A. they are both bread winners and housewives

　　B. their home is also a place for kicking back

　　C. there is often much housework left behind

　　D. it is difficult for them to leave their office

　　24. The word “moola” (Line 4, Para 4) most probably means____.

　　A. energy B. skills C. earnings D. nutrition

　　25. The home front differs from the workplace in that____.

　　A. home is hardly a cozier working environment

　　B. division of labor at home is seldom clear-cut

　　C. household tasks are generally more motivating

　　D. family labor is often adequately rewarded

　　Text 2

　　For years, studies have found that first-generation college students—those who do not have a parent with a college degree—lag other students on a range of education achievement factors. Their grades are lower and their dropout rates are higher. But since such students are most likely to advance economically if they succeed in higher education, colleges and universities have pushed for decades to recruit more of them. This has created “a paradox” in that recruiting first-generation students, but then watching many of them fail, means that higher education has “continued to reproduce and widen, rather than close” an achievement gap based on social class, according to the depressing beginning of a paper forthcoming in the journal Psychological Science.

　　But the article is actually quite optimistic, as it outlines a potential solution to this problem, suggesting that an approach (which involves a one-hour, next-to-no-cost program) can close 63 percent of the achievement gap (measured by such factors as grades) between first-generation and other students.

　　The authors of the paper are from different universities, and their findings are based on a study involving 147 students (who completed the project) at an unnamed private university. First generation was defined as not having a parent with a four-year college degree. Most of the first-generation students (59.1 percent) were recipients of Pell Grants, a federal grant for undergraduates with financial need, while this was true only for 8.6 percent of the students with at least one parent with a four-year degree.

　　Their thesis—that a relatively modest intervention could have a big impact—was based on the view that first-generation students may be most lacking not in potential but in practical knowledge about how to deal with the issues that face most college students. They cite past research by several authors to show that this is the gap that must be narrowed to close the achievement gap.

　　Many first-generation students “struggle to navigate the middle-class culture of higher education，learn the ‘rules of the game,’ and take advantage of college resources,” they write. And this becomes more of a problem when colleges don’t talk about the class advantage and disadvantages of different groups of students. “Because US colleges and universities seldom acknowledge how social class can affect students’ educational experience, many first-generation students lack insight about why they are struggling and do not understand how students ‘like them’ can improve.”

　　26. Recruiting more first-generation students has____.

　　A. reduced their dropout rates B. narrowed the achievement gap

　　C. missed its original purpose D. depressed college students

　　27. The authors of the research article are optimistic because____.

　　A. the problem is solvable B. their approach is costless

　　C. the recruiting rate has increased D. their finding appeal to students

　　28. The study suggests that most first-generation students____.

　　A. study at private universities B. are from single-parent families

　　C. are in need of financial support D. have failed their college

　　29. The authors of the paper believe that first-generation students____.

　　A. are actually indifferent to the achievement gap

　　B. can have a potential influence on other students

　　C. may lack opportunities to apply for research projects

　　D. are inexperienced in handling their issues at college

　　30. We may infer from the last paragraph that____.

　　A. universities often reject the culture of the middle-class

　　B. students are usually to blame for their lack of resources

　　C. social class greatly helps enrich educational experiences

　　D. colleges are partly responsible for the problem in question