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 center.

Passage One
Questions 21 to 25 are based on the following passage.

In the 1960s, medical researchers Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe developed a checklist of stressful events. They appreciated the tricky point that any major change can be stressful. Negative events like “serious illness of a family member” were high on the list, but so were some positive life-changing events, like marriage. When you take the Holmes-Rahe test you must remember that the score does not reflect how you deal with stress—it only shows how much you have to deal with. And we now know that the way you handle these events dramatically affects your chances of staying healthy.

By the early 1970s, hundreds of similar studies had followed Holmes and Rahe. And millions of Americans who work and live under stress worried over the reports. Somehow, the research got boiled down to a memorable message. Women’s magazines ran headlines like “Stress causes illness!” If you want to stay physically and mentally healthy, the articles said, avoid stressful events.

But such simplistic advice is impossible to follow. Even if stressful events are dangerous, many—like the death of a loved one—are impossible to avoid. Moreover, any warning to avoid all stressful events is a prescription (处方) for staying away from opportunities as well as trouble. Since any change can be stressful, a person who wanted to be completely free of stress would never marry, have a child, take a new job or move.

The notion that all stress makes you sick also ignores a lot of what we know about people. It assumes we’re all vulnerable (脆弱的) and passive in the face of adversity (逆境). But what about human initiative and creativity? Many come through periods of stress with more physical and mental vigor than they had before. We also know that a long time without change or challenge can lead to boredom, and physical and metal strain.

21. The result of Holmes-Rahe’s medical research tells us ________.
A) the way you handle major events may cause stress
B) what should be done to avoid stress
C) what kind of event would cause stress
D) how to cope with sudden changes in life（C）

22. The studies on stress in the early 1970’s led to ________.
A) widespread concern over its harmful effects
B) great panic over the mental disorder it could cause
C) an intensive research into stress-related illnesses
D) popular avoidance of stressful jobs（A）

23. The score of the Holmes-Rahe test shows ________.
A) how much pressure you are under
B) how positive events can change your life
C) how stressful a major event can be
D) how you can deal with life-changing events（A）

24. Why is “such simplistic advice” (Line 1, Para. 3) impossible to follow?
A) No one can stay on the same job for long.
B) No prescription is effective in relieving stress.
C) People have to get married someday.
D) You could be missing opportunities as well.（D）

25. According to the passage people who have experienced ups and downs may become ________.
A) nervous when faced with difficulties
B) physically and mentally strained
C) more capable of coping with adversity
D) indifferent toward what happens to them（C）

Passage Two
Questions 26 to 30 are based on the following passage.

Most episodes of absent-mindedness—forgetting where you left something or wondering why you just entered a room—are caused by a simple lack of attention, says Schacter. “You’re supposed to remember something, but you haven’t encoded it deeply.”

Encoding, Schacter explains, is a special way of paying attention to an event that has a major impact on recalling it later. Failure to encode properly can create annoying situations. If you put your mobile phone in a pocket, for example, and don’t pay attention to what you did because you’re involved in a conversation, you’ll probably forget that the phone is in the jacket now hanging in you wardrobe (衣柜). “Your memory itself isn’t failing you,” says Schacter. “Rather, you didn’t give your memory system the information it needed.”

Lack of interest can also lead to absent-mindedness. “A man who can recite sports statistics from 30 years ago,” says Zelinski, “may not remember to drop a letter in the mailbox.” Women have slightly better memories than men, possibly because they pay more attention to their environment, and memory relies on just that.

Visual cues can help prevent absent-mindedness, says Schacter. “But be sure the cue is clear and available,” he cautions. If you want to remember to take a medication (药物) with lunch, put the pill bottle on the kitchen table—don’t leave it in the medicine chest and write yourself a note that you keep in a pocket.

Another common episode of absent-mindedness: walking into a room and wondering why you’re there. Most likely, you were thinking about something else. “Everyone does this from time to time,” says Zelinski. The best thing to do is to return to where you were before entering the room, and you’ll likely remember.

26. Why does the author think that encoding properly is very important?
A) It helps us understand our memory system better.
B) It enables us to recall something form our memory.
C) It expands our memory capacity considerably.
D) It slows down the process of losing our memory.（B）

27. One possible reason why women have better memories than men is that ________.
A) they have a wider range of interests
B) they are more reliant on the environment
C) they have an unusual power of focusing their attention
D) they are more interested in what’s happening around them（D）

28. A note in the pocket can hardly serve as a reminder because ________.
A) it will easily get lost
B) it’s not clear enough for you to read
C) it’s out of your sight
D) it might get mixed up with other things（C）

29. What do we learn from the last paragraph?
A) If we focus our attention on one thing, we might forget another.
B) Memory depends to a certain extent on the environment.
C) Repetition helps improve our memory.
D) If we keep forgetting things, we’d better return to where we were.（A）

30. What is the passage mainly about?
A) The process of gradual memory loss.
B) The causes of absent-mindedness.
C) The impact of the environment on memory.
D) A way if encoding and recalling.（B）

Passage Three
Questions 31 to 35 are based on the following passage.

