一、Part Ⅱ Listening Comprehension
1、Question 1 is based on the news report you have just heard.
A、The number of male nurses has gone down.
B、There is discrimination against male nurses.
C、There is a growing shortage of medical personnel.
D、The number of nurses has dropped to a record low.
2、Question 2 is based on the news report you have just heard.
A、Working conditions.
B、Educational system.
C、Inadequate pay.
D、Cultural bias.
3、Question 3 is based on the news report you have just heard.
A、He fell out of a lifeboat.
B、He was almost drowned.
C、He lost his way on a beach.
D、He enjoyed swimming in the sea.
4、Question 4 is based on the news report you have just heard.
A、The lifeboats patrol the area round the clock.
B、The beach is a good place to watch the tide.
C、The emergency services are efficient.
D、The beach is a popular tourist resort.
5、Question 5 is based on the news report you have just heard.
A、It climbed 25 storeys at one go.
B、It broke into an office room.
C、It escaped from a local zoo.
D、It became an online star.
6、Question 6 is based on the news report you have just heard.
A、Release it into the wild.
B、Return it to its owner.
C、Send it back to the zoo.
D、Give it a physical checkup.
7、Question 7 is based on the news report you have just heard.
A、A raccoon can perform acts no human can.
B、A raccoon can climb much higher than a cat.
C、The raccoon did something no politician could.
D、The raccoon became as famous as some politicians.
8、Question 8 is based on the conversation you have just heard.
A、She received a bonus unexpectedly.
B、She got a well-paying job in a bank.
C、She received her first monthly salary.
D、She got a pay raise for her performance.
9、Question 9 is based on the conversation you have just heard.
A、Two decades ago.
B、Several years ago.
C、Just last month.
D、Right after graduation.
10、Question 10 is based on the conversation you have just heard.
A、He sent a small check to his parents.
B、He treated his parents to a nice meal.
C、He took a few of his friends to a gym.
D、He immediately deposited it in a bank.
11、Question 11 is based on the conversation you have just heard.
A、Join her colleagues for gym exercise.
B、Visit her former university campus.
C、Buy some professional clothes.
D、Budget her salary carefully.
12、Question 12 is based on the conversation you have just heard.
A、He has just too many things to attend to.
B、He has been overworked recently.
C、He has a difficult decision to make.
D、He has just quarreled with his girlfriend.
13、Question 13 is based on the conversation you have just heard.
A、Turn to his girlfriend for assistance.
B、Give priority to things more urgent.
C、Think twice before making the decision.
D、Seek advice from his family and advisor.
14、Question 14 is based on the conversation you have just heard.
A、His girlfriend does not support his decision.
B、He is not particularly keen on the job offered.
C、He lacks the money for his doctoral program.
D、His parents and advisor have different opinions.
15、Question 15 is based on the conversation you have just heard.
A、They need time to make preparations.
B、They haven’t started their careers yet.
C、They need to save enough money for it.
D、They haven’t won their parents’ approval.
16、Question 16 is based on the passage you have just heard.
A、Expressing ideas and opinions freely.
B、Enriching social and intellectual lives.
C、Acquiring information and professional knowledge.
D、Using information to understand and solve problems.
17、Question 17 is based on the passage you have just heard.
A、Traveling to different places in the world.
B、Playing games that challenge one’s mind.
C、Improving mind-reading strategies.
D、Reading classic scientific literature.
18、Question 18 is based on the passage you have just heard.
A、Participate in debates or discussions.
B、Expose themselves to different cultures.
C、Discard personal biases and prejudices.
D、Give others freedom to express themselves.
19、Question 19 is based on the passage you have just heard.
A、Why dogs can be faithful friends of humans.
B、The nature of relationships between dogs.
C、The reason a great many people love dogs.
D、How dogs feel about their bonds with humans.
20、Question 20 is based on the passage you have just heard.
A、They behave like other animals in many ways.
B、They have an unusual sense of responsibility.
C、They can respond to humans’ questions.
D、They can fall in love just like humans.
21、Question 21 is based on the passage you have just heard.
A、They stay with one partner for life.
B、They have their own joys and sorrows.
C、They experience true romantic love.
D、They help humans in various ways.
22、Question 22 is based on the passage you have just heard.
A、A rare animal.
B、A historical site.
C、A cow bone.
D、A precious stone.
23、Question 23 is based on the passage you have just heard.
A、Dating it.
B、Preserving it.
C、Measuring it.
D、Identifying it.
24、Question 24 is based on the passage you have just heard.
A、The channel needs to interview the boy.
B、The boy should have called an expert.
C、The boy’s family had acted correctly.
D、The site should have been protected.
25、Question 25 is based on the passage you have just heard.
A、Conduct a more detailed search.
B、Ask the university to reward Jude.
C、Search for similar fossils elsewhere.
D、Seek additional funds for the search.
二、Part III Reading Comprehension
Finally, some good news about airplane travel. If you are on a plane with a sick passenger, you are unlikely to get sick. That is the (26)_____ of a new study that looked at how respiratory (呼吸道) viruses (27)_____ on airplanes. Researchers found that only people who were seated in the same row as a passenger with the flu, for example—or one row in front of or behind that individual—had a high risk of catching the illness. All other passengers had only a very (28)_____ chance of getting sick, according to the findings. Media reports have not necessarily presented (29)_____ information about the risk of getting infected on an airplane in the past. Therefore, these new findings should help airplane passengers to feel less (30)_____ to catching respiratory infections while traveling by air.
Prior to the new study, little was known about the risks of getting (31)_____ infected by common respiratory viruses, such as the flu or common cold, on an airplane, the researchers said. So, to (32)_____ the risks of infection, the study team flew on 10 different (33)_____ in the U.S. during flu season. The researchers found that passengers sitting within two seats on (34)_____ side of a person infected with the flu, as well as those sitting one row in front of or behind this individual, had about an 80 percent chance of getting sick. But other passengers were (35)_____ safe from infection. They had a less than 3 percent chance of catching the flu.
26、(1)
A、either
B、vividly
C、evaluate
D、explorations
E、directly
F、summit
G、nearby
H、accurate
I、flights
J、largely
K、respond
L、spread
M、conclusion
N、vulnerable
O、slim
Finally, some good news about airplane travel. If you are on a plane with a sick passenger, you are unlikely to get sick. That is the (26)_____ of a new study that looked at how respiratory (呼吸道) viruses (27)_____ on airplanes. Researchers found that only people who were seated in the same row as a passenger with the flu, for example—or one row in front of or behind that individual—had a high risk of catching the illness. All other passengers had only a very (28)_____ chance of getting sick, according to the findings. Media reports have not necessarily presented (29)_____ information about the risk of getting infected on an airplane in the past. Therefore, these new findings should help airplane passengers to feel less (30)_____ to catching respiratory infections while traveling by air.
Prior to the new study, little was known about the risks of getting (31)_____ infected by common respiratory viruses, such as the flu or common cold, on an airplane, the researchers said. So, to (32)_____ the risks of infection, the study team flew on 10 different (33)_____ in the U.S. during flu season. The researchers found that passengers sitting within two seats on (34)_____ side of a person infected with the flu, as well as those sitting one row in front of or behind this individual, had about an 80 percent chance of getting sick. But other passengers were (35)_____ safe from infection. They had a less than 3 percent chance of catching the flu.
27、(2)
A、either
B、vividly
C、evaluate
D、explorations
E、directly
F、summit
G、nearby
H、accurate
I、flights
J、largely
K、respond
L、spread
M、conclusion
N、vulnerable
O、slim
Finally, some good news about airplane travel. If you are on a plane with a sick passenger, you are unlikely to get sick. That is the (26)_____ of a new study that looked at how respiratory (呼吸道) viruses (27)_____ on airplanes. Researchers found that only people who were seated in the same row as a passenger with the flu, for example—or one row in front of or behind that individual—had a high risk of catching the illness. All other passengers had only a very (28)_____ chance of getting sick, according to the findings. Media reports have not necessarily presented (29)_____ information about the risk of getting infected on an airplane in the past. Therefore, these new findings should help airplane passengers to feel less (30)_____ to catching respiratory infections while traveling by air.
Prior to the new study, little was known about the risks of getting (31)_____ infected by common respiratory viruses, such as the flu or common cold, on an airplane, the researchers said. So, to (32)_____ the risks of infection, the study team flew on 10 different (33)_____ in the U.S. during flu season. The researchers found that passengers sitting within two seats on (34)_____ side of a person infected with the flu, as well as those sitting one row in front of or behind this individual, had about an 80 percent chance of getting sick. But other passengers were (35)_____ safe from infection. They had a less than 3 percent chance of catching the flu.
28、(3)
A、either
B、vividly
C、evaluate
D、explorations
E、directly
F、summit
G、nearby
H、accurate
I、flights
J、largely
K、respond
L、spread
M、conclusion
N、vulnerable
O、slim
Finally, some good news about airplane travel. If you are on a plane with a sick passenger, you are unlikely to get sick. That is the (26)_____ of a new study that looked at how respiratory (呼吸道) viruses (27)_____ on airplanes. Researchers found that only people who were seated in the same row as a passenger with the flu, for example—or one row in front of or behind that individual—had a high risk of catching the illness. All other passengers had only a very (28)_____ chance of getting sick, according to the findings. Media reports have not necessarily presented (29)_____ information about the risk of getting infected on an airplane in the past. Therefore, these new findings should help airplane passengers to feel less (30)_____ to catching respiratory infections while traveling by air.
Prior to the new study, little was known about the risks of getting (31)_____ infected by common respiratory viruses, such as the flu or common cold, on an airplane, the researchers said. So, to (32)_____ the risks of infection, the study team flew on 10 different (33)_____ in the U.S. during flu season. The researchers found that passengers sitting within two seats on (34)_____ side of a person infected with the flu, as well as those sitting one row in front of or behind this individual, had about an 80 percent chance of getting sick. But other passengers were (35)_____ safe from infection. They had a less than 3 percent chance of catching the flu.
29、(4)
A、either
B、vividly
C、evaluate
D、explorations
E、directly
F、summit
G、nearby
H、accurate
I、flights
J、largely
K、respond
L、spread
M、conclusion
N、vulnerable
O、slim
Finally, some good news about airplane travel. If you are on a plane with a sick passenger, you are unlikely to get sick. That is the (26)_____ of a new study that looked at how respiratory (呼吸道) viruses (27)_____ on airplanes. Researchers found that only people who were seated in the same row as a passenger with the flu, for example—or one row in front of or behind that individual—had a high risk of catching the illness. All other passengers had only a very (28)_____ chance of getting sick, according to the findings. Media reports have not necessarily presented (29)_____ information about the risk of getting infected on an airplane in the past. Therefore, these new findings should help airplane passengers to feel less (30)_____ to catching respiratory infections while traveling by air.
Prior to the new study, little was known about the risks of getting (31)_____ infected by common respiratory viruses, such as the flu or common cold, on an airplane, the researchers said. So, to (32)_____ the risks of infection, the study team flew on 10 different (33)_____ in the U.S. during flu season. The researchers found that passengers sitting within two seats on (34)_____ side of a person infected with the flu, as well as those sitting one row in front of or behind this individual, had about an 80 percent chance of getting sick. But other passengers were (35)_____ safe from infection. They had a less than 3 percent chance of catching the flu.
