Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay on the following question. You should write at least 120 words but no more than 180 words.
    Suppose a foreign friend of yours is coming to visit China, what is the first place you would like to take him/her to see and why?

    Of all the components of a good night’s sleep, dreams seem to be least within our control. In dreams, a window opens into a world where logic is suspended and dead people speak. A century ago, Freud formulated his revolutionary theory that dreams were the disguised shadows of our unconscious desires and fears; by the late 1970s, neurologists had switched to thinking of them as just “mental noise”—the random byproducts of the neural-repair work that goes on during sleep. Now researchers suspect that dreams are part of the mind’s emotional thermostat, regulating moods while the brain is “off-line”. And one leading authority says that these intensely powerful mental events can be not only harnessed but actually brought under conscious control, to help us sleep and better. “It’s your dream,” says Rosalind Cartwright, chair of psychology at Chicago’s Medical Center. “If you don’t like it, change it.”
    Evidence from brain imaging supports this view. The brain is as active during REM (rapid eye movement) Sleep—when most vivid dreams occur—as it is when fully awake, says Dr. Eric Nofzinger at the University of Pittsburgh. But not all parts of the brain are equally involved, the limbic system (the “emotional brain”) is especially active, while the prefrontal cortex (the center of intellect and reasoning) is relatively quiet. “We wake up from dreams happy or depressed, and those feelings can stay with us all day,” says Stanford sleep researcher Dr. William Dement.
    The link between dreams and emotions shows up among the patients in Cartwright’s clinic. Most people seem to have more bad dreams early in the night, progressing toward happier ones before awakening, suggesting that they are working through negative feelings generated during the day. Because our conscious mind is occupied with daily life we don’t always think about the emotional significance of the day’s events—until, it appears, we begin to dream.
    And this process need not be left to the unconscious. Cartwright believes one can exercise conscious control over recurring bad dreams. As soon as you awaken, identify what is upsetting about the dream. Visualize how you would like it to end instead, it occurs, try to wake up just enough to control its course. With much practice people can learn, literally, do it in their sleep.
    At the end of the day, there’s probably little reason to pay attention to our dreams at all unless they keep us from sleeping or “we wake up in panic,” Cartwright says. Terrorism, economic uncertainties, and general feelings of insecurity have increased people’s anxiety. Those suffering from persistent nightmares should seek help from a therapist. For the rest of us, the brain has its ways of working through bad feeling. Sleep—or rather dream—on it and you’ll feel better in morning.

    In spite of “endless talk of difference,” American society is an amazing machine for homogenizing people. There is “the democratizing uniformity of dress and discourse, and the casualness and absence of deference” characteristic of popular culture. People are absorbed into “a culture of consumption” launched by the 19th-century department stores that offered “vast arrays of goods in an elegant atmosphere. Instead of intimate shops catering to a knowledgeable elite” these were stores “anyone could enter, regardless of class or background. This turned shopping into a public and democratic act.” The mass media, advertising and sports are other forces for homogenization.
    Immigrants are quickly fitting into this common culture, which may not be altogether elevating but is hardly poisonous. Writing for the National Immigration Forum, Gregory Rodriguez reports that today’s immigration is neither at unprecedented levels nor resistant to assimilation. In 1998 immigrants were 9.8 percent of the population; in 1900, 13.6 percent. In the 10 years prior t0 1990, 3.1 immigrants arrived for every l,000 residents; in the 10 years prior to 1890, 9.2 for every l,000. Now, consider three indices of assimilation—language, home ownership and intermarriage.
    The 1990 Census revealed that “a majority of immigrants from each of the fifteen most common countries of origin spoke English ‘well’ or ‘very well’ after ten years of residence.” The children of immigrants tend to be bilingual and proficient in English. “By the third generation, the original language is lost in the majority of immigrant families.” Hence the description of America as a “graveyard” for languages. By 1996 foreign-born immigrants who had arrived before 19 had a home ownership rate of 75.6 percent, higher than the 69.8 percent rate among native-born Americans.
    Foreign-born Asians and Hispanics “have higher rates of intermarriage than do U.S.-born whites and blacks.” By the third generation, one third of Hispanic women are married to non-Hispanics, and 41 percent of Asian-American women are married to non-Asians.
    Rodriguez notes that children in remote villages around the world are fans of superstars like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Garth Brooks, yet “some Americans fear that immigrants living within the United States remain somehow immune to the nation’s assimilative power.”
    Are there divisive issues and pockets of seething anger in America? Indeed. It is big enough to have a bit of everything. But particularly when viewed against America’s turbulent past, today’s social indices hardly suggest a dark and deteriorating social environment.