It is hard to track the blue whale, the ocean’s largest creature, which has almost been killed off by commercial whaling and is now listed as an endangered species. Attaching radio devices to it is difficult, and visual sightings are too unreliable to give real insight into its behavior.

So biologists were delighted early this year when, with the help of the Navy, they were able to track a particular blue whale for 43 days, monitoring its sounds. This was possible because of the Navy’s formerly top-secret system of underwater listening devices spanning the oceans.

Tracking whales is but one example of an exciting new world just opening to civilian scientists after the cold war as the Navy starts to share and partly uncover its global network of underwater listening system built over the decades to track the ships of potential enemies.

Earth scientists announced at a news conference recently that they had used the system for closely monitoring a deep-sea volcanic eruption (爆发) for the first time and that they plan similar studies.

Other scientists have proposed to use the network for tracking ocean currents and measuring changes in ocean and global temperatures.

The speed of sound in water is roughly one mile a second—slower than through land but faster than through air. What is most important, different layers of ocean water can act as channels for sounds, focusing them in the same way a stethoscope (听诊器) does when it carries faint noises from a patient’s chest to a doctor’s ear. This focusing is the main reason that even relatively weak sounds in the ocean, especially low-frequency ones, can often travel thousands of miles.

31. The passage is chiefly about ________.
A) an effort to protect an endangered marine species
B) the civilian use of a military detection system
C) the exposure of a U.S. Navy top-secret weapon
D) a new way to look into the behavior of blue whales（B）

32. The underwater listening system was originally designed ________.
A) to trace and locate enemy vessels
B) to monitor deep-sea volcanic eruptions
C) to study the movement of ocean currents
D) to replace the global radio communications network（A）

33. The deep-sea listening system makes use of ________.
A) the sophisticated technology of focusing sounds under water
B) the capability of sound to travel at high speed
C) the unique property of layers of ocean water in transmitting sound
D) low-frequency sounds traveling across different layers of water（C）

34. It can be inferred from the passage that ________.
A) new radio devices should be developed for tracking the endangered blue whales
B) blue whales are no longer endangered with the use of the new listening system
C) opinions differ as to whether civilian scientists should be allowed to use military technology
D) military technology has great potential in civilian use（D）

35. Which of the following is true about the U.S. Navy underwater listening network?
A) It is now partly accessible to civilian scientists.
B) It has been replaced by a more advanced system.
C) It became useless to the military after the cold war.
D) It is indispensable in protecting endangered species.（A）

Passage Four
Questions 36 to 40 are based on the following passage.

The fitness movement that began in the late 1960s and early 1970s centered around aerobic exercise (有氧操). Millions of individuals became engaged in a variety of aerobic activities, and literally thousands of health spas developed around the country to capitalize (获利) on this emerging interest in fitness, particularly aerobic dancing for females. A number of fitness spas existed prior to this aerobic fitness movement, even a national chain with spas in most major cities. However, their focus was not on aerobics, but rather on weight-training programs designed to develop muscular mass, strength, and endurance in their primarily male enthusiasts. These fitness spas did not seem to benefit financially form the aerobic fitness movement to better health, since medical opinion suggested that weight-training programs offered few, if any, health benefits. In recent years, however, weight training has again become increasingly popular for males and for females. Many current programs focus not only on developing muscular strength and endurance but on aerobic fitness as well.

Historically, most physical-fitness tests have usually included measures of muscular strength and endurance, not for health-related reasons, but primarily because such fitness components have been related to performance in athletics. However, in recent years, evidence has shown that training programs designed primarily to improve muscular strength and endurance might also offer some health benefits as well. The American College of Sports Medicine now recommends that weight training be part of a total fitness program for healthy Americans. Increased participation in such training is one of the specific physical activity and fitness objectives of Healthy People 2000: National Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Objectives.

36. The word “spas” (Line 3, Para. 1) most probably refers to ________.
A) sports activities
B) places for physical exercise
C) recreation centers
D) athletic training programs（B）

37. Early fitness spas were intended mainly for ________.
A) the promotion of aerobic exercise
B) endurance and muscular development
C) the improvement of women’s figures
D) better performance in aerobic dancing（B）

38. What was the attitude of doctors towards weight training in health improvement?
A) Positive.
B) Indifferent.
C) Negative.
D) Cautious.（C）

39. People were given physical fitness tests in order to find out ________.
A) how ell they could do in athletics
B) what their health condition was like
C) what kind of fitness center was suitable for them
D) whether they were fit for aerobic exercise（A）

40. Recent studies have suggested that weight training ________.
A) has become an essential part of people’s life
B) may well affect the health of the trainees
C) will attract more people in the days to come
D) contributes to health improvement as well（D）