单选题Walking through my train yesterday, staggering from my seat to the buffet and back, I counted five people reading Harry Potter novels. Not children- these were real grown-ups reading children"s books, Maybe that would have been understandable. If these people had jumped whole-heartedly into a second childhood it would have made more sense. But they were card-carrying grown-ups with laptops and spreadsheets returning from sales meetings and seminars. Yet they chose to read a children"s book. I don"t imagine you"ll find this headcount exceptional. You can no longer get on the London Tube and not see a Harry Potter book. Nor is it just the film; these throwback readers were out there in droves long before the movie campaign opened. So who are these adult readers who have made J.K. Rowling the second-biggest female earner in Britain (after Madonna)? As I have tramped along streets knee-deep in Harry Potter paperbacks, I"ve mentally slotted them into three groups. First come the Never-Readers, whom Harry has enticed into opening a book. Is this a bad thing? Probably not. Writing has many advantages over film, but it can never compete with its magnetic punch. If these books can re-establish the novel as a thrilling experience for some people, then this can only be for the better. If it takes obsession-level hype to lure them into a bookshop. that"s fine by me. But will they go on to read anything else? Again, we can only hope. The second group are the Occasional Readers. These people claim that tiredness, work and children allow them to read only a few books a year. Yet now--to be part of the crowd, to say they"ve read it- they put Harry Potter on their oh-so-select reading list. It"s infuriating, and maddening. Yes, I"m a writer myself, currently writing difficult, unreadable, hopefully unsettling novels, but there are so many other good books out there, so much rewarding, enlightening, enlarging works of fiction for adults; and yet these sad cases are swept along by the hype, the faddism, into reading a children"s book. The third group are the Regular Readers, for whom Harry is sandwiched between McEwan (英国当代作家) and Balzac, Roth (德国现代诗人) and Dickens. This is the real baffler--what on earth do they get out of reading it? Why bother? But if they call rattle through it in a week just to say they"ve been there- like going to Longleat (朗利特山庄，英国名胜)or the Eiffel Tower--the worst they"re doing is encouraging others.

单选题Evidence came up ______ specific speech sounds are recognized by babies as young as five months old. A. that B. which C. what D. when

单选题The ______ of the dollar can be directly linked to deterioration of the current account of the U.S. balance of payments.

单选题I had to take a step, even though I understand that that step was in the direction of______ rather than success.(2003年西南财经大学考博试题)

单选题I was ______ when I learnt that your application for the post of secretary had been unsuccessful.

单选题What is true about the Internet according to the text? A．People now have realized that the Internet will dominate our society completely. B．The Internet increases by 50/% every year. C．The Internet will combine all the traditional media such as books, televisions and push them further. D．The Internet prevents individuals from developing new skills.

单选题{{B}}Part A{{/B}}{{B}}Directions:{{/B}}Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1.{{B}}Text 1{{/B}} The planet's wild creatures face a new threat -- from yuppies, empty nesters, singletons and one parent families. Biologists studying the pressure on the planet's dwindling biodiversity today report on a new reason for alarm. Although the rate of growth in the human population is decreasing, the number of individual households is exploding. Even where populations have actually dwindled -- in some regions of New Zealand, for instance -- the number of individual households has increased, bemuse of divorce, career choice, smaller families and longer lifespans. Jianguo Liu of Michigan State University and colleagues from Stanford University in California re- port in Nature, in a paper published online in advance, that a greater number of individual house-holds, each containing on average fewer people, meant more pressure on natural resources. Towns and cities began to sprawl as new homes were built. Each household needed fuel to heat and light it; each household required its own plumbing, cooking and refrigeration. "In larger households, the efficiency of resource consumption will be a lot higher, because more people share things," Dr. Liu said. He and his colleagues looked at the population patterns of life in 141 countries, including 76 "hotspot" regions unusually rich in a variety of endemic wildlife. These hot spots included Australia, New Zealand, the US, Brazil, China, India, Kenya, and Italy. They found that between 1985 and 2000 in the "hotspot" parts of the globe, the annual 3.1% growth rate in the number of households was far higher than the population growth rate of 1.8%. "Had the average household' size remained at the 1985 level," the scientists report, "there would have been 155m fewer households in hotspot countries in 2000. Paradoxically, smaller households do not mean smaller homes. In Indian River county, Florida, the average area of a one-storey, single family house increased 33 % in the past three decades." Dr. Liu's work grew from the alarming discovery that the giant pandas living in China's Wolong reserve were more at risk now than they were when the reserve was first established. The local population had grown, but the total number of homes had increased more swiftly, to make greater inroads into the bamboo forests. Gretchen Daily of Stanford, one of the authors, said: "We all depend on open space and wild places, not just for peace of mind but for vital services such as crop pollination, water purification and climate stabilization. The alarming thing about this study is the finding that, if family groups continue to become smaller and smaller, we might continue losing biodiversity -- even if we get the aggregate human population size stabilised."

单选题This style of writing, incidentally, is suggestive of what is called the "newsreel technique" of John dos Passes.

