One area in which London still surpasses its rivals is the number of international visitors it receives: more than any other in the world in 2015. And while the city has long been an attractive destination for leisure and business travelers, it is currently undergoing an almost unprecedented hotel building boom. The number of hotel rooms has risen from 129, 000 in 2013 to 149, 000 today, and may reach as many as 180, 000 by 2018. Despite competition from room-sharing sites such as Airbnb, there is still no sign of over-capacity. Last year occupancy rates reached their highest in a decade and average daily rates were higher than ever before. Why? One big market for London’s hotels is international visitors. But it is one which is running out of steam. Total spending by overseas visitors is likely to be flat in 2015. Whereas the strong pound has convinced many tourists to divert to cheaper European cities, business travelers cannot avoid London so easily. So while tourist spending stagnated in 2015, business folk splashed out 7% more in Britain than the previous year. So there are still plenty more business people to fill London’s extra rooms, even if some tourists are staying away. Hoteliers are surprisingly tough given the violent attack from sharing-economy websites that allow people to rent out their spare rooms to travelers. Airbnb has forced down hotel revenues in some American cities by as much as 10%. By comparison, its impact has been reduced in London. Only 0.5% of Londoners advertise their properties on Airbnb, compared with 2.4% of Parisians. One reason is that there is a shortage of reasonably priced residential stock near London’s main tourist attractions, which are enclosed by offices and mansions. Secondly, the growth of Airbnb listings in London and other big European cities is slowing, meaning that Londoners’ spare rooms are unlikely to soak up much more demand. But the most convincing explanation is that London’s business travelers are avoiding locals’ spare rooms in favor of comfortable, anonymous hotels. Unlike budget-conscious holidaymakers, who are willing to book a room in a stranger’s home on Airbnb to save money, most business people travel on expense accounts. Their employers, citing a duty to ensure safety, remain wary of spare-room-booking sites, fearing the possibility of axe murderers or unreliable wiring or unsafe stairwells. As long as the City of London continues to flourish, the capital’s hotels will do fine.

6. M: Would you like to go to a concert with me? W: Well, it sounds good, but I would rather you took me for a ride in the countryside. Q: What does the woman prefer to do? 7. W: I have also invited Fred to come. M: That’s good. When Fred’s around, you never know what he’s going to say. But one thing’s for sure: It’s guaranteed to be funny. Q: What does the man mean? 8. W: I want to try something new in the experiment. What’s your opinion? M: Well, I prefer to go by the book. At least it is safer, isn’t it? Q: What does the man suggest? 9. W: I want to call some friends to go swimming in the summer vacation. Is Bob OK? M: Don’t count Bob in. You know him. He can never keep anything long. Q: What does the man mean? To go to a concert with the man. To give the man a lift to the countryside. To enjoy the sunshine. To make a short trip for pleasure.

1. M: Mary, what do you think about the courses this semester? W: At the moment, there is no course I enjoy more than composition. Q: What does the woman mean? 2. M: Do you have any idea what this passage is about? W: I’m as much in the dark as you are. Q: What does the woman mean? 3. W: I’m taking the train downtown to go shopping. M: Well, you’d better keep an eye on your wallet. Q: What does the man advise the woman to do? 4. W: Do you know that Jerry turned down that job offer by the company? M: Yeah, the hours were convenient but he wouldn’t have been able to make ends meet. Q: Why did Jerry refuse to take the job? 5. W: Steven has failed in his experiment, but he is still ready for parties. M: He is a typical boy without worries and anxieties. Q: What can we learn about Steven? Composition is her favorite course. She prefers other courses to composition. She enjoys most of the courses. She doesn’t like any of the courses.