30、(5)
A、either
B、vividly
C、evaluate
D、explorations
E、directly
F、summit
G、nearby
H、accurate
I、flights
J、largely
K、respond
L、spread
M、conclusion
N、vulnerable
O、slim
Finally, some good news about airplane travel. If you are on a plane with a sick passenger, you are unlikely to get sick. That is the (26)_____ of a new study that looked at how respiratory (呼吸道) viruses (27)_____ on airplanes. Researchers found that only people who were seated in the same row as a passenger with the flu, for example—or one row in front of or behind that individual—had a high risk of catching the illness. All other passengers had only a very (28)_____ chance of getting sick, according to the findings. Media reports have not necessarily presented (29)_____ information about the risk of getting infected on an airplane in the past. Therefore, these new findings should help airplane passengers to feel less (30)_____ to catching respiratory infections while traveling by air.
Prior to the new study, little was known about the risks of getting (31)_____ infected by common respiratory viruses, such as the flu or common cold, on an airplane, the researchers said. So, to (32)_____ the risks of infection, the study team flew on 10 different (33)_____ in the U.S. during flu season. The researchers found that passengers sitting within two seats on (34)_____ side of a person infected with the flu, as well as those sitting one row in front of or behind this individual, had about an 80 percent chance of getting sick. But other passengers were (35)_____ safe from infection. They had a less than 3 percent chance of catching the flu.
31、(6)
A、either
B、vividly
C、evaluate
D、explorations
E、directly
F、summit
G、nearby
H、accurate
I、flights
J、largely
K、respond
L、spread
M、conclusion
N、vulnerable
O、slim
Finally, some good news about airplane travel. If you are on a plane with a sick passenger, you are unlikely to get sick. That is the (26)_____ of a new study that looked at how respiratory (呼吸道) viruses (27)_____ on airplanes. Researchers found that only people who were seated in the same row as a passenger with the flu, for example—or one row in front of or behind that individual—had a high risk of catching the illness. All other passengers had only a very (28)_____ chance of getting sick, according to the findings. Media reports have not necessarily presented (29)_____ information about the risk of getting infected on an airplane in the past. Therefore, these new findings should help airplane passengers to feel less (30)_____ to catching respiratory infections while traveling by air.
Prior to the new study, little was known about the risks of getting (31)_____ infected by common respiratory viruses, such as the flu or common cold, on an airplane, the researchers said. So, to (32)_____ the risks of infection, the study team flew on 10 different (33)_____ in the U.S. during flu season. The researchers found that passengers sitting within two seats on (34)_____ side of a person infected with the flu, as well as those sitting one row in front of or behind this individual, had about an 80 percent chance of getting sick. But other passengers were (35)_____ safe from infection. They had a less than 3 percent chance of catching the flu.
32、(7)
A、either
B、vividly
C、evaluate
D、explorations
E、directly
F、summit
G、nearby
H、accurate
I、flights
J、largely
K、respond
L、spread
M、conclusion
N、vulnerable
O、slim
Finally, some good news about airplane travel. If you are on a plane with a sick passenger, you are unlikely to get sick. That is the (26)_____ of a new study that looked at how respiratory (呼吸道) viruses (27)_____ on airplanes. Researchers found that only people who were seated in the same row as a passenger with the flu, for example—or one row in front of or behind that individual—had a high risk of catching the illness. All other passengers had only a very (28)_____ chance of getting sick, according to the findings. Media reports have not necessarily presented (29)_____ information about the risk of getting infected on an airplane in the past. Therefore, these new findings should help airplane passengers to feel less (30)_____ to catching respiratory infections while traveling by air.
Prior to the new study, little was known about the risks of getting (31)_____ infected by common respiratory viruses, such as the flu or common cold, on an airplane, the researchers said. So, to (32)_____ the risks of infection, the study team flew on 10 different (33)_____ in the U.S. during flu season. The researchers found that passengers sitting within two seats on (34)_____ side of a person infected with the flu, as well as those sitting one row in front of or behind this individual, had about an 80 percent chance of getting sick. But other passengers were (35)_____ safe from infection. They had a less than 3 percent chance of catching the flu.
33、(8)
A、either
B、vividly
C、evaluate
D、explorations
E、directly
F、summit
G、nearby
H、accurate
I、flights
J、largely
K、respond
L、spread
M、conclusion
N、vulnerable
O、slim
Finally, some good news about airplane travel. If you are on a plane with a sick passenger, you are unlikely to get sick. That is the (26)_____ of a new study that looked at how respiratory (呼吸道) viruses (27)_____ on airplanes. Researchers found that only people who were seated in the same row as a passenger with the flu, for example—or one row in front of or behind that individual—had a high risk of catching the illness. All other passengers had only a very (28)_____ chance of getting sick, according to the findings. Media reports have not necessarily presented (29)_____ information about the risk of getting infected on an airplane in the past. Therefore, these new findings should help airplane passengers to feel less (30)_____ to catching respiratory infections while traveling by air.
Prior to the new study, little was known about the risks of getting (31)_____ infected by common respiratory viruses, such as the flu or common cold, on an airplane, the researchers said. So, to (32)_____ the risks of infection, the study team flew on 10 different (33)_____ in the U.S. during flu season. The researchers found that passengers sitting within two seats on (34)_____ side of a person infected with the flu, as well as those sitting one row in front of or behind this individual, had about an 80 percent chance of getting sick. But other passengers were (35)_____ safe from infection. They had a less than 3 percent chance of catching the flu.
34、(9)
A、either
B、vividly
C、evaluate
D、explorations
E、directly
F、summit
G、nearby
H、accurate
I、flights
J、largely
K、respond
L、spread
M、conclusion
N、vulnerable
O、slim
Finally, some good news about airplane travel. If you are on a plane with a sick passenger, you are unlikely to get sick. That is the (26)_____ of a new study that looked at how respiratory (呼吸道) viruses (27)_____ on airplanes. Researchers found that only people who were seated in the same row as a passenger with the flu, for example—or one row in front of or behind that individual—had a high risk of catching the illness. All other passengers had only a very (28)_____ chance of getting sick, according to the findings. Media reports have not necessarily presented (29)_____ information about the risk of getting infected on an airplane in the past. Therefore, these new findings should help airplane passengers to feel less (30)_____ to catching respiratory infections while traveling by air.
Prior to the new study, little was known about the risks of getting (31)_____ infected by common respiratory viruses, such as the flu or common cold, on an airplane, the researchers said. So, to (32)_____ the risks of infection, the study team flew on 10 different (33)_____ in the U.S. during flu season. The researchers found that passengers sitting within two seats on (34)_____ side of a person infected with the flu, as well as those sitting one row in front of or behind this individual, had about an 80 percent chance of getting sick. But other passengers were (35)_____ safe from infection. They had a less than 3 percent chance of catching the flu.
35、(10)
A、either
B、vividly
C、evaluate
D、explorations
E、directly
F、summit
G、nearby
H、accurate
I、flights
J、largely
K、respond
L、spread
M、conclusion
N、vulnerable
O、slim
A South Korean city designed for the future takes on a life of its own
【A】Getting around a city is one thing—and then there’s the matter of getting from one city to another. One vision of the perfect city of the future is a place that offers easy access to air travel. In 2011, a University of North Carolina business professor named John Kasarda published a book called Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next. Kasarda says future cities should be built intentionally around or near airports. The idea, as he has put it, is to offer businesses “rapid, long-distance connectivity on a massive scale.”
【B】 “The 18th century really was a waterborne (水运的) century, the 19th century a rail century, the 20th century a highway, car, truck century—and the 21st century will increasingly be an aviation century, as the globe becomes increasingly connected by air,” Kasarda says. Songdo, a city built from scratch in South Korea, is one of Kasarda’s prime examples. It has existed for just a few years. “From the outset, it was designed on the basis of connectivity and competitiveness,” says Kasarda. “The government built the bridge directly from the airport to the Songdo International Business District. And the surface infrastructure was built at the same time as the new airport.”
【C】Songdo is a stone’s throw from South Korea’s Incheon Airport, its main international hub (枢纽). But it takes a lot more than a nearby airport to be a city of the future. Just building a place as an “international business district” doesn’t mean it will become one. Park Yeon Soo conceived (构想) this city of the future back in 1986. He considers Songdo his baby. Park sees himself as a visionary. Thirty years after he imagined the city, Park’s baby is close to 70 percent built, with 36,000 people living in the business district and 90,000 residents in greater Songdo. It’s about an hour outside Seoul, built on former tidal flats along the Yellow Sea. There’s a Coast Guard building and a tall trade tower, as well as a park, golf course and university.
【D】Chances are you’ve actually seen this place. Songdo appears in the most famous music video ever to come out of South Korea. “Gangnam Style” refers to the fashionable Gangnam district in Seoul. But some of the video was filmed in Songdo. “I don’t know if you remember, there was a scene in a subway station. That was not Gangnam. That was actually Songdo,” says Jung Won Son, a professor of urban development at London’s Bartlett School of Planning. “Part of the reason to shoot there is that it’s new and nice.”
【E】The city was supposed to be a hub for global companies, with employees from all over the world. But that’s not how it has turned out. Songdo’s reputation is as a futuristic ghost town. But the reality is more complicated. A bridge with big, light-blue loops leads into the business district. In the center of the main road, there’s a long line of flags of the world. On the corner, there’s a Starbucks and a 7-Eleven—all of the international brands that you see all over the world nowadays.
【F】The city is not empty. There are mothers pushing baby carriages, old women with walkers—even in the middle of the day, when it’s 90 degrees out. Byun Young-Jin chairs the Songdo real estate association and started selling property here when the first phase of the city opened in 2005. He says demand has boomed in the past couple of years. Most of his clients are Korean. In fact, the developer says, 99 percent of the homes here are sold to Koreans. Young families move here because the schools are great. And that’s the problem: Songdo has become a popular Korean city—more popular as a residential area than a business one. It’s not yet the futuristic international business hub that planners imagined. “It’s a great place to live. And it’s becoming a great place to work,” says Scott Summers, vice-president of Gale International, the developer of the city. The floor-to-ceiling windows of his company’s offices overlook Songdo Central Park, with a canal full of small boats and people fishing. Shimmering (闪烁的) glass towers line the canal’s edge.
【G】 “What’s happened is that our focus on creating that quality of life first has enabled the residents to live here,” Summers says. But there needs to be strong economic incentives for companies to locate here. The city is still unfinished, and it feels a bit like a theme park. It doesn’t feel all that futuristic. There’s a high-tech underground trash disposal system. Buildings are environmentally friendly. Everybody’s television set is connected to a system that streams personalized language or exercise classes.
【H】But this is not Star Trek. And to some of the residents, Songdo feels hollow. “I’m, like, in prison for weekdays. That’s what we call it in the workplace,” says a woman in her 20s. She doesn’t want to use her name for fear of being fired from her job. She goes back to Seoul every weekend. “I say I’m prison-breaking on Friday nights.” But she has to make the prison break in her own car. There’s no high-speed train connecting Songdo to Seoul, just over 20 miles away.
