A recent study, published in last week’s Journal of the American Medical Association, offers a picture of how risky it is to get a lift from a teenage driver, Indeed, a 16-year-old driver with three or more passengers is three times as likely to have a fatal accident as a teenager driving alone, By contrast, the risk of death for drivers between 30 and 59 decreases with each additional passenger.
    The authors also found that the death rates for teenage drivers increased dramatically after 10 p.m., and especially after midnight, with passengers in the car, the driver was even more likely to die in a late-night accident.
    Robert Foss, a scientist at the University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center, says the higher death rates for teenage drivers have less to do with “really stupid behavior” than with just a lack of driving experience. “The basic issue.” Be says, “is that adults who are responsible for issuing licenses fail to recognize how complex and skilled a task driving is.”
    Both he and the author of the study believe that the way to mitigate (使…缓解) the problem is to have states institute so-called graduated licensing systems, in which getting a license is a multistage process. A graduated license requires that a teenager first prove himself capable of driving in the presence of an adult, followed by a period of driving with night of passenger restrictions, before graduating to full driving privileges.
    Graduated licensing systems have reduced teenage driver crashes, according to recent studies. About half of the states now have some sort of graduated licensing system in place, but only 10 of those states have restrictions on passengers, California is the strictest, with a novice (新手) driver prohibited from carrying any passenger under 20 (without the presence of an adult over 25) for the first six months.

    If you know exactly what you want, the best route to a job is to get specialized training. A recent survey shows that companies like graduates in such fields as business and health care who can go to work immediately with very little on-the-job training.
    That’s especially true of booming fields that are challenging for workers. At Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration, for example, bachelor’s degree graduates get an average of four or five job offers with salaries ranging from the high teens to the low 20s and plenty of chances for rapid advancement. Large companies, especially, like a background of formal education coupled with work experience.
    But in the long run, too much specialization doesn’t pay off. Business, which has been flooded with MBAs, no longer considers the degree an automatic stamp of approval. The MBA may open doors and command a higher salary initially, but the impact of a degree washes out after five years.
    As further evidence of the erosion (销蚀) of corporate (公司的) faith in specialized degrees, Michigan State’s Scheetz cites a pattern in corporate hiring practices, although companies tend to take on specialists as new hires, they often seek out generalists for middle and upper-level management. “They want someone who isn’t constrained (限制) by nuts and bolts to look at the big picture, “says Scheetz.
    This sounds suspiciously like a formal statement that you approve of the liberal-arts graduate. Time and again labor-market analysts mention a need for talents that liberal-arts majors are assumed to have: writing and communication skills, organizational skills, open-mindedness and adaptability, and the ability to analyze and solve problems, David Birch claims he does not hire anybody with an MBA or an engineering degree, “I hire only liberal-arts people because they have a less-than-canned way of doing things,” says Birch. Liberal-arts means an academically thorough and strict program that includes literature, history, mathematics, economics, science, human behavior—plus a computer course or two. With that under your belt, you can feel free to specialize, “A liberal-arts degree coupled with an MBA or some other technical training is a very good combination in the marketplace,” says Scheetz.

    About six years ago I was eating lunch in a restaurant in New York City when a woman and a young boy sat down at the next table, I couldn’t help overhearing parts of their conversation. At one point the woman asked: “So, how have you been?” And the boy—who could not have been more than seven or eight years old—replied. “Frankly, I’ve been feeling a little depressed lately.”
    This incident stuck in my mind because it confirmed my growing belief that children are changing. As far as I can remember, my friends and I didn’t find out we were “depressed” until we were in high school.
    The evidence of a change in children has increased steadily in recent years. Children don’t seem childlike anymore. Children speak more like adults, dress more like adults and behave more like adults than they used to.
    Whether this is good or bad is difficult to say, but it certainly is different. Childhood as it once was no longer exists, Why?
    Human development is based not only on innate (天生的) biological states, but also on patterns of access to social knowledge. Movement from one social rote to another usually involves learning the secrets of the new status. Children have always been taught adult secrets, but slowly and in stages: traditionally, we tell sixth graders things we keep hidden from fifth graders.
    In the last 30 years, however, a secret-revelation (揭示) machine has been installed in 98 percent of American homes. It is called television, Television passes information, and indiscriminately (不加区分地), to all viewers alike, be they children or adults. Unable to resist the temptation, many children turn their attention from printed texts to the less challenging, more vivid moving pictures.
    Communication through print, as a matter of fact, allows for a great deal of control over the social information to which children have access. Reading and writing involve a complex code of symbols that must be memorized and practices. Children must read simple books before they can read complex materials.

