Text3

　　Talk to any parent of a student who took an adventurous gap year(a year between school and university when some students earn money, travel, etc.)and a misty look will come into their eyes.There are some disasters and even the most motivated, organised gap student does require family back�瞮p, financial, emotional and physical.The parental mistiness is not just about the brilliant experience that has matured their offspring; it is vicarious living.We all wish pre�瞮niversity gap years had been the fashion in our day.We can see how much tougher our kids become; how much more prepared to benefit from university or to decide positively that they are going to do something other than a degree.

　　Gap years are fashionable, as is reflected in the huge growth in the number of charities and private companies offering them.Pictures of Prince William toiling in Chile have helped, but the trend has been gathering steam for a decade.The range of gap packages starts with backpacking, includes working with charities, building hospitals and schools and, very commonly, working as a language assistant, teaching English.With this trend, however, comes a danger.Once parents feel that a well�瞫tructured year is essential to their would�瞓e undergraduate’s progress to a better university, a good degree, an impressive CV and well paid employment, as the gap companies blurbs suggest it might be, then parents will start organising—and paying for—the gaps.

　　Where there are disasters, according to Richard Oliver, director of the gap companies’ umbrella organisation, the Year Out Group, it is usually because of poor planning.That can be the fault of the company or of the student, he says, but the best insurance is thoughtful preparation.“When people get it wrong, it is usually medical or, especially among girls, it is that they have not been away from home before or because expectation does not match reality.”

　　The point of a gap year is that it should be the time when the school leaver gets to do the thing that he or she fancies.Kids don’t mature if mum and dad decide how they are going to mature.If the 18�瞴ear�瞣ld’s way of maturing is to slob out on Hampstead Heath soaking up sunshine or spending a year working with fishermen in Cornwall, then that’s what will be productive for that person.The consensus, however, is that some structure is an advantage and that the prime mover needs to be the student.

　　The 18�瞴ear�瞣ld who was dispatched by his parents at two weeks’ notice to Canada to learn to be a snowboarding instructor at a cost of ￡5,800, probably came back with little more than a hangover.The 18�瞴ear�瞣ld on the same package who worked for his fare and spent the rest of his year instructing in resorts from New Zealand to Switzerland, and came back to apply for university, is the positive counterbalance.

　　31.It can be inferred from the first paragraph that parents of gap students may.

　　[A] help children to be prepared for disasters

　　[B] receive all kinds of support from their children

　　[C] have rich experience in bringing up their offspring

　　[D] experience watching children grow up

　　32.According to the text, which of the following is true?

　　[A] The popularity of gap years results from an increasing number of charities.

　　[B] Prince William was working hard during his gap year.

　　[C] Gap years are not as fashionable as they were ten years ago.

　　[D] A well�瞫tructured gap year is a guarantee of university success.

　　33.The word“packages”(Line 3, Para.2)means.

　　[A] parcels carried in traveling[B] a comprehensive set of activities

　　[C] something presented in a particular way[D] charity actions

　　34.What can cause the disasters of gap years?

　　[A] Intervention of parents.[B] Irresponsibility of the companies.

　　[C] A lack of insurance.[D] Low expectation.

　　35.An 18�瞴ear�瞣ld is believed to take a meaningful gap year when he/she

　　[A] lives up to his/her parents’ expectations

　　[B] spends time being lazy and doing nothing

　　[C] learns skills by spending parents’ money

　　[D] earns his or her living and gains working experience

　　Text4

　　The winner takes all, as is widely supposed in computing circles.Indeed, geeks have coined a word,“Googlearchy”, for the way in which search engines encourage web traffic towards the most popular sites.The belief that search engines make popular websites even more fashionable, at the expense of other pages, is now being challenged by research.

　　The apparently magical ability of search engines such as Google to return relevant websites even when given the sketchiest of clues by the person entering a question relies on the use of mathematical recipes or algorithms(計算程序).Google works by analyzing the structure of the web itself.Each of its billions of pages can link to other pages and can also, in turn, be linked to by others.If a page is linked to many other pages, it is flagged up as being important.Furthermore, if the pages that link to this page are also important, then that page is even more likely to be important.The algorithm has been made increasingly complex over the years, to deter those who would manipulate their pages to appear higher in their rankings, but it remains at the heart of Google’s success.

　　Google is not alone in this.Many search engines take account of the number of links to a website when they return the results of a search.Because of this, there is a widespread belief among computer, social, and political scientists that search engines create a vicious circle that amplifies the dominance of established and already popular websites.Page returned by research engines are more likely to be discovered and consequently linked to by others.

　　Not so, according to a controversial new paper that has recently appeared on ArViv, an online collection of physics and related papers.In it, Santo Fortunato and his colleagues at Indiana University in America and Bielefeld University in Germany claim that search engines actually have an egalitarian effect that increases traffic to less popular sites.

　　The researchers developed a model that described two extreme cases.In the first, people browsed the web only by surfing random links.In the second, people only visited pages that were returned by search engines.The researchers then turned to the real world.To their amazement, they found that the relationship between the two did not lie between the extremes suggested by their model but somewhere completely different.It appears to show that the supposed bias in favor of popular pages is actually alleviated by the combination of search engines and people following random links.

　　36.What can we infer from the first three paragraphs?

　　\[A\] Mathematical methods help search engines become more popular.

　　\[B\] The web information seems to be dominated by Google alone.

　　\[C\] Sociologists argue that search engines alleviate the inequality of websites.

　　\[D\] The ability of search engines is dependent on using algorithms.

　　37.According to the text, the importance of a page is determined by.

　　\[A\] controlling other pages

　　\[B\] the number of its links to other pages

　　\[C\] using mathematical methods

　　\[D\] the structure of the web itself

　　38.The foremost reason why Google is successful is no other than.

　　\[A\] its magical ability

　　\[B\] its higher page rankings

　　\[C\] complexity of its algorithms

　　\[D\] its heavy web traffic

　　39.Santo Fortunato and his colleagues seem to suggest that.

　　\[A\] fair effect is created by increasing traffic to less well known sites

　　\[B\] popular websites are made more fashionable by search engines

　　\[C\] the situation in favor of popular pages has become more serious

　　\[D\] Popular pages are more likely to be discovered by random links

　　40.The author seems to be mainly concerned with.

　　\[A\] prejudice against less popular websites

　　\[B\] equality of search engines

　　\[C\] key to Google’s success

　　\[D\] negative effects of search engines