【I】Park Yeon Soo, the man who first imagined Songdo, feels frustrated, too. He says he built South Korea a luxury vehicle, “like Mercedes or BMW. It’s a good car now. But we’re waiting for a good driver to accelerate.” But there are lots of other good cars out there, too. The world is dotted with futuristic, high-tech cities trying to attract the biggest international companies.
【J】Songdo’s backers contend that it’s still early, and business space is filling up—about 70 percent of finished offices are now occupied. Brent Ryan, who teaches urban design at MIT, says Songdo proves a universal principle. “There have been a lot of utopian (乌托邦的) cities in history. And the reason we don’t know about a lot of them is that they have vanished entirely.” In other words, when it comes to cities—or anything else—it is hard to predict the future.
36、
36. Songdo’s popularity lies more in its quality of life than its business attraction.
A、A
B、B
C、C
D、D
E、E
F、F
G、G
H、H
I、I
J、J
A South Korean city designed for the future takes on a life of its own
【A】Getting around a city is one thing—and then there’s the matter of getting from one city to another. One vision of the perfect city of the future is a place that offers easy access to air travel. In 2011, a University of North Carolina business professor named John Kasarda published a book called Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next. Kasarda says future cities should be built intentionally around or near airports. The idea, as he has put it, is to offer businesses “rapid, long-distance connectivity on a massive scale.”
【B】 “The 18th century really was a waterborne (水运的) century, the 19th century a rail century, the 20th century a highway, car, truck century—and the 21st century will increasingly be an aviation century, as the globe becomes increasingly connected by air,” Kasarda says. Songdo, a city built from scratch in South Korea, is one of Kasarda’s prime examples. It has existed for just a few years. “From the outset, it was designed on the basis of connectivity and competitiveness,” says Kasarda. “The government built the bridge directly from the airport to the Songdo International Business District. And the surface infrastructure was built at the same time as the new airport.”
【C】Songdo is a stone’s throw from South Korea’s Incheon Airport, its main international hub (枢纽). But it takes a lot more than a nearby airport to be a city of the future. Just building a place as an “international business district” doesn’t mean it will become one. Park Yeon Soo conceived (构想) this city of the future back in 1986. He considers Songdo his baby. Park sees himself as a visionary. Thirty years after he imagined the city, Park’s baby is close to 70 percent built, with 36,000 people living in the business district and 90,000 residents in greater Songdo. It’s about an hour outside Seoul, built on former tidal flats along the Yellow Sea. There’s a Coast Guard building and a tall trade tower, as well as a park, golf course and university.
【D】Chances are you’ve actually seen this place. Songdo appears in the most famous music video ever to come out of South Korea. “Gangnam Style” refers to the fashionable Gangnam district in Seoul. But some of the video was filmed in Songdo. “I don’t know if you remember, there was a scene in a subway station. That was not Gangnam. That was actually Songdo,” says Jung Won Son, a professor of urban development at London’s Bartlett School of Planning. “Part of the reason to shoot there is that it’s new and nice.”
【E】The city was supposed to be a hub for global companies, with employees from all over the world. But that’s not how it has turned out. Songdo’s reputation is as a futuristic ghost town. But the reality is more complicated. A bridge with big, light-blue loops leads into the business district. In the center of the main road, there’s a long line of flags of the world. On the corner, there’s a Starbucks and a 7-Eleven—all of the international brands that you see all over the world nowadays.
【F】The city is not empty. There are mothers pushing baby carriages, old women with walkers—even in the middle of the day, when it’s 90 degrees out. Byun Young-Jin chairs the Songdo real estate association and started selling property here when the first phase of the city opened in 2005. He says demand has boomed in the past couple of years. Most of his clients are Korean. In fact, the developer says, 99 percent of the homes here are sold to Koreans. Young families move here because the schools are great. And that’s the problem: Songdo has become a popular Korean city—more popular as a residential area than a business one. It’s not yet the futuristic international business hub that planners imagined. “It’s a great place to live. And it’s becoming a great place to work,” says Scott Summers, vice-president of Gale International, the developer of the city. The floor-to-ceiling windows of his company’s offices overlook Songdo Central Park, with a canal full of small boats and people fishing. Shimmering (闪烁的) glass towers line the canal’s edge.
【G】 “What’s happened is that our focus on creating that quality of life first has enabled the residents to live here,” Summers says. But there needs to be strong economic incentives for companies to locate here. The city is still unfinished, and it feels a bit like a theme park. It doesn’t feel all that futuristic. There’s a high-tech underground trash disposal system. Buildings are environmentally friendly. Everybody’s television set is connected to a system that streams personalized language or exercise classes.
【H】But this is not Star Trek. And to some of the residents, Songdo feels hollow. “I’m, like, in prison for weekdays. That’s what we call it in the workplace,” says a woman in her 20s. She doesn’t want to use her name for fear of being fired from her job. She goes back to Seoul every weekend. “I say I’m prison-breaking on Friday nights.” But she has to make the prison break in her own car. There’s no high-speed train connecting Songdo to Seoul, just over 20 miles away.
【I】Park Yeon Soo, the man who first imagined Songdo, feels frustrated, too. He says he built South Korea a luxury vehicle, “like Mercedes or BMW. It’s a good car now. But we’re waiting for a good driver to accelerate.” But there are lots of other good cars out there, too. The world is dotted with futuristic, high-tech cities trying to attract the biggest international companies.
【J】Songdo’s backers contend that it’s still early, and business space is filling up—about 70 percent of finished offices are now occupied. Brent Ryan, who teaches urban design at MIT, says Songdo proves a universal principle. “There have been a lot of utopian (乌托邦的) cities in history. And the reason we don’t know about a lot of them is that they have vanished entirely.” In other words, when it comes to cities—or anything else—it is hard to predict the future.
37、
37. The man who conceived Songdo feels
disappointed because it has fallen short of his expectations.
A、A
B、B
C、C
D、D
E、E
F、F
G、G
H、H
I、I
J、J
A South Korean city designed for the future takes on a life of its own
【A】Getting around a city is one thing—and then there’s the matter of getting from one city to another. One vision of the perfect city of the future is a place that offers easy access to air travel. In 2011, a University of North Carolina business professor named John Kasarda published a book called Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next. Kasarda says future cities should be built intentionally around or near airports. The idea, as he has put it, is to offer businesses “rapid, long-distance connectivity on a massive scale.”
【B】 “The 18th century really was a waterborne (水运的) century, the 19th century a rail century, the 20th century a highway, car, truck century—and the 21st century will increasingly be an aviation century, as the globe becomes increasingly connected by air,” Kasarda says. Songdo, a city built from scratch in South Korea, is one of Kasarda’s prime examples. It has existed for just a few years. “From the outset, it was designed on the basis of connectivity and competitiveness,” says Kasarda. “The government built the bridge directly from the airport to the Songdo International Business District. And the surface infrastructure was built at the same time as the new airport.”
【C】Songdo is a stone’s throw from South Korea’s Incheon Airport, its main international hub (枢纽). But it takes a lot more than a nearby airport to be a city of the future. Just building a place as an “international business district” doesn’t mean it will become one. Park Yeon Soo conceived (构想) this city of the future back in 1986. He considers Songdo his baby. Park sees himself as a visionary. Thirty years after he imagined the city, Park’s baby is close to 70 percent built, with 36,000 people living in the business district and 90,000 residents in greater Songdo. It’s about an hour outside Seoul, built on former tidal flats along the Yellow Sea. There’s a Coast Guard building and a tall trade tower, as well as a park, golf course and university.
【D】Chances are you’ve actually seen this place. Songdo appears in the most famous music video ever to come out of South Korea. “Gangnam Style” refers to the fashionable Gangnam district in Seoul. But some of the video was filmed in Songdo. “I don’t know if you remember, there was a scene in a subway station. That was not Gangnam. That was actually Songdo,” says Jung Won Son, a professor of urban development at London’s Bartlett School of Planning. “Part of the reason to shoot there is that it’s new and nice.”
【E】The city was supposed to be a hub for global companies, with employees from all over the world. But that’s not how it has turned out. Songdo’s reputation is as a futuristic ghost town. But the reality is more complicated. A bridge with big, light-blue loops leads into the business district. In the center of the main road, there’s a long line of flags of the world. On the corner, there’s a Starbucks and a 7-Eleven—all of the international brands that you see all over the world nowadays.
【F】The city is not empty. There are mothers pushing baby carriages, old women with walkers—even in the middle of the day, when it’s 90 degrees out. Byun Young-Jin chairs the Songdo real estate association and started selling property here when the first phase of the city opened in 2005. He says demand has boomed in the past couple of years. Most of his clients are Korean. In fact, the developer says, 99 percent of the homes here are sold to Koreans. Young families move here because the schools are great. And that’s the problem: Songdo has become a popular Korean city—more popular as a residential area than a business one. It’s not yet the futuristic international business hub that planners imagined. “It’s a great place to live. And it’s becoming a great place to work,” says Scott Summers, vice-president of Gale International, the developer of the city. The floor-to-ceiling windows of his company’s offices overlook Songdo Central Park, with a canal full of small boats and people fishing. Shimmering (闪烁的) glass towers line the canal’s edge.
【G】 “What’s happened is that our focus on creating that quality of life first has enabled the residents to live here,” Summers says. But there needs to be strong economic incentives for companies to locate here. The city is still unfinished, and it feels a bit like a theme park. It doesn’t feel all that futuristic. There’s a high-tech underground trash disposal system. Buildings are environmentally friendly. Everybody’s television set is connected to a system that streams personalized language or exercise classes.
【H】But this is not Star Trek. And to some of the residents, Songdo feels hollow. “I’m, like, in prison for weekdays. That’s what we call it in the workplace,” says a woman in her 20s. She doesn’t want to use her name for fear of being fired from her job. She goes back to Seoul every weekend. “I say I’m prison-breaking on Friday nights.” But she has to make the prison break in her own car. There’s no high-speed train connecting Songdo to Seoul, just over 20 miles away.
【I】Park Yeon Soo, the man who first imagined Songdo, feels frustrated, too. He says he built South Korea a luxury vehicle, “like Mercedes or BMW. It’s a good car now. But we’re waiting for a good driver to accelerate.” But there are lots of other good cars out there, too. The world is dotted with futuristic, high-tech cities trying to attract the biggest international companies.
【J】Songdo’s backers contend that it’s still early, and business space is filling up—about 70 percent of finished offices are now occupied. Brent Ryan, who teaches urban design at MIT, says Songdo proves a universal principle. “There have been a lot of utopian (乌托邦的) cities in history. And the reason we don’t know about a lot of them is that they have vanished entirely.” In other words, when it comes to cities—or anything else—it is hard to predict the future.
38、
38. A scene in a popular South Korean
music video was shot in Songdo.
A、A
B、B
C、C
D、D
E、E
F、F
G、G
H、H
I、I
J、J
A South Korean city designed for the future takes on a life of its own
【A】Getting around a city is one thing—and then there’s the matter of getting from one city to another. One vision of the perfect city of the future is a place that offers easy access to air travel. In 2011, a University of North Carolina business professor named John Kasarda published a book called Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next. Kasarda says future cities should be built intentionally around or near airports. The idea, as he has put it, is to offer businesses “rapid, long-distance connectivity on a massive scale.”
