单选题 {{B}}第二篇{{/B}}

Video recorders and photocopiers, even ticket machines on the railways, often seem unnecessarily difficult to use. Last December I bought myself a video cassette recorder(VCR) described as "simple to use". In the first three weeks I failed repeatedly to program the machine to record from the TV, and after months of practice I still made mistakes. I am not alone. According to a survey last year by Ferguson, the British manufacturer, more than one in four VCR owners never use the timer(定时器) on their machines to record a programme: they don' t use it because they've found it far too hard to operate.
So why do manufacturers keep on designing and producing VCRs that are awkward to use if the problems are so obvious. First, the problem we notice are not obvious to technically minded (有技术思想的) designers with years o[ experience and trained to understand how appliances work. Secondly, designers tend to add one or two features at a time to each model, whereas you or I face all a machine' features at once. Thirdly, although finding problems in a finished product is easy, it is too late by then to do anything about the design. Finally, if manufacturers can get away with selling products that are difficult to use, it is not worth the effort of any one of them to make improvements.
Some manufacturers say they concentrate on providing a wide range of features rather than on making the machines easy to use. But that gives rise to the question, "Why can't you have features that are easy to use?" The answer is you can.
Good design practice is a mixture of specific procedures and general principles. For a start, designers should build an original model of the machine and try it out on typical members of the public—not on colleagues in the development laboratory. Simple public trials would quickly reveal many design mistakes. In an ideal world, there would be some ways of controlling quality such as that the VCR must be redesigned repeatedly until, say, 90 per cent of users can work 90 per cent of the features correctly 90 per cent of the time.

单选题 The author had trouble operating his VCR because

【正确答案】 D

【答案解析】文章第一段开头及结尾二处都指出：录像机很难使用。Video records and photocopiers…often seem unnecessarily difficult to use.…they don't use it because they've found it far too hard to operate，那么机器难以使用的根本原因又是什么呢?作者在第二段分析了其中数种原因。第一种原因就是设计人员没有站在用户角度体谅他们的难处。所以本题问题的根本原因是录像机的操作比设计者所预料的难一些，而不是机器功能不必要那么多。所以正确答案是D。

单选题 According to the author, manufacturers ______.

【正确答案】 B

【答案解析】文章第三段第一句是：Some manufacturers say they concentrate on providing a wide range of features rather than on making the machines easy to use．一些生产制造商说他们注意力集中在提供系列功能的产品，而不注重如何使机器容易操作。可以判断B项符合题意。正确答案是B。A、C两项是生产制造商的观点，而非作者的观点，D项与原文内容不符。

单选题 It seems that manufacturers will remain reluctant to make improvements unless______.

【正确答案】 C

【答案解析】答案依据就在第二段最后一句话当中：If manufacturers can get away with selling products that are difficult to use it is not worth the effort of any one of them to make improvements．若生产制造商能够把难以使用的产品卖出去，那谁还舍得花力气去改进这些产品呢?C项意思是生产制造商很能把产品卖出去的话，他们才会努力改进产品。显然C项与原文内容是符合的。正确答案是 C。