第三部分：閱讀理解（共20小題；每小題2分，滿分40分）
閱讀下列短文，從每篇短文后所給各題的四個選項（A、B、C和D）中，選出最佳選項，并在答題卡上將該項涂黑。
                                          A
Singles’ Day—the Chinese opposite of Valentines that’s turned into a massive online shopping event. It’s a day when single people are supposed to buy themselves presents, or get them from their coupled-up friends. But there are evil sociological reasons at play behind China’s celebration of single life. And the imbalance could have big consequences for the country.
There were 34 million more men than women in China in 2011. Part of that is natural— usually there are 105 boys born for every 100 girls. It was 116 boys to 100 girls in 2012. The one child policy is largely to blame. Brought in to control population expansion, the policy allowed only one child per family.
But because male children are seen as more valuable, as well as more likely to support their parents in old age, some parents chose to have a son over a daughter. As a result, large numbers of men are likely never to get married. In fact, one study has predicted that by 2030, 1 in 5 Chinese men in their 30s will never have married, while another states that 94% of un- married people in China are men.
Some parents are trying to find partners for their sons at physical markets, where people post personal ads detailing their characteristics, as well as their work and educational achievements, Traditionally China has seen high levels of marriage, usually among the young, but measures brought in by the government, as well as increased education and career opportunities for women have meant marriages are happening later.
It's also traditional that women marry up, which means they marry men from a higher socioeconomic bracket(檔次)than themselves. So women at the top and men at the bottom find themselves alone. That's a big problem in a society that still focuses on family life as the ideal. One study has even suggested a link between an imbalanced sex rate and growth in violent crime in the country.
Huge numbers of young, single Chinese people have accelerated Chinese businesses, but Singles’ Day can’t solve all the problems China’s singles face. Indeed, it’s possible it’s causing even more problems, as men turn to increasingly risky lines of work for increasing their chances of gaining money and thus a wife. And as capitalism starts to overcome romance, there’s evidence that China’s marriage market is increasingly materialistic.
51. An important theme for Singles' Day of China is _____.
A. celebration on one’s single life 
B. online shopping
C. presenting gifts to each other 
D. visiting coupled-up friends
52. An important cause for the serious imbalance of gender is _______.
A. Chinese traditional concept B. males are good labour
C. the one child policy D. the celebration of Singles’ Day
53. Which of the following is one reason why young people now marry late?
A. They think one’s cause is more important than marriage.
B. More people are getting higher income.
C. Their parents don't try to assist in finding a partner for them.
D. Many people’s education is increasing.
54. Many women at the top are difficult to find a husband because ______.
A. they are too old for marriage
B. they have too fine background for men
C. the traditional idea that women marry up affected them
D. they are too proud for ordinary young men

B
We all know the Internet does not run fast enough. What we often do not know is why. When a Web page is slow downloading, we usually blame the kind of computer we have, the speed of the connection or the time of day. But in fact there are other things that can figure in, and they are often hidden.
Did you know that there are only 13 “root name servers” in the world, serving all 150 million people using the Internet? A root server is a computer that holds the routing information for the naming system of the Internet. It allows your computer to connect with the host computer of, for example, all the www. apple. com pages. It’s like an electronic directory. Each request for a Web page generates at least two transactions well before any real content is communicated—one from the customer to find the name server, and one from the server to confirm the information to the customer. All that back-and-forth generates huge data traffic, so there is some of your slowdown.
Significantly, only three of the root name servers are outside the United States in London, StockAholm and Tokyo. This means that an awful lot of Net access generated outside the United States has to go to one of the servers there to find its way. That makes it slow for users.
Of course, as with many things about the Internet, the Washington area has a particular advantage. As many as four name servers are here. One is in Hemdon at Network Solutions Inc, and one is College Park at the University of Maryland Computer Science Center. The other two are maintained by the Defense Department's Network Information Center in Vienna and the Army Resource Lab in Aberdeen, Md. But the military rotates(輪換)the servers among secret locations for security purposes.
The Net is “distance insensitive”. In other words, the fact that sites are close to each other does not necessarily mean that traffic will move between them faster than between far-apart sites. Singapore and Phnom Perth, for example, are about 750 miles apart. A data trip from one to the other and back takes 1,100 milliseconds. But from Singapore to Los Angeles, which is many more times distant, the data trip is just 400 milliseconds. This has a lot to do with capacity (容量)— the fattest “pipes” of access are to the top-level Internet servers, the backbone computers of the Net, the ones that function like trunk lines, providing long-distance interconnections. If you and the computer host of the page you want to reach are both near a big pipe, signals will travel between you very quickly, even if you are very far away from each other. But even if you are close together the signal will travel slowly if you have a small connecting line.
55. Which of the following is the correct description about “root name servers”？
A. A root name server is a route for all the Internet's naming systems.
B. A root name server is a web page connecting with all the computers.
C. A root name server is a hosting computer connecting with web pages.
D. A root name server will connect your computer with the hosting computer.
56.  According to the passage, the speed that a signal travels from one site to another is mainly influenced by ______.  
A. the distance between two places
B. the capacity of the Internet server
C. the sensitivities of two computers
D. the distance between two web sites
57. This passage mainly talks about ______.
A. why it's slow going on the Net
B. all the problems on the Internet
C. the root name servers in the world
D. how to request a web page on the Net
58. From the passage, we can infer that ______.
A. people in America can get access to the Net faster
B. nowhere has more advanced root name servers than in Hemdon
C. most Net access has to find their ways from American name servers
D. distance insensitivity is another factor that affects the signal on the Net
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