Directions: For this part, you are allowed thirty minutes to write a composition on the topic Harmfulness of Fake Commodities. You should write at least 100 words and you should base your composition on the outline (given in Chinese) below:
(1) 目前社会上有不少假冒伪劣商品(fake commodities)。为什么会有这种现象?
(2) 举例说明假冒伪劣商品对消费者个人、社会等的危害。

Harmfulness of Fake Commodities

    It’s no secret that many children would be healthier and happier with adoptive parents than with the parents that nature dealt them. That’s especially true of children who remain in abusive homes because the law blindly favors biological parents. It’s also true of children who suffer for years in foster homes (收养孩子的家庭) because of parents who can’t or won’t care for them but refuse to give up custody (监护) rights.
    Fourteen-year-old Kimberly Mays fits neither description, but her recent court victory could eventually help children who do. Kimberly has been the object of an angry custody baffle between the man who raised her and her biological parents, with whom she has never lived. A Florida judge ruled that the teenager can remain with the only father she’s ever known and that her biological parents have “no legal claim” on her.
    The ruling, though it may yet be reversed, sets aside the principle that biology is the primary determinant of parentage. That’s an important development, one that’s long overdue.
Shortly after birth in December 1978, Kimberly Mays and another infant were mistakenly switched and sent home with the wrong parents. Kimberly’s biological parents, Ernest and Regina Twigg, received a child who died of a heart disease in 1988. Medical tests showed that the child wasn’t the Twiggs’ own daughter, but Kimt only was, thus sparking a custody battle with Robert Mays. In 1989, the two families agreed that Mr. Mays would maintain custody with the Twiggs getting visiting fights. Those rights were ended when Mr. Mays decided that Kimberly was being harmed.
    The decision to leave Kimberly with Mr. Mays rendered her suit debated. But the judge made clear that Kimberly did have standing to sue (起诉) on her own behalf. Thus he made clear that she was more than just property to be handled as adults saw fit.
    Certainly, the biological link between parent and child is fundamental. But biological parents aren’t always preferable to adoptive ones, and biological parentage does not convey an absolute ownership that cancels all the rights of children.

    The rise of multinational corporations (跨国公司), global marketing, new communications technologies, and shrinking cultural differences have led to an unparalleled increase in global public relations or PR.
    Surprisingly, since modern PR was largely an American invention, the U.S. leadership in public relations is being threatened by PR efforts in other countries. Ten years ago, for example, the world’s top five public relations agencies were American-owned. In 1991, only one was. The British in particular are becoming more sophisticated and creative. A recent survey found that more than half of all British companies include PR as part of their corporate (公司的) planning activities, compared to about one-third of U.S. companies. It may not be long before London replaces New York as the capital of PR.
    Why is America lagging behind in the global PR race? First, Americans as a whole tend to be fairly provincial and take more of an interest in local affairs. Knowledge of world geography, for example, has never been strong in this country. Secondly, Americans lag behind their European and Asian counterparts (相对应的人) in knowing a second language. Less than 5 percent of Burson—Marshall’s U.S. employees know two languages. Ogilvy and Mather has about the same percentage. Conversely, some European firms have half or more of their employees fluent in a second language. Finally, people involved in PR abroad tend to keep a closer eye on international affairs. In the financial PR area, for instance, most Americans read the Wall Street Journal. Overseas, their counterparts read the Journal as well as the Financial Times of London and The Economist, publications not often read in this country.
    Perhaps the PR industry might take a lesson from Ted Turner of CNN (Cable News Network). Turner recently announced that the word “foreign” would no longer be used on CNN news broadcasts. According to Turner, global communications have made the nations of the world so interdependent that there is no longer any such things as foreign.