    “Opinion” is a word that is used carelessly today. It is used to refer to matters of taste, belief, and judgment. This casual use would probably cause little confusion if people didn’t attach too much importance to opinion. Unfortunately, most to attach great importance to it. “I have as much right to my opinion as you to yours,” and “Everyone’s entitled to his opinion,” are common expressions. In fact, anyone who would challenge another’s opinion is likely to be branded intolerant.
    Is that label accurate? Is it intolerant to challenge another’s opinion? It depends on what definition of opinion you have in mind. For example, you may ask a friend “What do you think of the new Ford cars?” And he may reply, “In my opinion, they’re ugly.” In this case, it would not only be intolerant to challenge his statement, but foolish. For it’s obvious that by opinion he means his personal preference, a matter of taste. And as the old saying goes, “It’s pointless to argue about matters of taste.”
    But consider this very different use of the term, a newspaper reports that the Supreme Court has delivered its opinion in a controversial case. Obviously the justices did not shale their personal preferences, their mere likes and dislikes, they stated their considered judgment, painstakingly arrived at after thorough inquiry and deliberation.
    Most of what is referred to as opinion falls somewhere between these two extremes. It is not an expression of taste. Nor is it careful judgment. Yet it may contain elements of both. It is a view or belief more or less casually arrived at, with or without examining the evidence.
    Is everyone entitled to his opinion? Of course, this is not only permitted, but guaranteed. We are free to act on our opinions only so long as, in doing so, we do not harm others.

    Sport is one of the world’s largest industries, and most athletes are professionals who are paid for their efforts. Because an athlete succeeds by achievement only—not by economic ground or family connections—sports can be a fast route to wealth, and many athletes play only for money than for love.
    This has not always been true. In the ancient Olympics the winner got only a wreath of olive leaves (橄榄叶花环). Even though the winners became national heroes, the games remained amateur for centuries. Athletes won fame, but no money. As time passed, however, the contests became increasingly less amateur and cities began to hire athletes to represent them. By the fourth century A.D., the Olympics were ruined, and they were soon ended.
    In 1896, the Olympic games were revived (使再度兴起) with the same goal of pure amateur competition. The rules bar athletes who have ever received a $50 prize or an athletic scholars or who have spent four weeks in a training camp. At least one competitor in the 1896 games met these qualifications. He was Spiridon Loues, a water carrier who won the marathon race, after race, a rich Athenian offered him anything he wanted. A true amateur, Loues accepted only a cart and a horse. Then he gave up running forever. But Loues was an exception and now, as the Chairman of the German Olympic Committee said, “Nobody pays any attention to these rules.” Many countries pay their athletes to train year-round, and Olympic athletes are eager to sell their names to companies that make everything from ski equipment to fast food.
    Even the games themselves have become a huge business. Countries fight to hold the Olympics not only for honor, but for money. The 1972 games in Munich cost the Germans 545 million dollars, but by selling medal symbols, TV rights, food, drink, hotel rooms, and souvenirs (纪念品), they managed to make a profit. Appropriately, the symbol of victory in the Olympic games is no longer a simple olive wreath—it is a gold medal.

Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a composition on the topic The Day My Classmate Fell Ill (or Got Injured). You should write at least 120 words according to the outline given below in Chinese:
(1) 简单叙述一下这位同学生病(或受伤)的情况
(2) 同学、老师和我是如何帮助他/她的
(3) 人与人之间的这种相互关爱给我的感受是…

The Day My Classmate Fell Ill (or Got Injured)