Part A

Directions:

text1

Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing [A], [B], [C] or [D]. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET1. (40 points)

Come on –Everybody’s doing it. That whispered message, half invitation and half forcing, is what most of us think of when we hear the words peer pressure. It usually leads to no good-drinking, drugs and casual sex. But in her new book Join the Club, Tina Rosenberg contends that peer pressure can also be a positive force through what she calls the social cure, in which organizations and officials use the power of group dynamics to help individuals improve their lives and possibly the word.

Rosenberg, the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, offers a host of example of the social cure in action: In South Carolina, a state-sponsored antismoking program called Rage Against the Haze sets out to make cigarettes uncool. In South Africa, an HIV-prevention initiative known as LoveLife recruits young people to promote safe sex among their peers.

The idea seems promising，and Rosenberg is a perceptive observer. Her critique of the lameness of many pubic-health campaigns is spot-on: they fail to mobilize peer pressure for healthy habits, and they demonstrate a seriously flawed understanding of psychology.” Dare to be different, please don’t smoke!” pleads one billboard campaign aimed at reducing smoking among teenagers-teenagers, who desire nothing more than fitting in. Rosenberg argues convincingly that public-health advocates ought to take a page from advertisers, so skilled at applying peer pressure.

But on the general effectiveness of the social cure, Rosenberg is less persuasive. Join the Club is filled with too much irrelevant detail and not enough exploration of the social and biological factors that make peer pressure so powerful. The most glaring flaw of the social cure as it’s presented here is that it doesn’t work very well for very long. Rage Against the Haze failed once state funding was cut. Evidence that the LoveLife program produces lasting changes is limited and mixed.

There’s no doubt that our peer groups exert enormous influence on our behavior. An emerging body of research shows that positive health habits-as well as negative ones-spread through networks of friends via social communication. This is a subtle form of peer pressure: we unconsciously imitate the behavior we see every day.

Far less certain, however, is how successfully experts and bureaucrats can select our peer groups and steer their activities in virtuous directions. It’s like the teacher who breaks up the troublemakers in the back row by pairing them with better-behaved classmates. The tactic never really works. And that’s the problem with a social cure engineered from the outside: in the real world, as in school, we insist on choosing our own friends.

21. According to the first paragraph, peer pressure often emerges as

[A] a supplement to the social cure

[B] a stimulus to group dynamics

[C] an obstacle to school progress

[D] a cause of undesirable behaviors

22. Rosenberg holds that public advocates should

[A] recruit professional advertisers

[B] learn from advertisers’ experience

[C] stay away from commercial advertisers

[D] recognize the limitations of advertisements

23. In the author’s view, Rosenberg’s book fails to

[A] adequately probe social and biological factors

[B] effectively evade the flaws of the social cure

[C] illustrate the functions of state funding

[D]produce a long-lasting social effect

24. Paragraph 5shows that our imitation of behaviors

[A] is harmful to our networks of friends

[B] will mislead behavioral studies

[C] occurs without our realizing it

[D] can produce negative health habits

25. The author suggests in the last paragraph that the effect of peer pressure is

[A] harmful

[B] desirable

[C] profound

[D] questionable

 Girls' attraction to pink may seem unavoidable, somehow encoded in their DNA, but according to Jo Paoletti, an associate professor of American Studies, it's not. Children were not colour-coded at all until the early 20th century: in the era before domestic washing machines all babies wore white as a practical matter, since the only way of getting clothes clean was to boil them. What's more, both boys and girls wore what were thought of as gender-neutral dresses. When nursery colours were introduced, pink was actually considered the more masculine colour, a pastel version of red, which was associated with strength. Blue, with its intimations of the Virgin Mary, constancy and faithfulness, symbolised femininity. It was not until the mid-1980s, when amplifying age and sex differences became a dominant children's marketing strategy, that pink fully came into its own, when it began to seem innately attractive to girls, part of what defined them as female, at least for the first few critical years.

I had not realised how profoundly marketing trends dictated our perception of what is natural to kids, including our core beliefs about their psychological development. Take the toddler. I assumed that phase was something experts developed after years of research into children's behaviour: wrong. Turns out, according to Daniel Cook, a historian of childhood consumerism, it was popularised as a marketing gimmick by clothing manufacturers in the 1930s.

Trade publications counselled department stores that, in order to increase sales, they should create a "third stepping stone" between infant wear and older kids' clothes. It was only after "toddler" became common shoppers' term that it evolved into a broadly accepted developmental stage. Splitting kids, or adults, into ever-tinier categories has proved a sure-fire way to boost profits. And one of the easiest ways to segment a market is to magnify gender differences – or invent them where they did not previously exist.

26 By saying "it is ... The rainbow"(line 3, Para 1), the author means pink _______.

A should not be the sole representation of girlhood

B should not be associated with girls' innocence

C cannot explain girls' lack of imagination

D cannot influence girls' lives and interests

27 According to Paragraph 2, which of the following is true of colours?

A Colors are encoded in girls' DNA

B Blue used to be regarded as the color for girls

C Pink used to be a neutral color in symbolizing genders

D White is preferred by babies

28 The author suggests that our perception of children's psychological devotement was much influenced by ________.

[A] the marketing of products for children

[B] the observation of children's nature

[C] researches into children's behavior

[D] studies of childhood consumption

29. We may learn from Paragraph 4 that department stores were advised ________.

A focuses on infant wear and older kids' clothes

B attach equal importance to different genders

C classify consumers into smaller groups

D create some common shoppers' terms

30. it can be concluded that girl's attraction to pink seems to be _____.

A clearly explained by their inborn tendency

B fully understood by clothing manufacturers

C mainly imposed by profit-driven businessmen

D well interpreted by psychological experts