Part I Writing (30 minutes)

　　Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a letter. You should write at least 120 words following the outline given below in Chinese:

　　給你的外國朋友寫一封信，告訴他(她)你已經被美國的一所大學錄取，但你苦惱的是自己的聽力和口語水平不夠，你想尋求他(她)對于如何提高聽力和口語的建議。

　　Part II Reading Comprehension (skimming and Scanning) (15 minutes)

　　Directions: In this part, you will have 15 minutes to go over the passage quickly and answer the questions on Answer Sheet 1.

　　For questions 1-7, mark

　　Y (for YES) if the statement agrees with the information given in the passage;

　　N (for NO) if the statement contradicts the information given in the passage;

　　NG (for NOT GIVEN) if the information is not given in the passage.

　　For questions 8-10, complete the sentences with the information given in the passage.

　　Robot Cars to Do Battle in Desert Race

　　When 15 competitors lined up in Nevada last year for the U.S. Defense Department's first million-dollar robot race, hopes were high. The challenge: to drive a vehicle without a human driver or remote control some 150 miles (241 kilometers) through the Mojave Desert.

　　But those hopes quickly went up in a cloud of dust as most robots barely managed to get off the starting line. The best performer, a modified Humvee built by engineers at Pennsylvania's Carnegie Mellon University, traveled 7 miles (11 kilometers) before breaking down.

　　To robot devotees(熱愛者), however, it was a miinor hiccup.

　　No surprise, then, that 43 teams showed up to try out for this year's race, dubbed(被稱作) the Grand Challenge. For the past week, teams ranging from garage enthusiasts to well-funded university engineers have been fine-tuning their machines at qualifying rounds here at the California Speedway in Fontana, California. (Watch the robots in action in our exclusive video.)

　　Twenty-three finalists were announced Thursday for Saturday's Grand Challenge. The 175-mile (282-kilometer) course starts and finishes in Primm, Nevada.

　　The race promises to be even tougher than last year's run. But 18 months is an eternity in the robotics world, and the technology has vastly improved.

　　Organizers believe several teams have a real shot of finishing the race in less than ten hours to earn the grand prize of two million U.S. dollars.

　　"When the first team out of the chute(斜道)—Mojavaton, a small team out of Colorado—made it successfully around the 2.2-mile (3.5-kilometer) qualification course, I knew right there and then that we had something special," said Ron Kurjanowicz, the chief of staff for the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is sponsoring the race.

　　Unknown Course

　　The aim of the Grand Challenge, Defense Department officials say, is to spur development of autonomous ground vehicles that can operate in dangerous environments, such as war zones, keeping soldiers out of harm's way.

　　A U.S. Congress mandate(訓令)requires that one-third of military ground vehicles drive themselves by 2015, but the technology to meet that mandate does not yet exist.

　　So the government looked to enterprising teams to develop the technology for driverless vehicles, sweetening its offer with the two-million-dollar purse.

　　None of the 23 teams knows what lies ahead for this year's race. DARPA won't reveal the exact route until two hours before the start of the race on Saturday.

　　But the obstacles on the Fontana qualification course-including a steel—enforced tunnel that wipes out a vehicle's global positioning system—are made to resemble the rugged, real-life conditions that the vehicles will have to navigate.

　　The vehicles use sensors such as lasers, cameras, and radar to help them avoid obstacles such as rocks and cliffs. The computer's brain has to figure out how to resolve unexpected conflicts, like a boulder sitting in the middle of the road.