Part IV Reading Comprehension (Reading in Depth) (25 minutes)

Section A
Directions: In this section, there is a short passage with 5 questions or incomplete statements. Read the passage carefully. Then answer the questions or complete the statements in the fewest possible words. Please write your answers on Answer Sheet 2.

Questions 47 to 51 are based on the following passage.

I’ve heard from and talked to many people who described how Mother Nature simplified their lives for them. They’d lost their home and many or all of their possessions through fires, floods, earthquakes, or some other disaster. Losing everything you own under such circumstances can be distressing³, but the people I’ve heard from all saw their loss, ultimately, as a blessing⁴.

"The fire saved us the agony of deciding what to keep and what to get rid of," one woman wrote. And once all those things were no longer there, she and her husband saw how they had weighed them down and complicated their lives.

"There was so much stuff we never used and that was just taking up space. We vowed⁵ when we started over, we’d replace only what we needed, and this time we’d do it right. We’ve kept our promise: we don’t have much now, but what we have is exactly what we want."

Though we’ve never had a catastrophic loss such as that, Gibbs and I did have a close call shortly before we decided⁶ to simplify. At that time we lived in a fire zone. One night a firestorm raged through and destroyed over six hundred homes in our community. That tragedy gave us the opportunity to look objectively at the goods we’d accumulated.

We saw that there was so much we could get rid of and not only never miss, but be better off without. Having almost lost it all, we found it much easier to let go of the things we knew we’d never use again.

Obviously, there’s a tremendous difference between getting rid of possessions and losing them through a natural disaster without having a say in the matter. And this is not to minimize the tragedy and pain such a loss can generate.

But you might think about how you would approach the acquisition process if you had it to do all over again. Look around your home and make a list of what you would replace.

Make another list of things you wouldn’t acquire again no matter what, and in fact would be happy to be rid of.

When you’re ready to start unloading some of your stuff, that list will be a good place to start.

Section B
Directions: There are 2 passages in this section. 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 decided on the best choice and mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre.

Passage One
Questions 52 to 56 are based on the following passage.

In a purely⁷ biological sense, fear begins with the body’s system for reacting to things that can harm us- the so-called fight-or-flight response. "An animal that can’t detect danger can’t stay alive," says Joseph LeDoux. Like animals, humans evolved with an elaborate mechanism⁸ for processing information about potential threats. At its core is a cluster to neurons(神经元)deep in the brain known as the amygdala(扁桃核)。
 
LeDoux studies the way animals and humans respond to threats to understand how we form memories of significant events in our lives. The amygdala receives input¹⁰ from many parts of the brain, including regions responsible for retrieving¹¹ memories. Using this information, the amygdala appraises¹² a situation-I think this charging dog wants to bite me-and triggers a response by radiating nerve signals throughout the body. These signals produce the familiar signs of distress²:trembling,prespiration and fast-moving feet, just to name three.

This fear mechanism is critical to the survival of all animals, but no one can say for sure whether beasts other than human know they’re afraid. That is, as LeDoux says, "if you put that system into a brain that has consciousness, then you get the feeling of fear."

Humans, says Edward M. Hallowell, have the ability to call up images of bad things that happened in the past and to anticipate future events. Combine these higher thought processes with our hardwired danger-detection systems, and you get a near-universal human phenomenon:worry.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, says Hallowell. "When used properly, worry is an incredible device," he says. After all, a little healthy worrying is okay if it leads to constructive¹³ action-like having a doctor look at that weird¹⁴ spot on your back.

Hallowell insists, though, that there’s a right way to worry. "Never do it alone, get the facts and then make a plan," he says. Most of us have survived a recession, so we’re familiar with the belt-tightening strategies needed to survive a slump¹⁵.

Unfortunately, few of us have much experience dealing¹⁶ with the threat of terrorism, so it’s been difficult to get facts about how we should respond. That’s why Hallowell believes it was okay for people to indulge some extreme worries last fall by asking doctors for Cipro(抗炭疽菌的药物) and buying gas masks.