Read the article and select the best answer. Article: The increase in tuition fees has led to a "clear drop" in the number of English students applying for university places this autumn. There are 15,000 "missing" applicants this academic year, according to the Independent Commission on Fees. Chairman Will Hutton said: "We're asking our young men and women to have more debt than any other country in the world -- it's higher than the average debt in the US. It's not clear whether those lost students this year will return next year, or if it's a storm warming of a worrying trend." But the commission's report says there does not seem to be an impact on poorer communities. The commission found there was no significant change in the application rate to the key universities, such as Oxford or Cambridge. The decline in England has not been mirrored in other parts of the UK where fees have not been raised, and the drop can only partly be explained by falling numbers of young people in the population. Students from Scotland attending Scottish universities do not pay fees, while the Welsh Assembly says it will pay fees above PS3,465 for Welsh students attending UK institutions. The average tuition fee at English universities this year is PS 8,385, rising to PS 8,507 next year. UK and EU students have access to government-backed loans to pay the fees. And the survey of 1,000 pupils aged 15-18, carried out this April, found that the majority expected to go on to higher education as people continue to understand that university remains a good long term investment in their future. A spokeswoman at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills which is responsible for universities, said: "Students shouldn't be forced to put off going to university for financial reasons. Most students will not have to pay in advance, and no one will have to start paying back their student loan until they start to earn at least PS 2l,000 per year." Question: Why is there still a drop of applicants though fees have not been raised? Options: A: Because the students live in poor communities. B: Because education is free for Scottish students. C: Because there are less young students in the area. D: Because Welsh students will pay fees abovePS3,465.
C

Read the article and select the best answer. Article: One of my China Dialogue colleagues in Beijing recently bought a Philips energy-saving light bulb to replace a standard one.He was happy with his choice.It may have cost 30 yuan (just under US$4.50) - ten times the price of a filament bulb - but he wanted to save energy as part of his low-carbon lifestyle.And according to the shopkeeper, he would save, in the long run, much more than the 30 yuan he was spending. Yet only one month later, his expensive light bulb blew up, before he had saved even a small part of the purchase price.Will he stick to his high-cost, low-carbon lifestyle? China's environmental organizations have started to advocate low-carbon lifestyles and the decrease of carbon footprints to help fight against climate change.But they have overlooked one fact: in China, low-carbon living comes at a high cost.It means buying energy-saving bulbs and appliances, and environmentally friendly building materials and daily goods.Cost can no longer be the only standard for purchases.An energy-saving and environmentally friendly product is more expensive than a standard alternative - whether it's a simple light bulb or the house it shines.For average consumers, even buying an ordinary bulb is a huge burden.How can we persuade ordinary people to choose an energy-saving residence? This is not a trend they can afford to follow; perhaps this fashion is only for the rich. Most consumers today do not cause huge carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.Their responsibility lies not in choosing a low-carbon lifestyle today, but in avoiding a high-carbon life in the future.The principle of "common but differentiated responsibility" - a basis of sustainable development - can be applied here as well. In China, low-carbon living still is resisted by a lack of social infrastructure . Even if your salary allows you to make that choice, nobody is there to help you accomplish it. Consider energy-saving homes. You need to find out whether or not the developer has used natural materials wherever possible; how effective the... Question: What does the writer think of energy-saving homes? Options: A: Most of them are environmentally friendly. B: They are musts of low-carbon lifestyle of Chinese. C: They are huge burdens for Chinese people. D: Many of them are more in name than in reality.
D

Read the article and select the best answer. Article: What is your earliest childhood memory? Can you remember learning to walk? Or talk? The first time you watched a television program? Adults seldom call back events much earlier than the year or so before entering school, just as children younger than three or four seldom remember any specific, personal experiences. A variety of explanations have been suggested by psychologists for this "childhood amnesia". Now Annette Simms, a psychologist of Riverdale University, offers a new explanation for childhood amnesia. According to Dr. Simms, children need to learn to use someone else's spoken description of their personal experiences in order to turn their own short-term, fast forgotten impressions of them into long-term memories. In other words, children have to talk about their experiences and hear others talk about them. Without this verbal reinforcement , children cannot form permanent memories of what they have experienced. So why should personal memories depend so heavily on hearing them described? Dr. Simms presents evidence that the human mind organizes memories in that way. Children whose mothers talk with them about the day's activities before bedtime tend to remember more of the day's special event than those whose mothers don't. Talking about an event in this way helps a child to remember it. And learning to organize memories as a continuous story is the key to a permanent mental "autobiography " of important life events. Dr. Simms suggests that we humans may be biologically programmed to turn our life experiences into a novel. The key to creating this mental life story is language, says Dr. Simms. "Children learn to talk about the past," she says. "Talking to others about their short-term memories of the past leads to the establishment of long-term memories." One way it does this is by helping a child to recognize that the retelling of an experience is just the experience itself, recreated in the form of words. The child learns that this "word-description" of an experience can then be stored in... Question: According to Dr. Simms, the reason why children don't form long-term memories before the age of three is that children _ . Options: A: can't call back their experiences B: have nowhere to store the memories C: haven't developed enough language skills D: confuse the memory with the experience itself
C