【B】 “The 18th century really was a waterborne (水运的) century, the 19th century a rail century, the 20th century a highway, car, truck century—and the 21st century will increasingly be an aviation century, as the globe becomes increasingly connected by air,” Kasarda says. Songdo, a city built from scratch in South Korea, is one of Kasarda’s prime examples. It has existed for just a few years. “From the outset, it was designed on the basis of connectivity and competitiveness,” says Kasarda. “The government built the bridge directly from the airport to the Songdo International Business District. And the surface infrastructure was built at the same time as the new airport.”
【C】Songdo is a stone’s throw from South Korea’s Incheon Airport, its main international hub (枢纽). But it takes a lot more than a nearby airport to be a city of the future. Just building a place as an “international business district” doesn’t mean it will become one. Park Yeon Soo conceived (构想) this city of the future back in 1986. He considers Songdo his baby. Park sees himself as a visionary. Thirty years after he imagined the city, Park’s baby is close to 70 percent built, with 36,000 people living in the business district and 90,000 residents in greater Songdo. It’s about an hour outside Seoul, built on former tidal flats along the Yellow Sea. There’s a Coast Guard building and a tall trade tower, as well as a park, golf course and university.
【D】Chances are you’ve actually seen this place. Songdo appears in the most famous music video ever to come out of South Korea. “Gangnam Style” refers to the fashionable Gangnam district in Seoul. But some of the video was filmed in Songdo. “I don’t know if you remember, there was a scene in a subway station. That was not Gangnam. That was actually Songdo,” says Jung Won Son, a professor of urban development at London’s Bartlett School of Planning. “Part of the reason to shoot there is that it’s new and nice.”
【E】The city was supposed to be a hub for global companies, with employees from all over the world. But that’s not how it has turned out. Songdo’s reputation is as a futuristic ghost town. But the reality is more complicated. A bridge with big, light-blue loops leads into the business district. In the center of the main road, there’s a long line of flags of the world. On the corner, there’s a Starbucks and a 7-Eleven—all of the international brands that you see all over the world nowadays.
【F】The city is not empty. There are mothers pushing baby carriages, old women with walkers—even in the middle of the day, when it’s 90 degrees out. Byun Young-Jin chairs the Songdo real estate association and started selling property here when the first phase of the city opened in 2005. He says demand has boomed in the past couple of years. Most of his clients are Korean. In fact, the developer says, 99 percent of the homes here are sold to Koreans. Young families move here because the schools are great. And that’s the problem: Songdo has become a popular Korean city—more popular as a residential area than a business one. It’s not yet the futuristic international business hub that planners imagined. “It’s a great place to live. And it’s becoming a great place to work,” says Scott Summers, vice-president of Gale International, the developer of the city. The floor-to-ceiling windows of his company’s offices overlook Songdo Central Park, with a canal full of small boats and people fishing. Shimmering (闪烁的) glass towers line the canal’s edge.
【G】 “What’s happened is that our focus on creating that quality of life first has enabled the residents to live here,” Summers says. But there needs to be strong economic incentives for companies to locate here. The city is still unfinished, and it feels a bit like a theme park. It doesn’t feel all that futuristic. There’s a high-tech underground trash disposal system. Buildings are environmentally friendly. Everybody’s television set is connected to a system that streams personalized language or exercise classes.
【H】But this is not Star Trek. And to some of the residents, Songdo feels hollow. “I’m, like, in prison for weekdays. That’s what we call it in the workplace,” says a woman in her 20s. She doesn’t want to use her name for fear of being fired from her job. She goes back to Seoul every weekend. “I say I’m prison-breaking on Friday nights.” But she has to make the prison break in her own car. There’s no high-speed train connecting Songdo to Seoul, just over 20 miles away.
【I】Park Yeon Soo, the man who first imagined Songdo, feels frustrated, too. He says he built South Korea a luxury vehicle, “like Mercedes or BMW. It’s a good car now. But we’re waiting for a good driver to accelerate.” But there are lots of other good cars out there, too. The world is dotted with futuristic, high-tech cities trying to attract the biggest international companies.
【J】Songdo’s backers contend that it’s still early, and business space is filling up—about 70 percent of finished offices are now occupied. Brent Ryan, who teaches urban design at MIT, says Songdo proves a universal principle. “There have been a lot of utopian (乌托邦的) cities in history. And the reason we don’t know about a lot of them is that they have vanished entirely.” In other words, when it comes to cities—or anything else—it is hard to predict the future.
39、
39. Songdo still lacks the financial
stimulus for businesses to set up shop there.
A、A
B、B
C、C
D、D
E、E
F、F
G、G
H、H
I、I
J、J
A South Korean city designed for the future takes on a life of its own
【A】Getting around a city is one thing—and then there’s the matter of getting from one city to another. One vision of the perfect city of the future is a place that offers easy access to air travel. In 2011, a University of North Carolina business professor named John Kasarda published a book called Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next. Kasarda says future cities should be built intentionally around or near airports. The idea, as he has put it, is to offer businesses “rapid, long-distance connectivity on a massive scale.”
【B】 “The 18th century really was a waterborne (水运的) century, the 19th century a rail century, the 20th century a highway, car, truck century—and the 21st century will increasingly be an aviation century, as the globe becomes increasingly connected by air,” Kasarda says. Songdo, a city built from scratch in South Korea, is one of Kasarda’s prime examples. It has existed for just a few years. “From the outset, it was designed on the basis of connectivity and competitiveness,” says Kasarda. “The government built the bridge directly from the airport to the Songdo International Business District. And the surface infrastructure was built at the same time as the new airport.”
【C】Songdo is a stone’s throw from South Korea’s Incheon Airport, its main international hub (枢纽). But it takes a lot more than a nearby airport to be a city of the future. Just building a place as an “international business district” doesn’t mean it will become one. Park Yeon Soo conceived (构想) this city of the future back in 1986. He considers Songdo his baby. Park sees himself as a visionary. Thirty years after he imagined the city, Park’s baby is close to 70 percent built, with 36,000 people living in the business district and 90,000 residents in greater Songdo. It’s about an hour outside Seoul, built on former tidal flats along the Yellow Sea. There’s a Coast Guard building and a tall trade tower, as well as a park, golf course and university.
【D】Chances are you’ve actually seen this place. Songdo appears in the most famous music video ever to come out of South Korea. “Gangnam Style” refers to the fashionable Gangnam district in Seoul. But some of the video was filmed in Songdo. “I don’t know if you remember, there was a scene in a subway station. That was not Gangnam. That was actually Songdo,” says Jung Won Son, a professor of urban development at London’s Bartlett School of Planning. “Part of the reason to shoot there is that it’s new and nice.”
【E】The city was supposed to be a hub for global companies, with employees from all over the world. But that’s not how it has turned out. Songdo’s reputation is as a futuristic ghost town. But the reality is more complicated. A bridge with big, light-blue loops leads into the business district. In the center of the main road, there’s a long line of flags of the world. On the corner, there’s a Starbucks and a 7-Eleven—all of the international brands that you see all over the world nowadays.
【F】The city is not empty. There are mothers pushing baby carriages, old women with walkers—even in the middle of the day, when it’s 90 degrees out. Byun Young-Jin chairs the Songdo real estate association and started selling property here when the first phase of the city opened in 2005. He says demand has boomed in the past couple of years. Most of his clients are Korean. In fact, the developer says, 99 percent of the homes here are sold to Koreans. Young families move here because the schools are great. And that’s the problem: Songdo has become a popular Korean city—more popular as a residential area than a business one. It’s not yet the futuristic international business hub that planners imagined. “It’s a great place to live. And it’s becoming a great place to work,” says Scott Summers, vice-president of Gale International, the developer of the city. The floor-to-ceiling windows of his company’s offices overlook Songdo Central Park, with a canal full of small boats and people fishing. Shimmering (闪烁的) glass towers line the canal’s edge.
【G】 “What’s happened is that our focus on creating that quality of life first has enabled the residents to live here,” Summers says. But there needs to be strong economic incentives for companies to locate here. The city is still unfinished, and it feels a bit like a theme park. It doesn’t feel all that futuristic. There’s a high-tech underground trash disposal system. Buildings are environmentally friendly. Everybody’s television set is connected to a system that streams personalized language or exercise classes.
【H】But this is not Star Trek. And to some of the residents, Songdo feels hollow. “I’m, like, in prison for weekdays. That’s what we call it in the workplace,” says a woman in her 20s. She doesn’t want to use her name for fear of being fired from her job. She goes back to Seoul every weekend. “I say I’m prison-breaking on Friday nights.” But she has to make the prison break in her own car. There’s no high-speed train connecting Songdo to Seoul, just over 20 miles away.
【I】Park Yeon Soo, the man who first imagined Songdo, feels frustrated, too. He says he built South Korea a luxury vehicle, “like Mercedes or BMW. It’s a good car now. But we’re waiting for a good driver to accelerate.” But there are lots of other good cars out there, too. The world is dotted with futuristic, high-tech cities trying to attract the biggest international companies.
【J】Songdo’s backers contend that it’s still early, and business space is filling up—about 70 percent of finished offices are now occupied. Brent Ryan, who teaches urban design at MIT, says Songdo proves a universal principle. “There have been a lot of utopian (乌托邦的) cities in history. And the reason we don’t know about a lot of them is that they have vanished entirely.” In other words, when it comes to cities—or anything else—it is hard to predict the future.
40、
40. Airplanes will increasingly become
the chief means of transportation, according to a professor.
A、A
B、B
C、C
D、D
E、E
F、F
G、G
H、H
I、I
J、J
A South Korean city designed for the future takes on a life of its own
【A】Getting around a city is one thing—and then there’s the matter of getting from one city to another. One vision of the perfect city of the future is a place that offers easy access to air travel. In 2011, a University of North Carolina business professor named John Kasarda published a book called Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next. Kasarda says future cities should be built intentionally around or near airports. The idea, as he has put it, is to offer businesses “rapid, long-distance connectivity on a massive scale.”
【B】 “The 18th century really was a waterborne (水运的) century, the 19th century a rail century, the 20th century a highway, car, truck century—and the 21st century will increasingly be an aviation century, as the globe becomes increasingly connected by air,” Kasarda says. Songdo, a city built from scratch in South Korea, is one of Kasarda’s prime examples. It has existed for just a few years. “From the outset, it was designed on the basis of connectivity and competitiveness,” says Kasarda. “The government built the bridge directly from the airport to the Songdo International Business District. And the surface infrastructure was built at the same time as the new airport.”
【C】Songdo is a stone’s throw from South Korea’s Incheon Airport, its main international hub (枢纽). But it takes a lot more than a nearby airport to be a city of the future. Just building a place as an “international business district” doesn’t mean it will become one. Park Yeon Soo conceived (构想) this city of the future back in 1986. He considers Songdo his baby. Park sees himself as a visionary. Thirty years after he imagined the city, Park’s baby is close to 70 percent built, with 36,000 people living in the business district and 90,000 residents in greater Songdo. It’s about an hour outside Seoul, built on former tidal flats along the Yellow Sea. There’s a Coast Guard building and a tall trade tower, as well as a park, golf course and university.