单选题Don't look now, but they're all around you. They're standing by the copy machine, hovering by the printer, answering the phone. Yes, they're the overworked, underappreciated interns: young, eager and not always paid. And with just 20% of the graduating class of 2009 gainfully employed, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, there are more and more of them each day. It seems the importance of internships for securing full-time work has dramatically increased over the years. Intern, previously used in the medical profession to define a person with a degree but without a license to practice, became a term for a physician in training following World War I, when medical school was no longer seen as preparation enough for practice. Later, the word migrated to politics as an alternative to the term apprentice as a reference to those interested in learning about careers in government. Meanwhile, co-op programs, in which students would work at a company for an extended period during college, emerged. From 1970 to 1983, the number of colleges and universities offering the programs increased from 200 to 1,000. Sure, it took an extra year to earn a B.A., but for three months each school year, students worked for companies they were interested in, tried out careers they weren't sure about and earned money to help cover tuition. Internship programs have produced several successes: Bill Gates was once a congressional page, and Oprah Winfrey worked at a CBS affiliate during her college years, just to name a few. Of course, Monica Lewinsky was a 22-year-old White House intern when she engaged in an intimate relationship with President Clinton, a scandal that still taints both offices. Today's interns are not limited to summer jobs at their local businesses. Some programs provide dorm housing in cities like New York and Washington, allowing students from around the country to work for the nation's biggest companies. Many popular cities even have Facebook groups devoted to providing social outings and networking opportunities for the thousands of interns who descend each summer. Though internships were formerly touted as an opportunity for students to explore career options, doing so now comes with a price. Some experts argue that internships punish those who might decide later than age 18 what they want to do with their life. More important, they can favor wealthier students, who can afford to not make any money during the summer, over the less privileged. Still, with pressure increasing on students to find work, the clamor for internships is only growing. To land that first job, career advisers now say, applicants should have two or more internships under their belt. Anyone who takes a summer to simply explore might be too late.

单选题According to the law which he later produced, everything in the universe attracts everything else towards ______.

单选题Although he had done many great things, he never felt it necessary to ______ his achievements. A. lavish B. extravert C. impose D. vaunt

单选题In the imagined world ______ would restrict children's wildest thoughts.

单选题No one could tell us anything about the ______ stranger.

单选题Is teaching important? Well. of course it is. There was a time when the necessary knowledge could be taught to the young by family members. But as societies became more complex and division of labor more common, it was impossible for family members to teach the information and skills young people needed to become useful members of the society. As the need for specialists appeared, the job of teaching came into being in our country, and teaching as a job has been of increasing importance over the past hundred years. Today, we have strict rules for teachers. We hope all children can attend schools. Many things tell us that teaching is indeed an "important" job. In recent years, there has been an increasing need for teachers to be "responsible". This means that the public expects teachers to succeed in teaching important information to the young. Teachers' salaries today, while not much, certainly are much higher than they were in past years. These increases have come about because people have realized that without enough salaries, people who have abilities will not become teachers. Today almost no one says that "anybody will do" for a teacher. The public expects "quality people" to teach the young, and progress is being made to give salaries that will make people who have abilities become teachers.

单选题His inability to learn foreign languages was a(n)______to his career.

单选题A dependent audit comes from your employer, who wants proof that the people you're carrying on the company health plan really are your dependents. If you can't prove they are, the company will drop them. The goal is to ferret out children who are over age 18 and not in school, ex-spouses, sometimes even nieces or nephews—people, in short, who do not meet an employer's definition of dependent. If your company does not already conduct these audits, chances are it eventually will. And while it may strike you as an annoyance, do not ignore this task. Otherwise, eligible dependents could lose their health coverage. From an employer's perspective, audits make good business sense. Health care costs have been rising by 5 to 10 percent a year for over a decade, and employers want to contain those costs. An audit of a 10,000-person employer will typically uncover 200 to 500 ineligible dependents, said John Fazio, a senior consultant with the employee benefits firm Towers Watson. Removing these people, who cost a company an average of $ 2,100 a head, translates into annual savings of $ 420,000 to $1.05 million a year for the employer. Dependent audits have been around for more than a decade. But they have become popular in the last few years, as employers desperately sought ways to trim their health care budgets. This year 69 percent of large companies plan to conduct a dependent audit, up from the 55 percent that planned to do so in 2008, according to a March survey by Towers Watson and the National Business Group on Health, a nonprofit organization of large employers. From the employees' perspective, such audits are at best an annoyance, forcing them to gather paper work proving, say, that a child who had been covered for years remains eligible. At worst, an audit can be a wrenching and costly experience when a worker's dependent is found to be ineligible and has to get insurance elsewhere. What is more, a worker could become liable for the money that an employer paid out for a spouse or child who should not have been on the plan. And, as audits have become more common, the process for employees has become more onerous. "It used to be the honor system," says Michael Smith, the chief executive of ConSova, a dependent auditing company. Just five years ago, employers typically asked that you sign an affidavit stating that your dependent was eligible to be on your plan. "Now, they want documentation," Mr. Fazio said. "It's a more diligent process. " That means you may have to dig up birth and marriage certificates, bank statements, divorce agreements and other documents that prove your child or spouse are legal dependents.