单选题Photographs of the earth taken from space show a A predominantly blue globe, B two-third of its surface C being covered by water. Every year an average of 7 000 cubic meters per person flows into rivers and underground channels. And yet water shortages and droughts have become a serious problem, D one that will not go away without better conservation policies.

单选题In times of severe ______ companies are often forced to make massive job cuts in order to survive. A. retreat B. retrospect C. reduction D. recession

单选题Passage Three How can a company improve its sales? One of the keys to more effective selling is for a company to first decide on its "sales strategy". In other words, what is the role of the sales person? Is the salesperson's job narrative, suggestive, or consultative? The "narrative" sales strategy depends on the salesperson moving quickly into a standard sales presentation. His or her pitch highlights the benefits for the customer of a particular product or service. This approach is most effective for customers whose buying motives are basically the same and is also well suited to companies who have a large number of prospects (可能的主顾) on which to call. The "suggestive" approach is tailored more for the individual customer. The salesperson must be in a position to offer alternative recommendations that meet a particular customer's needs. One key aspect of the suggestive approach is the need for the salesperson to engage the buyer in some sort of discussion. The salesperson can then use the information gleaned from the customer to suggest an appropriate product or service. "We tell our salespeople to be like wine stewards," says Mindy Sahlawannee, a corporate sales trainer. "The wine steward first checks to see what food the custoiner has ordered and then opens by suggesting the wine that best complements the dish. Most companies who use a narrative strategy should be using a suggestive strategy. Just like you can't drink red wine with every dish, you can't have one sales recommendation to suit all customers." The final strategy demands that a company's sales staff act as "consultants" for the buyer. In this role, the salesperson must acquire a great deal of information about the customer. They do this through market research, surveys, and face-to-face discussions. Using this information, the salesperson makes a detailed presentation tailored specifically to a customer's needs. "Good sales 'consultants'," says Alan Goldfarb, president of Ad Pro, Inc., "are the people who use a wide range of skills including probing, listening, analysis, and persuasiveness. The best sales 'consultants', however, are the ones who can 'think outside the box and use their creativity to present a product and close the sale. The other skills you can teach. Creativity is innate. It's something we look for in every employee we hire." More and more sales teams are switching from a narrative or suggestive approach to a more consultative strategy. As a result, corporations are looking more at intangibles such as creativity and analytical skills and less at educational background and technical skills. "The next century will be about meeting individual customer needs," says Goldfarb. "The days when one size fits all are over./

单选题{{B}}Passage Two{{/B}} Nick was tired of life. Every day was exactly the same. "What I need is a little adventure!" Nick thought as he waited at the bus stop one morning. Nick's little adventure happened sooner than he had expected! While he was on the bus, reading his newspaper, the man sitting next to him suddenly pushed a large brown envelope in his hands. "Here, take this!" he murmured. Then he stood up and got off the bus before Nick could say a word. Nick sat There holding the envelope. It felt heavy. There were papers inside, or money perhaps. "I'd better hand it over to the police." He thought. There was a police station close to his office. But as he got off the bus, a man came up to him. He was obviously waiting for something. "He wants the envelope." Nick thought. Nick began to walk quickly and the man hurried after him. Nick started to run and the man began to run, too. But then, just before he go to the police station, Nick managed to lose the man in the crowds when he entered the police station, the man was no longer in sight. Inside the police station, the envelope was full of money—false money. "Obviously the man made a mistake." the inspector said, "He thought you was one of the gang! Well congratulations!" Nick felt like a hero. He could already see his name in all the paper. He could imagine an interview on television ! "However," the inspector went on, interrupting Nick's daydreams. "I'm afraid I must ask you to keep quiet about this. We're trying to catch some very clever thieves, and we don't want them to know that we have some of the money. So you mustn't say a word to anyone—even your boss! Sorry!" "So that's that!" Nick said to himself on his way to the office. He was over an hour late. "I've had my little adventure, but I can't tell anyone about it. So what's the point? I've even to make up an excuse to the boss!"