【D】Chances are you’ve actually seen this place. Songdo appears in the most famous music video ever to come out of South Korea. “Gangnam Style” refers to the fashionable Gangnam district in Seoul. But some of the video was filmed in Songdo. “I don’t know if you remember, there was a scene in a subway station. That was not Gangnam. That was actually Songdo,” says Jung Won Son, a professor of urban development at London’s Bartlett School of Planning. “Part of the reason to shoot there is that it’s new and nice.”
【E】The city was supposed to be a hub for global companies, with employees from all over the world. But that’s not how it has turned out. Songdo’s reputation is as a futuristic ghost town. But the reality is more complicated. A bridge with big, light-blue loops leads into the business district. In the center of the main road, there’s a long line of flags of the world. On the corner, there’s a Starbucks and a 7-Eleven—all of the international brands that you see all over the world nowadays.
【F】The city is not empty. There are mothers pushing baby carriages, old women with walkers—even in the middle of the day, when it’s 90 degrees out. Byun Young-Jin chairs the Songdo real estate association and started selling property here when the first phase of the city opened in 2005. He says demand has boomed in the past couple of years. Most of his clients are Korean. In fact, the developer says, 99 percent of the homes here are sold to Koreans. Young families move here because the schools are great. And that’s the problem: Songdo has become a popular Korean city—more popular as a residential area than a business one. It’s not yet the futuristic international business hub that planners imagined. “It’s a great place to live. And it’s becoming a great place to work,” says Scott Summers, vice-president of Gale International, the developer of the city. The floor-to-ceiling windows of his company’s offices overlook Songdo Central Park, with a canal full of small boats and people fishing. Shimmering (闪烁的) glass towers line the canal’s edge.
【G】 “What’s happened is that our focus on creating that quality of life first has enabled the residents to live here,” Summers says. But there needs to be strong economic incentives for companies to locate here. The city is still unfinished, and it feels a bit like a theme park. It doesn’t feel all that futuristic. There’s a high-tech underground trash disposal system. Buildings are environmentally friendly. Everybody’s television set is connected to a system that streams personalized language or exercise classes.
【H】But this is not Star Trek. And to some of the residents, Songdo feels hollow. “I’m, like, in prison for weekdays. That’s what we call it in the workplace,” says a woman in her 20s. She doesn’t want to use her name for fear of being fired from her job. She goes back to Seoul every weekend. “I say I’m prison-breaking on Friday nights.” But she has to make the prison break in her own car. There’s no high-speed train connecting Songdo to Seoul, just over 20 miles away.
【I】Park Yeon Soo, the man who first imagined Songdo, feels frustrated, too. He says he built South Korea a luxury vehicle, “like Mercedes or BMW. It’s a good car now. But we’re waiting for a good driver to accelerate.” But there are lots of other good cars out there, too. The world is dotted with futuristic, high-tech cities trying to attract the biggest international companies.
【J】Songdo’s backers contend that it’s still early, and business space is filling up—about 70 percent of finished offices are now occupied. Brent Ryan, who teaches urban design at MIT, says Songdo proves a universal principle. “There have been a lot of utopian (乌托邦的) cities in history. And the reason we don’t know about a lot of them is that they have vanished entirely.” In other words, when it comes to cities—or anything else—it is hard to predict the future.
41、
41. Songdo has ended up different from
the city it was supposed to be.
A、A
B、B
C、C
D、D
E、E
F、F
G、G
H、H
I、I
J、J
A South Korean city designed for the future takes on a life of its own
【A】Getting around a city is one thing—and then there’s the matter of getting from one city to another. One vision of the perfect city of the future is a place that offers easy access to air travel. In 2011, a University of North Carolina business professor named John Kasarda published a book called Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next. Kasarda says future cities should be built intentionally around or near airports. The idea, as he has put it, is to offer businesses “rapid, long-distance connectivity on a massive scale.”
【B】 “The 18th century really was a waterborne (水运的) century, the 19th century a rail century, the 20th century a highway, car, truck century—and the 21st century will increasingly be an aviation century, as the globe becomes increasingly connected by air,” Kasarda says. Songdo, a city built from scratch in South Korea, is one of Kasarda’s prime examples. It has existed for just a few years. “From the outset, it was designed on the basis of connectivity and competitiveness,” says Kasarda. “The government built the bridge directly from the airport to the Songdo International Business District. And the surface infrastructure was built at the same time as the new airport.”
【C】Songdo is a stone’s throw from South Korea’s Incheon Airport, its main international hub (枢纽). But it takes a lot more than a nearby airport to be a city of the future. Just building a place as an “international business district” doesn’t mean it will become one. Park Yeon Soo conceived (构想) this city of the future back in 1986. He considers Songdo his baby. Park sees himself as a visionary. Thirty years after he imagined the city, Park’s baby is close to 70 percent built, with 36,000 people living in the business district and 90,000 residents in greater Songdo. It’s about an hour outside Seoul, built on former tidal flats along the Yellow Sea. There’s a Coast Guard building and a tall trade tower, as well as a park, golf course and university.
【D】Chances are you’ve actually seen this place. Songdo appears in the most famous music video ever to come out of South Korea. “Gangnam Style” refers to the fashionable Gangnam district in Seoul. But some of the video was filmed in Songdo. “I don’t know if you remember, there was a scene in a subway station. That was not Gangnam. That was actually Songdo,” says Jung Won Son, a professor of urban development at London’s Bartlett School of Planning. “Part of the reason to shoot there is that it’s new and nice.”
【E】The city was supposed to be a hub for global companies, with employees from all over the world. But that’s not how it has turned out. Songdo’s reputation is as a futuristic ghost town. But the reality is more complicated. A bridge with big, light-blue loops leads into the business district. In the center of the main road, there’s a long line of flags of the world. On the corner, there’s a Starbucks and a 7-Eleven—all of the international brands that you see all over the world nowadays.
【F】The city is not empty. There are mothers pushing baby carriages, old women with walkers—even in the middle of the day, when it’s 90 degrees out. Byun Young-Jin chairs the Songdo real estate association and started selling property here when the first phase of the city opened in 2005. He says demand has boomed in the past couple of years. Most of his clients are Korean. In fact, the developer says, 99 percent of the homes here are sold to Koreans. Young families move here because the schools are great. And that’s the problem: Songdo has become a popular Korean city—more popular as a residential area than a business one. It’s not yet the futuristic international business hub that planners imagined. “It’s a great place to live. And it’s becoming a great place to work,” says Scott Summers, vice-president of Gale International, the developer of the city. The floor-to-ceiling windows of his company’s offices overlook Songdo Central Park, with a canal full of small boats and people fishing. Shimmering (闪烁的) glass towers line the canal’s edge.
【G】 “What’s happened is that our focus on creating that quality of life first has enabled the residents to live here,” Summers says. But there needs to be strong economic incentives for companies to locate here. The city is still unfinished, and it feels a bit like a theme park. It doesn’t feel all that futuristic. There’s a high-tech underground trash disposal system. Buildings are environmentally friendly. Everybody’s television set is connected to a system that streams personalized language or exercise classes.
【H】But this is not Star Trek. And to some of the residents, Songdo feels hollow. “I’m, like, in prison for weekdays. That’s what we call it in the workplace,” says a woman in her 20s. She doesn’t want to use her name for fear of being fired from her job. She goes back to Seoul every weekend. “I say I’m prison-breaking on Friday nights.” But she has to make the prison break in her own car. There’s no high-speed train connecting Songdo to Seoul, just over 20 miles away.
【I】Park Yeon Soo, the man who first imagined Songdo, feels frustrated, too. He says he built South Korea a luxury vehicle, “like Mercedes or BMW. It’s a good car now. But we’re waiting for a good driver to accelerate.” But there are lots of other good cars out there, too. The world is dotted with futuristic, high-tech cities trying to attract the biggest international companies.
【J】Songdo’s backers contend that it’s still early, and business space is filling up—about 70 percent of finished offices are now occupied. Brent Ryan, who teaches urban design at MIT, says Songdo proves a universal principle. “There have been a lot of utopian (乌托邦的) cities in history. And the reason we don’t know about a lot of them is that they have vanished entirely.” In other words, when it comes to cities—or anything else—it is hard to predict the future.
42、
42. Some of the people who work in
Songdo complain about boredom in the workplace.
A、A
B、B
C、C
D、D
E、E
F、F
G、G
H、H
I、I
J、J
A South Korean city designed for the future takes on a life of its own
【A】Getting around a city is one thing—and then there’s the matter of getting from one city to another. One vision of the perfect city of the future is a place that offers easy access to air travel. In 2011, a University of North Carolina business professor named John Kasarda published a book called Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next. Kasarda says future cities should be built intentionally around or near airports. The idea, as he has put it, is to offer businesses “rapid, long-distance connectivity on a massive scale.”
【B】 “The 18th century really was a waterborne (水运的) century, the 19th century a rail century, the 20th century a highway, car, truck century—and the 21st century will increasingly be an aviation century, as the globe becomes increasingly connected by air,” Kasarda says. Songdo, a city built from scratch in South Korea, is one of Kasarda’s prime examples. It has existed for just a few years. “From the outset, it was designed on the basis of connectivity and competitiveness,” says Kasarda. “The government built the bridge directly from the airport to the Songdo International Business District. And the surface infrastructure was built at the same time as the new airport.”
【C】Songdo is a stone’s throw from South Korea’s Incheon Airport, its main international hub (枢纽). But it takes a lot more than a nearby airport to be a city of the future. Just building a place as an “international business district” doesn’t mean it will become one. Park Yeon Soo conceived (构想) this city of the future back in 1986. He considers Songdo his baby. Park sees himself as a visionary. Thirty years after he imagined the city, Park’s baby is close to 70 percent built, with 36,000 people living in the business district and 90,000 residents in greater Songdo. It’s about an hour outside Seoul, built on former tidal flats along the Yellow Sea. There’s a Coast Guard building and a tall trade tower, as well as a park, golf course and university.
【D】Chances are you’ve actually seen this place. Songdo appears in the most famous music video ever to come out of South Korea. “Gangnam Style” refers to the fashionable Gangnam district in Seoul. But some of the video was filmed in Songdo. “I don’t know if you remember, there was a scene in a subway station. That was not Gangnam. That was actually Songdo,” says Jung Won Son, a professor of urban development at London’s Bartlett School of Planning. “Part of the reason to shoot there is that it’s new and nice.”
【E】The city was supposed to be a hub for global companies, with employees from all over the world. But that’s not how it has turned out. Songdo’s reputation is as a futuristic ghost town. But the reality is more complicated. A bridge with big, light-blue loops leads into the business district. In the center of the main road, there’s a long line of flags of the world. On the corner, there’s a Starbucks and a 7-Eleven—all of the international brands that you see all over the world nowadays.
