(25 minutes)
■ Section A
Directions: In this section, there is a passage with ten blanks. You are required to select one word for each blank from a list of choices given in a word bank following the passage. Read the passage through carefully before making your choices. Each choice in the bank is identified by a letter. You may not use any of the words in the bank more than once.
Questions 11 to 20 are based on the following passage.
Landslides are a form of mass movement, a term used to describe any sort of gravity-induced movement of sediment down a slope. Mass movements can 11 slowly over a period of years, or they can happen in a matter of minutes. A mass movement can be as small as some rocks and debris you kick down a small 12 or as big as the 1980 landslide set off by the eruption of Mount St. Helens.
There are many different kinds of mass movements 13 by the type of material involved, the way it is moved and how fast it moves. However, with any mass movement, a soil layer is separated to some 14 from the underlying bedrock. Soil is the 15 loose mixture of worn-down rock, minerals, air, water and decayed organic matter that covers the ground. Bedrock is the more 16 , solid layer of rock underneath.
Although the word landslide is often used (incorrectly) to encompass many types of mass movements, a landslide is actually something more 17 . A slide refers to a mass movement where rocks and sediment are loosened from the stable, underlying bedrock along a distinct 18 of weakness. The rocks and sediment separate and move down the slope rapidly. You could think of it as a poster fastened to a wall with tape. The poster will remain on the wall without any outside force 19 on it. But if extra weight is attached to the poster, or if the tape is moistened, the 20 will be weakened and the poster will fall.
A) stable I) zone
B) occur J) degree
C) risky K) specific
D) backing L) categorized
E) relatively M) room
F) connection N) slope
G) positively O) acting
H) grouped
Section B
Directions: There are 2 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished sentences. For each of them there are four choices marked A), B), C) and D). You should decide on the best choice.
Passage One
Questions 21 to 25 are based on the following passage.
“My early physics education was very strange,” says theoretical physicist Lee Smolin. Strange, but effective. Now, Smolin worries that the best and brightest students are turning to other disciplines because basic physics courses are stodgy. “In every other area, students are being exposed to things that are intellectually challenging and exciting because they are new,” he says. “The fact that we teach 300-year-old physics as introductory physics is just shameful.”
In the late 1970s, the United States dominated both Europe and Asia in sheer numbers of science and engineering doctorates, but it has trailed both regions since the late 1990s. One positive trend: The number of women and minorities receiving Ph.D.’s in science and engineering is on the rise.
There is plenty of shame to go around in America’s science classrooms, and creative solutions are definitely in order. The number of science and engineering doctorates awarded at American universities has dropped since the late 1990s, while foreign schools have more than picked up the slack. “We need another Sputnik,” says Cindy Workosky, a science teacher. “There was so much enthusiasm and focus on science education during those days ...”
Association president Anne Tweed says there are hopeful trends. “We’re also starting to see much more innovative research questions being asked in the lower grades,” says Tweed. “Students are inserting genes into bacteria as part of a 9th- or 10th-grade biology curriculum. Students can clone plant materials. It’s really amazing.”
And someday, Smolin hopes, physics education, regarded by many as the foundation upon which all other science education should be laid, will reflect our latest concept of ultimate reality. Even high school students, he says, could grasp — and be excited by — the fundamentals of simple quantum (量子) mechanical systems such as qubits (量子位), the two-state units of quantum information that scientists hope will someday be manipulated (操作) by quantum computers. “In the 21st century, we regard quantum mechanics as the truest thing we have,” he says, so it is only sensible that the most fundamental system be taught first. “It does not require any more skill or intelligence to learn this way, and it’s the best way to get and keep the kids we really want, the ones who are real thinkers and who are creative.”
21. What does the underlined word in the first paragraph most probably mean?
A) Uninteresting and difficult.
B) Strange and effective.
C) Heavy and sticky.
D) Dull and useless.
22. What do we know about the United States’ science education?
A) It dominated the world for almost 20 years.
B) The number of science students was the smallest in the late 1970s.
C) The number of female doctors majoring in science is increasing.
D) It is not as advanced as it is in Europe and Asia.
23. The underlined sentence in the third paragraph can be completed by ____________.
A) and we just don’t have that now
B) though not so much
C) and we just cannot get enough enthusiasm
D) though we don’t have another Sputnik
24. What do Anne Tweed’s words mean in the fourth paragraph?
A) Physics education is the foundation of all science education.
B) Biology is far more interesting than other science subjects.
C) Students can carry out amazing research on their own.
D) Younger students are becoming interested in science.
25. According to Smolin, the most fundamental system should be taught first to ___________.
A) keep the students’ interest in science high
B) make the students interested and creative
C) improve the students’ skills and intelligence
D) give the students what they really want