These guests were obliged to the host for his gracious and impressive hospitality. contemptuous resentful mighty grateful

The city council is considering setting up more schools in impoverished neighborhoods. illegitimate deprived unique relocated

There is compelling evidence that motor vehicles contribute to smog. convincing constitutional contradictory compulsory

Those with a good command of Englsih are at an advantage on the labor market. mastery demand direction appearance

With the passage of time, some words are beginning to assume a new sense. go about turn out take on draw upon

The manufacturing______in China is expected to continue to expand in 2018 despite the slight decline of an index. version quest sector fiction

In this research, the clinical data on 150 patients with hypertension was______studied. randomly intellectually retrospectively respectfully

According to a poll, around 70 percent of American kids stop playing organized sports by the age of 13 because “it’s just not fun anymore.“ However, the actual reason is some cultural, economic and systemic issues that result in our kids turning away from organized sports when they could benefit from them most, though playing sports offers everything from physical activity, experiencing success and bouncing back from failure to working as a team and getting away from the universal presence of screens. Why this happens? The first explanation is that as children get closer to high school, the system of youth sports is geared toward meeting the needs of more competitive players, and the expectations placed on them increase. The pressure to raise “successful“ kids means that we expect them to be the best. If they’re not, they’re encouraged to focus on areas where they can excel. A second argument is that for kids, playing at a more competitive level can mean having to prioritize their interests and work tirelessly. The required investment of time and money is so substantial that kids of lower-income or single-parent families are simply shut out of the game. It seems to me that it’s just the age. At 13, kids have more difficult school work. Most are encouraged to start choosing what interests them most and what they’re best at. There’s no longer time for them to do as much as they did in elementary school. Social and emotional changes they experience also push them to make decisions such as quitting sports. Kids become more focused on and influenced by friends, many of whom are walking away from organized sports. Social media, smartphones and the Internet also count. Most U.S. kids receive their first cellphone or wireless device by the age of 12. 92 percent of teens aged 13-17 report being online every day, and 24 percent are online “almost constantly.“ As kids become teenagers, their priorities change. How they socialize, study and spend their time changes with them. The system of youth sports is set up to cater to more elite players as they approach high school, leaving average kids with fewer opportunities. Our culture encourages specialization and achievement, which discourages kids from just playing for fun. Most kids leave because we haven’t given them a way to stay. We don’t stand a chance of solving this problem until we change the parenting culture that emphasizes achievement and success over healthy, happy kids.

Women are happy to wander aimlessly through a sea of clothing and accessory collections or linger through the shoe department. They like to glide up glass escalators past a grand piano, or spray a perfume sample on themselves on their way to, maybe, making a purchase. For men, shopping is a mission. They are out to buy a targeted item and flee the store as quickly as possible, according to a new Wharton research. In a study, researchers at Wharton’s Jay H. Baker Retail Initiative and the Verde Group, a Toronto consulting firm, found that women react more strongly than men to personal interaction with sales associates. Men are more likely to stress usefulness over beauty or other considerations by responding to such aspects of the experience as the availability of parking, whether the item they came for is in stock, and the length of the checkout line. “Women tend to be more invested in the shopping experience on many dimensions, “ says Robert Price, chief marketing officer at CVS Caremark and a member of the Baker advisory board. “Men want to go to Sears, buy a specific tool and get out.“ As one female shopper between the ages of 18 and 35 told the researchers “I love shopping. I love shopping even when I have a deadline. I just love shopping.“ Compare that to this response from a male in the same age group who described how men approach retailing: “We’re going to this store and we buy it and we leave because we want to do something else.“ Price says women’s role as caregiver persists even as women’s professional responsibilities mount. He speculates that this responsibility contributes to women’s more acute shopping awareness and higher expectations. On the other hand, after generations of relying on women to shop effectively for them, men’s interest in shopping has atrophied. According to Wharton marketing professor Setphen J. Hock, shopping behavior mirrors gender differences throughout many aspects of life. “Women think of shopping in an inter-personal, human fashion and men treat it as more instrumental. It’s a job to get done, “ he says, adding that the data has implications for retailers interested in developing a more segmented approach to build and maintain loyalty among male and female customers. So it can be concluded that when it comes to shopping, men are from Mars, women are from Venus.