【F】The city is not empty. There are mothers pushing baby carriages, old women with walkers—even in the middle of the day, when it’s 90 degrees out. Byun Young-Jin chairs the Songdo real estate association and started selling property here when the first phase of the city opened in 2005. He says demand has boomed in the past couple of years. Most of his clients are Korean. In fact, the developer says, 99 percent of the homes here are sold to Koreans. Young families move here because the schools are great. And that’s the problem: Songdo has become a popular Korean city—more popular as a residential area than a business one. It’s not yet the futuristic international business hub that planners imagined. “It’s a great place to live. And it’s becoming a great place to work,” says Scott Summers, vice-president of Gale International, the developer of the city. The floor-to-ceiling windows of his company’s offices overlook Songdo Central Park, with a canal full of small boats and people fishing. Shimmering (闪烁的) glass towers line the canal’s edge.
【G】 “What’s happened is that our focus on creating that quality of life first has enabled the residents to live here,” Summers says. But there needs to be strong economic incentives for companies to locate here. The city is still unfinished, and it feels a bit like a theme park. It doesn’t feel all that futuristic. There’s a high-tech underground trash disposal system. Buildings are environmentally friendly. Everybody’s television set is connected to a system that streams personalized language or exercise classes.
【H】But this is not Star Trek. And to some of the residents, Songdo feels hollow. “I’m, like, in prison for weekdays. That’s what we call it in the workplace,” says a woman in her 20s. She doesn’t want to use her name for fear of being fired from her job. She goes back to Seoul every weekend. “I say I’m prison-breaking on Friday nights.” But she has to make the prison break in her own car. There’s no high-speed train connecting Songdo to Seoul, just over 20 miles away.
【I】Park Yeon Soo, the man who first imagined Songdo, feels frustrated, too. He says he built South Korea a luxury vehicle, “like Mercedes or BMW. It’s a good car now. But we’re waiting for a good driver to accelerate.” But there are lots of other good cars out there, too. The world is dotted with futuristic, high-tech cities trying to attract the biggest international companies.
【J】Songdo’s backers contend that it’s still early, and business space is filling up—about 70 percent of finished offices are now occupied. Brent Ryan, who teaches urban design at MIT, says Songdo proves a universal principle. “There have been a lot of utopian (乌托邦的) cities in history. And the reason we don’t know about a lot of them is that they have vanished entirely.” In other words, when it comes to cities—or anything else—it is hard to predict the future.
43、
43. A business professor says that a
future city should have easy access to international transportation.
A、A
B、B
C、C
D、D
E、E
F、F
G、G
H、H
I、I
J、J
A South Korean city designed for the future takes on a life of its own
【A】Getting around a city is one thing—and then there’s the matter of getting from one city to another. One vision of the perfect city of the future is a place that offers easy access to air travel. In 2011, a University of North Carolina business professor named John Kasarda published a book called Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next. Kasarda says future cities should be built intentionally around or near airports. The idea, as he has put it, is to offer businesses “rapid, long-distance connectivity on a massive scale.”
【B】 “The 18th century really was a waterborne (水运的) century, the 19th century a rail century, the 20th century a highway, car, truck century—and the 21st century will increasingly be an aviation century, as the globe becomes increasingly connected by air,” Kasarda says. Songdo, a city built from scratch in South Korea, is one of Kasarda’s prime examples. It has existed for just a few years. “From the outset, it was designed on the basis of connectivity and competitiveness,” says Kasarda. “The government built the bridge directly from the airport to the Songdo International Business District. And the surface infrastructure was built at the same time as the new airport.”
【C】Songdo is a stone’s throw from South Korea’s Incheon Airport, its main international hub (枢纽). But it takes a lot more than a nearby airport to be a city of the future. Just building a place as an “international business district” doesn’t mean it will become one. Park Yeon Soo conceived (构想) this city of the future back in 1986. He considers Songdo his baby. Park sees himself as a visionary. Thirty years after he imagined the city, Park’s baby is close to 70 percent built, with 36,000 people living in the business district and 90,000 residents in greater Songdo. It’s about an hour outside Seoul, built on former tidal flats along the Yellow Sea. There’s a Coast Guard building and a tall trade tower, as well as a park, golf course and university.
【D】Chances are you’ve actually seen this place. Songdo appears in the most famous music video ever to come out of South Korea. “Gangnam Style” refers to the fashionable Gangnam district in Seoul. But some of the video was filmed in Songdo. “I don’t know if you remember, there was a scene in a subway station. That was not Gangnam. That was actually Songdo,” says Jung Won Son, a professor of urban development at London’s Bartlett School of Planning. “Part of the reason to shoot there is that it’s new and nice.”
【E】The city was supposed to be a hub for global companies, with employees from all over the world. But that’s not how it has turned out. Songdo’s reputation is as a futuristic ghost town. But the reality is more complicated. A bridge with big, light-blue loops leads into the business district. In the center of the main road, there’s a long line of flags of the world. On the corner, there’s a Starbucks and a 7-Eleven—all of the international brands that you see all over the world nowadays.
【F】The city is not empty. There are mothers pushing baby carriages, old women with walkers—even in the middle of the day, when it’s 90 degrees out. Byun Young-Jin chairs the Songdo real estate association and started selling property here when the first phase of the city opened in 2005. He says demand has boomed in the past couple of years. Most of his clients are Korean. In fact, the developer says, 99 percent of the homes here are sold to Koreans. Young families move here because the schools are great. And that’s the problem: Songdo has become a popular Korean city—more popular as a residential area than a business one. It’s not yet the futuristic international business hub that planners imagined. “It’s a great place to live. And it’s becoming a great place to work,” says Scott Summers, vice-president of Gale International, the developer of the city. The floor-to-ceiling windows of his company’s offices overlook Songdo Central Park, with a canal full of small boats and people fishing. Shimmering (闪烁的) glass towers line the canal’s edge.
【G】 “What’s happened is that our focus on creating that quality of life first has enabled the residents to live here,” Summers says. But there needs to be strong economic incentives for companies to locate here. The city is still unfinished, and it feels a bit like a theme park. It doesn’t feel all that futuristic. There’s a high-tech underground trash disposal system. Buildings are environmentally friendly. Everybody’s television set is connected to a system that streams personalized language or exercise classes.
【H】But this is not Star Trek. And to some of the residents, Songdo feels hollow. “I’m, like, in prison for weekdays. That’s what we call it in the workplace,” says a woman in her 20s. She doesn’t want to use her name for fear of being fired from her job. She goes back to Seoul every weekend. “I say I’m prison-breaking on Friday nights.” But she has to make the prison break in her own car. There’s no high-speed train connecting Songdo to Seoul, just over 20 miles away.
【I】Park Yeon Soo, the man who first imagined Songdo, feels frustrated, too. He says he built South Korea a luxury vehicle, “like Mercedes or BMW. It’s a good car now. But we’re waiting for a good driver to accelerate.” But there are lots of other good cars out there, too. The world is dotted with futuristic, high-tech cities trying to attract the biggest international companies.
【J】Songdo’s backers contend that it’s still early, and business space is filling up—about 70 percent of finished offices are now occupied. Brent Ryan, who teaches urban design at MIT, says Songdo proves a universal principle. “There have been a lot of utopian (乌托邦的) cities in history. And the reason we don’t know about a lot of them is that they have vanished entirely.” In other words, when it comes to cities—or anything else—it is hard to predict the future.
44、
44. According to an urban design
professor, it is difficult for city designers to foresee what will happen in
the future.
A、A
B、B
C、C
D、D
E、E
F、F
G、G
H、H
I、I
J、J
A South Korean city designed for the future takes on a life of its own
【A】Getting around a city is one thing—and then there’s the matter of getting from one city to another. One vision of the perfect city of the future is a place that offers easy access to air travel. In 2011, a University of North Carolina business professor named John Kasarda published a book called Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next. Kasarda says future cities should be built intentionally around or near airports. The idea, as he has put it, is to offer businesses “rapid, long-distance connectivity on a massive scale.”
【B】 “The 18th century really was a waterborne (水运的) century, the 19th century a rail century, the 20th century a highway, car, truck century—and the 21st century will increasingly be an aviation century, as the globe becomes increasingly connected by air,” Kasarda says. Songdo, a city built from scratch in South Korea, is one of Kasarda’s prime examples. It has existed for just a few years. “From the outset, it was designed on the basis of connectivity and competitiveness,” says Kasarda. “The government built the bridge directly from the airport to the Songdo International Business District. And the surface infrastructure was built at the same time as the new airport.”
【C】Songdo is a stone’s throw from South Korea’s Incheon Airport, its main international hub (枢纽). But it takes a lot more than a nearby airport to be a city of the future. Just building a place as an “international business district” doesn’t mean it will become one. Park Yeon Soo conceived (构想) this city of the future back in 1986. He considers Songdo his baby. Park sees himself as a visionary. Thirty years after he imagined the city, Park’s baby is close to 70 percent built, with 36,000 people living in the business district and 90,000 residents in greater Songdo. It’s about an hour outside Seoul, built on former tidal flats along the Yellow Sea. There’s a Coast Guard building and a tall trade tower, as well as a park, golf course and university.
【D】Chances are you’ve actually seen this place. Songdo appears in the most famous music video ever to come out of South Korea. “Gangnam Style” refers to the fashionable Gangnam district in Seoul. But some of the video was filmed in Songdo. “I don’t know if you remember, there was a scene in a subway station. That was not Gangnam. That was actually Songdo,” says Jung Won Son, a professor of urban development at London’s Bartlett School of Planning. “Part of the reason to shoot there is that it’s new and nice.”
【E】The city was supposed to be a hub for global companies, with employees from all over the world. But that’s not how it has turned out. Songdo’s reputation is as a futuristic ghost town. But the reality is more complicated. A bridge with big, light-blue loops leads into the business district. In the center of the main road, there’s a long line of flags of the world. On the corner, there’s a Starbucks and a 7-Eleven—all of the international brands that you see all over the world nowadays.
【F】The city is not empty. There are mothers pushing baby carriages, old women with walkers—even in the middle of the day, when it’s 90 degrees out. Byun Young-Jin chairs the Songdo real estate association and started selling property here when the first phase of the city opened in 2005. He says demand has boomed in the past couple of years. Most of his clients are Korean. In fact, the developer says, 99 percent of the homes here are sold to Koreans. Young families move here because the schools are great. And that’s the problem: Songdo has become a popular Korean city—more popular as a residential area than a business one. It’s not yet the futuristic international business hub that planners imagined. “It’s a great place to live. And it’s becoming a great place to work,” says Scott Summers, vice-president of Gale International, the developer of the city. The floor-to-ceiling windows of his company’s offices overlook Songdo Central Park, with a canal full of small boats and people fishing. Shimmering (闪烁的) glass towers line the canal’s edge.
【G】 “What’s happened is that our focus on creating that quality of life first has enabled the residents to live here,” Summers says. But there needs to be strong economic incentives for companies to locate here. The city is still unfinished, and it feels a bit like a theme park. It doesn’t feel all that futuristic. There’s a high-tech underground trash disposal system. Buildings are environmentally friendly. Everybody’s television set is connected to a system that streams personalized language or exercise classes.