单选题The Security Council is the most powerful body in the UN. It is responsible for maintaining international peace, and for restoring peace when conflicts arise. Its decisions are binding on all UN members. The Security Council has the power to define what is a threat to security, to determine how the UN should respond, and to enforce its decisions by ordering UN members to take certain actions. The Council convenes (召集) any time there is a threat to peace. A representative from each member country who sits on the Council must be available at all times so that the Council can meet at a moment's notice. The Security Council also frequently meets at the request of a UN member—often a nation with a grievance about another nation's actions. The Security Council has 15 members, five of which hold permanent seats. The assembly elects the other ten members for two-year terms. The five permanent members—the United States, Britain, France, Russia (formerly the Soviet Union), and China—have the most power. These nations were the winning powers at the end of World War Ⅱ, and they still represent the bulk of the world's military might. Decisions of the Council require nine votes. But any one of the permanent members can veto an important decision. This authority is known as the veto right of the great powers. As a result, the Council is effective only when its permanent members can reach a consensus (一致同意) . The Council has a variety of ways it can try to resolve conflicts among countries. Usually the Council's first step is to encourage the countries to settle their disagreements without violence. The Council can mediate a dispute or recommend guidelines for a settlement. It can send peacekeeping troops into a distressed area. If war breaks out, the Council can call for a ceasefire. It can enforce its decisions by imposing economic sanctions on a country, or through joint military action.

单选题Any property that a bankrupt person may still have is usually divided among the various people to whom money are owed.

单选题The only solution to rubbish problem for a nation which now spends more on wrapping food than it pays farmers to produce it, is recovering______the packaging materials for commer cial as well as for conservation reasons.

单选题The fundamental reason why people in general do not speak foreign languages very much better than they do is that they fail to grasp the true nature of the problem of learning to pronounce, and consequently never ______ tackling it in the right way. A. turn to B. insist on C. set about D. work at

单选题{{B}}Passage Four{{/B}} She was slim and he liked her that way. So he called a lawyer. The result was a contract. According to the document, the fresh-faced bride agreed to pay a fine for each pound she gained in weight, the money refundable upon its loss. The paper signed, and the wedding went on. This is a prenuptial (婚前的)agreement—one more indication of the strange pass of marriage in this most transactional decade. You are welcome to marriage, contractual style, where increasingly detailed legal documents spell out everything from who's going to do the dishes to who's going to get the house when you split. This is family planning taken to extreme. Once employed solely by the rich, second-timers and the old industrialist carrying off the latest young cookie, the prenuptial agreement—a written pact between a couple outlining the financial obligations in the event of divorce—is becoming commonplace in a litigious (爱打官司的),disillusioned and materialistic age in which one in every two marriages is projected to end in divorce. The only question is: What about love? When asked whether anyone believes in Cupid (爱神)anymore, Dr. Michael Vincent Miller says, "Given a century that is full of sexual liberation, computer-dating services and so on, one feels tempted to reply,' only in a mood of desperate nostalgia (怀旧 )'. ""Pre-nups" (prenuptial agreements)do assume negativity. Founded on disillusionment, they cannot be separated from the high divorce rate in the United States. The result, argues Miller, is a kind of defending mentality. "We've gotten good at managing finiteness, failure and trouble with a sort of 'What' s yours is yours and what's mine is mine's realism'. We've seen it isn't all about love. We've seen there's power politics in there—a fight for control, and when you've got those things, you're halfway to lawyers and money." In other ways, however, the compacts embody positive, even idealistic thinking about marriage, love and relations, a law scholar Isabel Marcus believes. Marcus says , "Contracts could spell the end of romantic love as salvation. They say love exists, but that it's best accompanied by good, hard thinking about equitability (平等). By writing a contract, the couple gains control of its marriage. "What's good is it contributes to honesty; what's unfortunate is the idea that any contract can govern your emotions," says the author of the book "The Nature of Love."

单选题According to the author, which of the following is the most important reason for women to go to work?

单选题{{B}}Passage Four{{/B}} Tests administered to most elementary and high-school students in the United States exert an unfavourable influence on science and math teaching, according to a new $1 million study performed for the National Science Foundation. And because schools with high minority enrollments (入学) generally place a greater reliance on scores from these tests, the study finds, there tends to be "a gap in instructional emphases between high- and low-minority classrooms that differ from our national concern for the quality of education". George F. Madaus and his colleagues at Boston College analyzed not only the six most widely used national standardized tests, but also the tests designed to accompany the four most commonly used science and math texts in fourth-grade, eighth-grade, and high-school classrooms. Though curriculum (teaching program) experts argue that schools should place greater emphasis on problem solving and reasoning, the new study indicates that the tests focus on lower-level skills -- primarily mechanical memorization of routine formulas. Researchers surveyed more than 2 200 math and science instructors, interviewing in depth some 300 teachers and administrators. Especially in schools with high minority enrollments; teachers reported feeling pressured to help students perform well. on these tests. Some states judge schools and some schools determine teacher assignments based on students' test scores. With so much worry, Madaus says, teachers feel compelled to focus their instruction on drilling what the tests will measure -- at the expense of the more valuable, higher-level skills.