Economics often misses an important element of inequality between males and females: unpaid work. The main measure of economic activity, GDP, counts housework when it is paid, but excludes it when it is done free of charge. This is an arbitrary distinction and leads to the funny question of what happens to a country’s GDP when a man marries his maid. The usual defense is that measuring unpaid work is hard. Diane Coyle, an economist, asks whether statistical agencies have not bothered to collect data on unpaid housework precisely because women do most of it. Marilyn Waring, a feminist economist, has suggested that the system of measuring GDP was designed by men to keep women “in their place“. Women in rich countries spend roughly 5% more time working than men. But they spend roughly twice as much time on unpaid work, and only two-thirds the time men do in paid work. By excluding unpaid work from the national accounts, economists not only diminish women’s contribution, but cover up the staggering inequality in who does it. Ignoring unpaid work also misrepresents the significance of particular kinds of economic activity. Ms. Waring thinks that raising well-cared-for children is just as important to society as making buildings or cars. Yet as long as the former is excluded from official measures of output, investing resources in it seems like less of a priority. In a perfectly equal world, men would do much more child-rearing than they do now. It is women who are disadvantaged by economists’ failure to measure the value of parenting properly. Now let’s look at the impact of measuring things differently. A new version of GDP that included unpaid work was attempted. Doing so boosted GDP overall, but lowered the growth rate: as women have moved into paid work, they have been doing less unpaid work at home, so total production has not been rising as quickly as official figures suggest. By some estimates, including unpaid work boosted GDP in 1965 by 39%, but by only 26% in 2010. Over the 45 years between, they put the average annual nominal growth rate at 6.7% if unpaid work is included, lower than the official 6.9%. Ignoring the feminist perspective is bad economics. The discipline aims to explain the allocation of scarce resources; it is bound to go wrong if it ignores the role that deep imbalances between men and women play in this allocation. As long as this inequality exists, there is space for feminist economics.

人类当前面临多种挑战，其中之一就是全球变暖。对汽车的过度依赖加速了化石燃料的枯竭，也增加了温室气体的排放。我们被迫转向替代能源，如太阳能和核能。减少能源消耗并不意味着生活水平的降低，但需要更新基础设施。我们应该学会放眼全球，从我做起。

For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a composition of no less than 150 words under the title of “Is English Grammar Important“. You are advised to give examples and avoid using any stereotyped expressions or sentences, such as “last but not the least“.

The United Nations World Food Program says______(3 words) could push 100 million people into hunger.Poor families in some countries spend as much as eighty percent of their money on food. They have watched helplessly as rising prices in recent months have created the worst food crisis in more than thirty years. The United Nations World Food Program says high food prices could push one hundred million people into hunger. Half the world’s people depend on rice as a main part of their diet. Yet the price has tripled in the past year. Inflated costs for fuel and fertilizer have played a part. Economist Nathan Childs at the United States Agriculture Department says another reason is the falling value of the dollar. This has hurt the ability of some nations to buy food. But he says the main reason is export limits in some rice-growing nations. This means less rice on the world market. Nathan Childs is an expert on rice markets. He notes that the harvest for the latest growing season was the largest on record. But India, Vietnam and others have restricted exports to keep prices down at home and protect supplies. Thailand’s agriculture minister says his country will never restrict rice exports. He told the Reuters news agency Thursday that Thailand has enough supplies to meet demand at home and for export. Thailand is the world’s largest rice exporter. Recent signs of an increase in supplies have helped ease record prices for Thai rice. Prices rose last week above one thousand dollars a ton. Vietnam, the second biggest exporter, has banned exports until June. And Vietnamese officials have now warned that non-food traders who buy rice for speculation will be severely punished. Speculators try to predict future price movements. They take greater risks than average investors. Experts say speculation is a necessary part of market activity.

Many effective measures are being taken to curb the rising price of property. spur check glorify alienate

Patients in_____ condition are usually kept in ICUs and monitored by various instruments. critical crucial crude crystal

Economic recessions will weaken one’s confidence in the government and threaten social______. cohesion erosion illusion evasion

Between 2012 and 2016, the huge demand______the price of property surging in China. forced sent maintained led

The reporter was told by a local resident______anonymity that no one cared about their suffering. in the form of in spite of on condition of in the course of

This passage aims to explain______.

Business travelers prefer hotels to spare rooms because______.

Airbnb is mentioned in Paragraph Three as a website that______in London.

It can be concluded from Paragraph Two that tourist spending in 2015______.

The underlined expression in Paragraph Two probably means______.

The first paragraph is primarily concerned with______in London.