【H】But this is not Star Trek. And to some of the residents, Songdo feels hollow. “I’m, like, in prison for weekdays. That’s what we call it in the workplace,” says a woman in her 20s. She doesn’t want to use her name for fear of being fired from her job. She goes back to Seoul every weekend. “I say I’m prison-breaking on Friday nights.” But she has to make the prison break in her own car. There’s no high-speed train connecting Songdo to Seoul, just over 20 miles away.
【I】Park Yeon Soo, the man who first imagined Songdo, feels frustrated, too. He says he built South Korea a luxury vehicle, “like Mercedes or BMW. It’s a good car now. But we’re waiting for a good driver to accelerate.” But there are lots of other good cars out there, too. The world is dotted with futuristic, high-tech cities trying to attract the biggest international companies.
【J】Songdo’s backers contend that it’s still early, and business space is filling up—about 70 percent of finished offices are now occupied. Brent Ryan, who teaches urban design at MIT, says Songdo proves a universal principle. “There have been a lot of utopian (乌托邦的) cities in history. And the reason we don’t know about a lot of them is that they have vanished entirely.” In other words, when it comes to cities—or anything else—it is hard to predict the future.
45、
45. Park Yeon Soo, who envisioned
Songdo, feels a parental connection with the city.
A、A
B、B
C、C
D、D
E、E
F、F
G、G
H、H
I、I
J、J
The fifth largest city in the US passed a significant soda tax proposal that will levy (征税) 1.5 cents per liquid ounce on distributors.
Philadelphia’s new measure was approved by a 13 to 4 city council vote. It sets a new bar for similar initiatives across the country. It is proof that taxes on sugary drinks can win substantial support outside super-liberal areas. Until now, the only city to successfully pass and implement a soda tax was Berkeley, California, in 2014.
The tax will apply to regular and diet sodas, as well as other drinks with added sugar, such as Gatorade and iced teas. It’s expected to raise $410 million over the next five years, most of which will go toward funding a universal pre-kindergarten program for the city.
While the city council vote was met with applause inside the council room, opponents to the measure, including soda lobbyists, made sharp criticisms and a promise to challenge the tax in court.
“The tax passed today unfairly singles out beverages—including low- and no-calorie choices,” said Lauren Kane, spokeswoman for the American Beverage Association. “But most importantly, it is against the law. So we will side with the majority of the people of Philadelphia who oppose this tax and take legal action to stop it.”
An industry-backed anti-tax campaign has spent at least $4 million on advertisements. The ads criticized the measure, characterizing it as a “grocery tax”.
Public health groups applauded the approved tax as a step toward fixing certain lasting health issues that plague Americans. “The move to recapture a small part of the profits from an industry that pushes a product that contributes to diabetes, obesity and heart disease in poorer communities in order to reinvest in those communities will sure be inspirational to many other places,” said Jim Krieger, executive director of Healthy Food America. “Indeed, we are already hearing from some of them. It’s not ‘just Berkeley’ anymore.”
Similar measures in California’s Albany, Oakland, San Francisco and Colorado’s Boulder are becoming hot-button issues. Health advocacy groups have hinted that even more might be coming.
46、46. What does the passage say about the newly-approved soda tax in Philadelphia?
A、It will change the lifestyle of many consumers.
B、It may encourage other US cities to follow suit.
C、It will cut soda consumption among low-income communities.
D、It may influence the marketing strategies of the soda business.
The fifth largest city in the US passed a significant soda tax proposal that will levy (征税) 1.5 cents per liquid ounce on distributors.
Philadelphia’s new measure was approved by a 13 to 4 city council vote. It sets a new bar for similar initiatives across the country. It is proof that taxes on sugary drinks can win substantial support outside super-liberal areas. Until now, the only city to successfully pass and implement a soda tax was Berkeley, California, in 2014.
The tax will apply to regular and diet sodas, as well as other drinks with added sugar, such as Gatorade and iced teas. It’s expected to raise $410 million over the next five years, most of which will go toward funding a universal pre-kindergarten program for the city.
While the city council vote was met with applause inside the council room, opponents to the measure, including soda lobbyists, made sharp criticisms and a promise to challenge the tax in court.
“The tax passed today unfairly singles out beverages—including low- and no-calorie choices,” said Lauren Kane, spokeswoman for the American Beverage Association. “But most importantly, it is against the law. So we will side with the majority of the people of Philadelphia who oppose this tax and take legal action to stop it.”
An industry-backed anti-tax campaign has spent at least $4 million on advertisements. The ads criticized the measure, characterizing it as a “grocery tax”.
Public health groups applauded the approved tax as a step toward fixing certain lasting health issues that plague Americans. “The move to recapture a small part of the profits from an industry that pushes a product that contributes to diabetes, obesity and heart disease in poorer communities in order to reinvest in those communities will sure be inspirational to many other places,” said Jim Krieger, executive director of Healthy Food America. “Indeed, we are already hearing from some of them. It’s not ‘just Berkeley’ anymore.”
Similar measures in California’s Albany, Oakland, San Francisco and Colorado’s Boulder are becoming hot-button issues. Health advocacy groups have hinted that even more might be coming.
47、47. What will the opponents probably do to respond to the soda tax proposal?
A、Bargain with the city council.
B、Refuse to pay additional tax.
C、Take legal action against it.
D、Try to win public support.
The fifth largest city in the US passed a significant soda tax proposal that will levy (征税) 1.5 cents per liquid ounce on distributors.
Philadelphia’s new measure was approved by a 13 to 4 city council vote. It sets a new bar for similar initiatives across the country. It is proof that taxes on sugary drinks can win substantial support outside super-liberal areas. Until now, the only city to successfully pass and implement a soda tax was Berkeley, California, in 2014.
The tax will apply to regular and diet sodas, as well as other drinks with added sugar, such as Gatorade and iced teas. It’s expected to raise $410 million over the next five years, most of which will go toward funding a universal pre-kindergarten program for the city.
While the city council vote was met with applause inside the council room, opponents to the measure, including soda lobbyists, made sharp criticisms and a promise to challenge the tax in court.
“The tax passed today unfairly singles out beverages—including low- and no-calorie choices,” said Lauren Kane, spokeswoman for the American Beverage Association. “But most importantly, it is against the law. So we will side with the majority of the people of Philadelphia who oppose this tax and take legal action to stop it.”
An industry-backed anti-tax campaign has spent at least $4 million on advertisements. The ads criticized the measure, characterizing it as a “grocery tax”.
Public health groups applauded the approved tax as a step toward fixing certain lasting health issues that plague Americans. “The move to recapture a small part of the profits from an industry that pushes a product that contributes to diabetes, obesity and heart disease in poorer communities in order to reinvest in those communities will sure be inspirational to many other places,” said Jim Krieger, executive director of Healthy Food America. “Indeed, we are already hearing from some of them. It’s not ‘just Berkeley’ anymore.”
Similar measures in California’s Albany, Oakland, San Francisco and Colorado’s Boulder are becoming hot-button issues. Health advocacy groups have hinted that even more might be coming.
48、48. What did the industry-backed anti-tax campaign do about the soda tax proposal?
A、It tried to arouse hostile feelings among consumers.
B、It tried to win grocers’ support against the measure.
C、It kept sending letters of protest to the media.
D、It criticized the measure through advertising.
The fifth largest city in the US passed a significant soda tax proposal that will levy (征税) 1.5 cents per liquid ounce on distributors.
Philadelphia’s new measure was approved by a 13 to 4 city council vote. It sets a new bar for similar initiatives across the country. It is proof that taxes on sugary drinks can win substantial support outside super-liberal areas. Until now, the only city to successfully pass and implement a soda tax was Berkeley, California, in 2014.
The tax will apply to regular and diet sodas, as well as other drinks with added sugar, such as Gatorade and iced teas. It’s expected to raise $410 million over the next five years, most of which will go toward funding a universal pre-kindergarten program for the city.
While the city council vote was met with applause inside the council room, opponents to the measure, including soda lobbyists, made sharp criticisms and a promise to challenge the tax in court.
“The tax passed today unfairly singles out beverages—including low- and no-calorie choices,” said Lauren Kane, spokeswoman for the American Beverage Association. “But most importantly, it is against the law. So we will side with the majority of the people of Philadelphia who oppose this tax and take legal action to stop it.”
An industry-backed anti-tax campaign has spent at least $4 million on advertisements. The ads criticized the measure, characterizing it as a “grocery tax”.
Public health groups applauded the approved tax as a step toward fixing certain lasting health issues that plague Americans. “The move to recapture a small part of the profits from an industry that pushes a product that contributes to diabetes, obesity and heart disease in poorer communities in order to reinvest in those communities will sure be inspirational to many other places,” said Jim Krieger, executive director of Healthy Food America. “Indeed, we are already hearing from some of them. It’s not ‘just Berkeley’ anymore.”
Similar measures in California’s Albany, Oakland, San Francisco and Colorado’s Boulder are becoming hot-button issues. Health advocacy groups have hinted that even more might be coming.
49、49. What did public health groups think the soda tax would do?
A、Alert people to the risk of sugar-induced diseases.
B、Help people to fix certain long-time health issues.
C、Add to the fund for their research on diseases.
D、Benefit low-income people across the country.
The fifth largest city in the US passed a significant soda tax proposal that will levy (征税) 1.5 cents per liquid ounce on distributors.
Philadelphia’s new measure was approved by a 13 to 4 city council vote. It sets a new bar for similar initiatives across the country. It is proof that taxes on sugary drinks can win substantial support outside super-liberal areas. Until now, the only city to successfully pass and implement a soda tax was Berkeley, California, in 2014.
The tax will apply to regular and diet sodas, as well as other drinks with added sugar, such as Gatorade and iced teas. It’s expected to raise $410 million over the next five years, most of which will go toward funding a universal pre-kindergarten program for the city.
While the city council vote was met with applause inside the council room, opponents to the measure, including soda lobbyists, made sharp criticisms and a promise to challenge the tax in court.
“The tax passed today unfairly singles out beverages—including low- and no-calorie choices,” said Lauren Kane, spokeswoman for the American Beverage Association. “But most importantly, it is against the law. So we will side with the majority of the people of Philadelphia who oppose this tax and take legal action to stop it.”
An industry-backed anti-tax campaign has spent at least $4 million on advertisements. The ads criticized the measure, characterizing it as a “grocery tax”.
Public health groups applauded the approved tax as a step toward fixing certain lasting health issues that plague Americans. “The move to recapture a small part of the profits from an industry that pushes a product that contributes to diabetes, obesity and heart disease in poorer communities in order to reinvest in those communities will sure be inspirational to many other places,” said Jim Krieger, executive director of Healthy Food America. “Indeed, we are already hearing from some of them. It’s not ‘just Berkeley’ anymore.”
Similar measures in California’s Albany, Oakland, San Francisco and Colorado’s Boulder are becoming hot-button issues. Health advocacy groups have hinted that even more might be coming.
50、50. What do we learn about similar measures concerning the soda tax in some other cities?
A、They are becoming rather sensitive issues.
B、They are spreading panic in the soda industry.
C、They are reducing the incidence of sugar-induced diseases.
D、They are taking away a lot of profit from the soda industry.