单选题You should have attended that lecture on durability testing of fibers; it really was most ______.

单选题In 1910, Henry Van Dyke wrote a book called "The Spirit of America, " which opened with this sentence: "The Spirit of America is best known in Europe by one of its qualities— energy. " This has always been true. Americans have always been known for their manic dynamism. Some condemned this ambition as a scrambling after money. Others saw it in loftier terms. But energy has always been the country"s saving feature. So Americans should be especially alert to signs that the country is becoming less vital and assiduous . One of those signs comes to us from the labor market. According to figures from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States has a smaller share of prime age men in the work force than any other G-7 nation. Part of the problem has to do with human capital. More American men lack the emotional and professional skills they would need to contribute. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 35 percent of those without a high school diploma are out of the labor force, compared with less than 10 percent of those with a college degree. Part of the problem has to do with structural changes in the economy. Sectors like government, health care and high-tech have been growing, generating jobs for college grads. Sectors like manufacturing, agriculture and energy have been getting more productive, but they have not been generating more jobs. Instead, companies are using machines or foreign workers. The result is this: There are probably more idle men now than at any time since the Great Depression, and this time the problem is mostly structural, not cyclical . This is a big problem. It can"t be addressed through the sort of short-term Keynesian stimulus some on the left are still fantasizing about. It can"t be solved by simply reducing the size of government, as some on the right imagine. It will probably require a broad menu of policies attacking the problem all at once: expanding community colleges and online learning; changing the corporate tax code and labor market rules to stimulate investment; adopting German-style labor market practices like apprenticeship programs, wage subsidies and programs that extend benefits to the unemployed for six months as they start small businesses. Reinvigorating the missing fifth—bringing them back into the labor market and using their capabilities—will certainly require money. If this were a smart country, we"d be having a debate about how to shift money from programs that provide comfort and toward programs that spark reinvigoration. But, of course, that"s not what is happening. Discretionary spending, which might be used to instigate dynamism, is declining. Health care spending, which mostly provides comfort to those beyond working years, is expanding. Attempts to take money from health care to open it up for other uses are being crushed . We"re locking in the nation"s wealth into the Medicare program and closing off any possibility that we might do something significant to reinvigorate the missing fifth. Next time you see a politician demagoguing Medicare, ask this : Should we be using our resources in the manner of a nation in decline or one still committed to stoking the energy of its people and continuing its rise?

单选题According to the passage, Disneyland in France ______.

单选题Speaker A: I'm awfully sorry. I hope I haven't spoiled it. Speaker B: ______ A. Oh, it's nothing. Don't let a little thing like that worry you. B. I know you are unintentional. Just be more careful next time. C. There is no need for you to say sorry. Anyway, I can buy a new one. D. You are right. You haven't spoiled it. You see, it's still in good condition.

单选题{{B}}Passage Two{{/B}} The Internet can make the news more democratic, giving the public a chance to ask questions and seek out facts behind stories and candidates, according to the head of the largest US on-line service. "But the greatest potential for public participation is still in the future," Steven Case, chairman of America On-line, told a recent meeting on Journalism and the Internet sponsored by The Freedom Forum(讨论会), though some other speakers say the new technology of computers is changing the face of journalism, giving reporters access to more information and their readers a chance to ask questions and turn to different sources. "You don't have to buy a newspaper and be confined to the four comers of that paper anymore," Sam Meddis, on-line technology editor at USA Today, observed about the variety of information available to computer users. But the speakers noted the easy access to the Internet also means anyone can post information for others to see. "Anyone can say anything they want, whether it's right or wrong," said Case. Readers have to determine for themselves who to trust. "In a world of almost infinite voices, respected journalists and respected brand names will probably become more important, not less," Case said. The Internet today is about where radio was 80 years ago, or television 50 years ago or cable 25 years ago, he said. But it is growing rapidly because it provides people fast access to news and a chance to comment on it.

单选题The trading company requires that payment ______ on time.

单选题It was last night ______ I see the comet.