单选题 You will hear one dialogue or monologue. Before listening, you will have 5 seconds to read each of the questions which accompany it. While listening, answer each question by choosing A, B, C, or D. You will hear ONLY ONCE.

单选题 According to the passage, how many people in the world are unable to read and write?

A. Five hundred million.
B. Half the world's total population.
C. Seven hundred million.
D. Seven hundred billion.

【正确答案】 C

【答案解析】[听力原文] Recently the attack on illiteracy (文盲) has been stepped up. A world plan has been drawn up by a committee of UNESCO experts in Paris, as part of the United Nations Development Decade, and an international conference on the subject has also been held. UNESCO stresses that functional literacy is the aim. People must learn the basic skills of responsible citizenship: the ability to read notices, newspapers, timetables, letters, price-lists, to keep simple records and accounts, to sort out the significance of the information gathered and to fill in forms. The major areas of illiteracy are in Asia, Africa, and Central and South America. In Africa there are at least one hundred million illiterates, comprising eighty to eighty-five percent of the total population. In Europe the figure is about twenty-four million, most of them in Southern Europe, with Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Yugoslavia heading the list (the United Kingdom has about seven hundred thousand).

单选题 What's the purpose of the plan drawn by UNESCO?

A. To hold an international meeting.
B. To be part of the United Nations Development Decade.
C. To achieve functional literacy.
D. To teach people how to fill in forms.

【正确答案】 C

【答案解析】