Popping food into the microwave for a couple of minutes may seem utterly harmless, and Europe’s stock of these quick-cooking ovens emit as much carbon as nearly 7 million cars, a new study has found. And the problem is growing. With costs falling and kitchen appliances becoming “status” items, owners are throwing many microwaves after an average of eight years. This is pushing sales of new microwaves which are expected to reach 135 million annually in the EU by the end of the decade.
A study by the University of Manchester calculated the emissions of CO2—the main greenhouse gas responsible for climate change—at every stage of microwave, from manufacture to waste disposal. “It is electricity consumption by microwaves that has the biggest impact on the environment,” say the authors. The authors also calculate that the emissions from using 19 microwaves over a year are the same as those from using a car. According to the same study, efforts to reduce consumption should focus on improving consumer awareness and behaviour. For example, consumers could use appliances in a more efficient way by adjusting the time of cooking to the type of food.
However, David Reay, professor of carbon management, argues that, although microwaves use a great deal of energy, their emissions are minor compared to those from cars. In the UK alone, there are around 30 million cars. These cars emit more than all the microwaves in the EU. Backing this up, recent data show that passenger cars in the UK emitted 69 million tons of CO2 in 2015. This is 10 times the amount this new microwave oven study estimates for annual emissions for all the microwave ovens in the EU. Further, the energy used by microwaves is lower than any other form of cooking. Among common kitchen appliances used for cooking, microwaves are the most energy efficient, followed by a stove and finally a standard oven. Thus, rising microwave sales could be seen as a positive thing.
51、51. What is the finding of the new study?
A、Quick-cooking microwave ovens have become more popular.
B、The frequent use of microwaves may do harm to our health.
C、CO2 emissions constitute a major threat to the environment.
D、The use of microwaves emits more CO2 than people think.
Popping food into the microwave for a couple of minutes may seem utterly harmless, and Europe’s stock of these quick-cooking ovens emit as much carbon as nearly 7 million cars, a new study has found. And the problem is growing. With costs falling and kitchen appliances becoming “status” items, owners are throwing many microwaves after an average of eight years. This is pushing sales of new microwaves which are expected to reach 135 million annually in the EU by the end of the decade.
A study by the University of Manchester calculated the emissions of CO2—the main greenhouse gas responsible for climate change—at every stage of microwave, from manufacture to waste disposal. “It is electricity consumption by microwaves that has the biggest impact on the environment,” say the authors. The authors also calculate that the emissions from using 19 microwaves over a year are the same as those from using a car. According to the same study, efforts to reduce consumption should focus on improving consumer awareness and behaviour. For example, consumers could use appliances in a more efficient way by adjusting the time of cooking to the type of food.
However, David Reay, professor of carbon management, argues that, although microwaves use a great deal of energy, their emissions are minor compared to those from cars. In the UK alone, there are around 30 million cars. These cars emit more than all the microwaves in the EU. Backing this up, recent data show that passenger cars in the UK emitted 69 million tons of CO2 in 2015. This is 10 times the amount this new microwave oven study estimates for annual emissions for all the microwave ovens in the EU. Further, the energy used by microwaves is lower than any other form of cooking. Among common kitchen appliances used for cooking, microwaves are the most energy efficient, followed by a stove and finally a standard oven. Thus, rising microwave sales could be seen as a positive thing.
52、52. Why are the sales of microwaves expected to rise?
A、They are becoming more affordable.
B、They have a shorter life cycle than other appliances.
C、They are getting much easier to operate.
D、They take less time to cook than other appliances.
Popping food into the microwave for a couple of minutes may seem utterly harmless, and Europe’s stock of these quick-cooking ovens emit as much carbon as nearly 7 million cars, a new study has found. And the problem is growing. With costs falling and kitchen appliances becoming “status” items, owners are throwing many microwaves after an average of eight years. This is pushing sales of new microwaves which are expected to reach 135 million annually in the EU by the end of the decade.
A study by the University of Manchester calculated the emissions of CO2—the main greenhouse gas responsible for climate change—at every stage of microwave, from manufacture to waste disposal. “It is electricity consumption by microwaves that has the biggest impact on the environment,” say the authors. The authors also calculate that the emissions from using 19 microwaves over a year are the same as those from using a car. According to the same study, efforts to reduce consumption should focus on improving consumer awareness and behaviour. For example, consumers could use appliances in a more efficient way by adjusting the time of cooking to the type of food.
However, David Reay, professor of carbon management, argues that, although microwaves use a great deal of energy, their emissions are minor compared to those from cars. In the UK alone, there are around 30 million cars. These cars emit more than all the microwaves in the EU. Backing this up, recent data show that passenger cars in the UK emitted 69 million tons of CO2 in 2015. This is 10 times the amount this new microwave oven study estimates for annual emissions for all the microwave ovens in the EU. Further, the energy used by microwaves is lower than any other form of cooking. Among common kitchen appliances used for cooking, microwaves are the most energy efficient, followed by a stove and finally a standard oven. Thus, rising microwave sales could be seen as a positive thing.
53、53. What recommendation does the study by the University of Manchester make?
A、Cooking food of different varieties.
B、Improving microwave users’ habits.
C、Eating less to cut energy consumption.
D、Using microwave ovens less frequently.
Popping food into the microwave for a couple of minutes may seem utterly harmless, and Europe’s stock of these quick-cooking ovens emit as much carbon as nearly 7 million cars, a new study has found. And the problem is growing. With costs falling and kitchen appliances becoming “status” items, owners are throwing many microwaves after an average of eight years. This is pushing sales of new microwaves which are expected to reach 135 million annually in the EU by the end of the decade.
A study by the University of Manchester calculated the emissions of CO2—the main greenhouse gas responsible for climate change—at every stage of microwave, from manufacture to waste disposal. “It is electricity consumption by microwaves that has the biggest impact on the environment,” say the authors. The authors also calculate that the emissions from using 19 microwaves over a year are the same as those from using a car. According to the same study, efforts to reduce consumption should focus on improving consumer awareness and behaviour. For example, consumers could use appliances in a more efficient way by adjusting the time of cooking to the type of food.
However, David Reay, professor of carbon management, argues that, although microwaves use a great deal of energy, their emissions are minor compared to those from cars. In the UK alone, there are around 30 million cars. These cars emit more than all the microwaves in the EU. Backing this up, recent data show that passenger cars in the UK emitted 69 million tons of CO2 in 2015. This is 10 times the amount this new microwave oven study estimates for annual emissions for all the microwave ovens in the EU. Further, the energy used by microwaves is lower than any other form of cooking. Among common kitchen appliances used for cooking, microwaves are the most energy efficient, followed by a stove and finally a standard oven. Thus, rising microwave sales could be seen as a positive thing.
54、54. What dose professor David Reay try to argue?
A、There are far more emissions from cars than from microwaves.
B、People should be persuaded into using passenger cars less often.
C、The UK produces less CO2 than many other countries in the EU.
D、More data are needed to show whether microwaves are harmful.
Popping food into the microwave for a couple of minutes may seem utterly harmless, and Europe’s stock of these quick-cooking ovens emit as much carbon as nearly 7 million cars, a new study has found. And the problem is growing. With costs falling and kitchen appliances becoming “status” items, owners are throwing many microwaves after an average of eight years. This is pushing sales of new microwaves which are expected to reach 135 million annually in the EU by the end of the decade.
A study by the University of Manchester calculated the emissions of CO2—the main greenhouse gas responsible for climate change—at every stage of microwave, from manufacture to waste disposal. “It is electricity consumption by microwaves that has the biggest impact on the environment,” say the authors. The authors also calculate that the emissions from using 19 microwaves over a year are the same as those from using a car. According to the same study, efforts to reduce consumption should focus on improving consumer awareness and behaviour. For example, consumers could use appliances in a more efficient way by adjusting the time of cooking to the type of food.
However, David Reay, professor of carbon management, argues that, although microwaves use a great deal of energy, their emissions are minor compared to those from cars. In the UK alone, there are around 30 million cars. These cars emit more than all the microwaves in the EU. Backing this up, recent data show that passenger cars in the UK emitted 69 million tons of CO2 in 2015. This is 10 times the amount this new microwave oven study estimates for annual emissions for all the microwave ovens in the EU. Further, the energy used by microwaves is lower than any other form of cooking. Among common kitchen appliances used for cooking, microwaves are the most energy efficient, followed by a stove and finally a standard oven. Thus, rising microwave sales could be seen as a positive thing.
55、55. What dose Professor David Reay think of the use of microwaves?
A、It will become less popular in the coming decades.
B、It makes everyday cooking much more convenient.
C、It plays a positive role in environmental protection.
D、It consumes more power than conventional cooking.
三、Part IV Translation
56、
中国家庭十分重视孩子的教育。许多父母认为应该努力工作，确保孩子受到良好教育。他们不仅非常情愿为孩子的教育投资，而且花很多时间督促他们学习。多数家长希望孩子能上名牌大学。由于改革开放，越来越多的家长能送孩子到国外学习或参加国际交流项目，以拓宽其视野。通过这些努力，他们期望孩子健康成长，为国家的发展和繁荣作出贡献。
参考答案：
参考译文
Chinese families attach great importance to their children’s education. Many parents believe that they are obligated to work hard so that their children can be well-educated. Not only are they willing to invest for the sake of their children’s education, but they also spend a lot of time on supervising their children’s study. Most parents hope that their children can be admitted to famous universities. Thanks to China’s reform and opening up, more and more parents can afford their children’s overseas study programs or international exchange programs, which can broaden their horizons. They make such efforts in the hope that their children can grow up healthily and make contributions to the country’s development and prosperity.
四、Part I Writing
57、
Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a letter to a foreign friend who wants to study in China. Please recommend a university to him. You should write at least 120 words but no more than 180 words.
参考答案：
参考范文
Dear Tom,
How is everything going with you? I am so delighted to hear that you are planning to study in China next month. As your best friend, I would like to recommend Peking University, one of the most famous universities in China.
The major reasons why I recommend this university are as follows. First and foremost, it is located in Beijing, the capital of China, with a long history and rich culture. It is more than a university with its beautiful scenery and excellent study environment. Secondly, there are a great number of excellent students from China and many other countries here, so that you can exchange ideas on academic and professional questions with them to enrich yourself. Moreover, benefiting from its reputation, Peking University graduates usually become high-level talents in many fields. I am quite sure you will benefit a lot from your school years.
I hope my recommendations are helpful and useful for you. Wish you enjoy your life in China. I am looking forward to your reply.
Sincerely,
Li Ming
参考译文
亲爱的汤姆，
你一切都好吗？很高兴听到你下个月打算来中国学习的消息。作为你最好的朋友，我想向你推荐一所大学——北京大学，它是中国最著名的大学之一。
我推荐它的主要原因如下。首先，这所大学位于中国的首都北京，它有着悠久的历史和丰富的文化。它不仅是一所大学，而且还有着美丽的风景和良好的学习环境。其次，每年都会有大量的优秀的中外学生来此学习，你可以和他们交流学术思想，讨论专业问题来充实自己。此外，得益于它的声誉，北京大学的毕业生通常会成为很多领域的高层次人才。我相信你会从这里的学习中获益。
希望我的建议对你有用。愿你在中国过得愉快。期待你的回复。
真诚地，
李明
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