Part I Listening Comprehension (20 minutes)

Section A

Directions: In this section, you will hear 10 short conversations. At the end of each conversation, a question will be asked about what was said. Both the conversation and the question will be spoken only once. After each question there Will be a pause. During the pause, you must read the four choices marked A), B), C) and D)~ and decide which is the best answer. Then mark the corresponding letter on the Answer Sheet with a single line through the centre.

Example: You will hear.'

You will read:

A) At the office.

B) In the waiting room.

C) At the airport.

D) In a restaurant.

From the conversation we know that the two were talking about some work they had to finish in the evening. This conversation is most likely to have taken place at the office. Therefore, A) "At the office" is the best answer. You should choose [A] on the Answer Sheet and mark it with a single line through the centre.

Sample Answer [A] [B] [C] [D]

1.   A) Mark and the woman had not been in touch for some time.

     B) The man saw Mark on the street two months ago.

     C) The woman made a phone call to Mark yesterday

D) The woman had forgotten Mark's phone number.

2.   A) The woman is glad to meet Mr. Brown in person.

     B) The woman feels sorry that Mr. Brown is unable to come.

     C) The man is meeting the woman on behalf of Mr. Brown.

     D) The man is late for the trip because he is busy.

3.   A) At 10:25.                         

     B) At 10:30. 

C) At 10:45.                       

D) At 10:40.

4.   A) The man refuses to listen to his doctor's advice.

     B) The man is under pressure from his wife.

     C) The man usually follows his wife's advice.

     D) The man no longer smokes.

5.   A) Become a teacher.                    

     B) Go back to school.  
C) Move to a big city.                

D) Work in New York.

6.   A) Quit delivering flowers.               

     B) Leave his job to work for her.  
C) Work at a restaurant.       
D) Bring her flowers every day.

7.   A) She can find the right person to help the man.

     B) She picked up the book from the bus floor.

     C) She can help the man out.

     D) She's also in need of a textbook.

8.   A) The man can't come for the appointment at 4:15.

     B) The man is glad he's got in touch with the doctor.

     C) The man wants to change the date of the appointment.

     D) The man was confused about the date of the appointment.

9.   A) The man is worded about his future.

     B) The two speakers are seniors at college.

     C) The two speakers are at a loss what to do.

     D) The woman regrets spending her time idly.

10.  A) She also found the plot difficult to follow.

     B) She has learned a lot from the novel.

     C) She usually has difficulty remembering names.

     D) She can recall the names of most characters in the novel.

Section B Compound Dictation
The Library of Congress is America’s national library. It has millions of books and other objects. It has newspapers,  S1    publications as well as letters of   S2    interest. It also has maps, photographs, art   S3    , movies, sound recordings and musical      S4   . All together, it has more than 100 million objects.
    The Library of Congress is open to the public Monday through Saturday, except for public holidays. Anyone may go there and read anything in the collection. But no one is    S5    to take books out of the building.

The Library of Congress was   S6      in 1800. It started with eleven boxes of books in one room of the Capitol Building. By 1814, the collection had increased to about 3,000 books. They were   S7 that year when the Capitol was burned down during America’s war with Britain.

To help re-build the library, Congress bought the books of President Thomas Jefferson. Mister Jefferson’s collection included 7,000 books in seven languages.

    S8                                                     . Today, three buildings hold the library’s collection.
    S9                              . It buys some of its books and gets others as gifts. It also gets materials through its copyright office.             S10                    . This means the Library of Congress receives almost everything that is published in the United States.

Part II Reading Comprehension (35 minutes)

Directions: There are 4 passages in this part. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A), B), C) and D). You should decide on the best choice and mark the corresponding letter on the Answer Sheet with a single line through the centre.

Passage One

Questions 11 to 15 are based on the following passage.

Sign has become a scientific hot button. Only in the past 20 years have specialists in language study realized that signed languages are unique - a speech of the hand. They offer a new way to probe how the brain generates and understands language, and throw new light on an old scientific controversy: whether language, complete with grammar, is something that we are born with, or whether it is a learned behavior. The current interest in sign language has roots in the pioneering work of one rebel teacher at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., the world's only liberal arts university for deaf people.

When Bill Stokoe went to Gallaudet to teach English, the school enrolled him in a course in signing. But Stokoe noticed something odd: among themselves, students signed differently from his classroom teacher.

Stokoe had been taught a sort of gestural code, each movement of the hands representing a word in English. At the time, American Sign Language (ASL) was thought to be no more than a form of pidgin English (混杂英语 ). But Stokoe believed the "hand talk" his students used looked richer. He wondered: Might deaf people actually have a genuine language? And could that language be unlike any other on Earth? It was 1955, when even deaf people dismissed their signing as "substandard". Stokoe's idea was academic heresy (异端邪说 ).

It is 37 years later. Stokoe - now devoting his time to writing and editing books and journals and to producing video materials on ASL and the deaf culture - is having lunch at a café near the Gallaudet campus and explaining how he started a revolution. For decades educators fought his idea that signed languages are natural languages like English, French and Japanese. They assumed language must be based on speech, the modulation (调节) of sound. But sign language is based on the movement of hands, the modulation of space. "What I said," Stokoe explains, "is that language is not mouth stuff- it's brain stuff."