单选题Questions 14~16 are based on a story about a woman's encounter with creatures from outer space. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 14~16.
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单选题It can be inferred from the passage that a change in class relationship after the Middle Ages led to greater productivity because______.
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单选题What would a Gusii mother from Kenya most likely do to punish her children?
单选题Questions 17-20 are based on the following monologue. You now have 20 seconds to read Questions 17-20.
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单选题{{I}} You will hear four dialogues or monologues. Before listening to
each one, 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. After
listening, you will have 10 seconds to check your answer to each question.
You will hear each piece ONLY ONCE.{{/I}}
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单选题Why can many people see "silver linings" to the economic slowdown?
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Questions 17~20 are based
on a report about high style cameras. You now have 20 seconds to read Questions
17~20.
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单选题Revolutionary innovation is now occurring in all scientific and technological fields. This wave of unprecedented change is driven primarily by advances in information technology, but it is much larger in scope. We are not dealing simply with an Information Revolution but with a Technology Revolution.
To anticipate developments in this field, the George Washington University Forecast of Emerging Technologies was launched at the start of the 1990s. We have now completed four rounds of our Delphi survey—in 1990, 1992, 1994, and 1996—giving us a wealth of data and experience. We now can offer a reasonably clear picture of what can be expected to happen in technology over the next three decades.
Time horizons play a crucial role in forecasting technology. Forecasts of the next five to ten years are often so predictable that they fall into the realm of market research, while those more than 30 or 40 years away are mostly speculation. This leaves a 10-to 20-year window in which to make useful forecasts. It is this time frame that our Forecast addresses.
The Forecast uses diverse methods, including environmental scanning, trend analysis, Delphi surveys, and model building. Environmental scanning is used to identify emerging technologies. Trend analysis guides the selection of the most important technologies for further study, and a modified Delphi survey is used to obtain forecasts. Instead of using the traditional Delphi method of providing respondents with immediate feedback and requesting additional estimates in order to arrive at a consensus, we conduct another survey after an additional time period of about two years.
Finally, the results are portrayed in time periods to build models of unfolding technological change. By using multiple methods instead of relying on a single approach, the Forecast can produce more reliable, useful estimates.
For our latest survey conducted in 1996, we selected 85 emerging technologies representing me most crucial advances that can be foreseen. We then submitted the list of technologies to our panel of futurists for their judgments as to when ( or if) each technological development would enter the mainstream, the probability that it would happen, and the estimated size of the economic market for it. In short, we sought a forecast as to when each emerging technology will have actually "emerged."
单选题You will hear two dialogues and one passage. Before listening to each one,
read the questions related to it. While listening, answer each question by
choosing A, B, C or D. You will hear each piece ONLY ONCE.
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单选题{{B}}Passage 2{{/B}}
Beads were probably the first durable
ornaments humans possessed, and the intimate relationship they had with their
owners is reflected in the fact that beads are among the most common items found
in ancient archaeological sites. In the past, as today, men, women, and children
adorned themselves with beads. In some cultures still, certain beads are often
worn from birth until death, and then are buried with their owners for the
afterlife. Abrasion due to daily wear alters the surface features of beads, and
if they are buried for long, the effects of corrosion can further change their
appearance. Thus, interest is imparted to the bead both by use and the effects
of time. Besides their wearability, either as jewelry or
incorporated into articles of attire, beads possess the desirable
characteristics of every collectible. They are durable, portable, available in
infinite variety, and often valuable in their original cultural context as well
as in today's market. Pleasing to look at and touch, beads come in shapes,
colors, and materials that almost compel one to handle them and to sort
them. Beads are miniature bundles of secrets waiting to be
revealed: their history, manufacture, cultural context, economic role, and
ornamental use are all points of information one hopes to unravel. Even the most
mundane beads may have traveled great distances and been exposed to many human
experiences. The bead researcher must gather information from many diverse
fields. In addition to having to be a generalist while specializing in what may
seem to be a narrow field, the researcher is faced with the problem of primary
materials that have little or no documentation. Many ancient beads that are of
ethnographic interest have often been separated from their original cultural
context. The special attractions of beads contribute to the
uniqueness of bead research. While often regarded as the "small change of
civilizations", beads are a part of every culture, and they can often be used to
date archaeological sites and to designate the degree of mercantile,
technological, and cultural sophistication.
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单选题It was said by Sir George Bernard Shaw that "England and America are two countries separated by the same language." My first personal experience of this was when I worked as a camp counselor for two months in 2000 in Summer Camp run by the Boy Scouts of America, as part of an international leader exchange scheme. Before I went, all the participants in the scheme were given a short list of words that are in common use in the UK which Americans would either be confused by or would even offend them. I memorized the words and thought "I’ll cope". When I finally arrived in the States three months later, I realized that perhaps a lifetime of watching American television was not adequate preparation for appreciating and coping with the differences between American and British speech. In the first hour of arriving at the camp I was exposed to High School American English, Black American English and American English spoken by Joe Public, all every different to each other. Needless to say, I did cope in the end. The Americans I met were very welcoming and helpful, and I found they were patient with me when I made a social faux pas when I used an inappropriate word or phrase. Upon my return I began to wonder whether anyone had documented the differences between American and British English. I found several books on the subject but often these were written in a dry and academic way. I felt that I could do better and use my sense of humor and personal experiences to help people from both sides of Atlantic to communicate more effectively when they meet. My research into the subject led me to several conclusions. Firstly, American English and British English are coveting, thanks to increased transatlantic travel and the media. The movement of slang words is mostly eastwards, though a few words from the UK have been adopted by the Ivy League fraternities, This convergent trend is a recent one dating from the emergence of Hollywood as the predominant film making center in the world and also from the Second World War when large numbers of American GIs were stationed in the UK. This trend was consolidated by the advent of television. Before then, it was thought that American English and British English would diverge as the two languages evolved. In 1789, Noah Webster stated that: "Numerous local causes, such as a new country, new associations of people, new combinations of ideas in the arts and some intercourse with tribes wholly unknown in Europe will introduce new words into the American tongue." He was right, but his next statement has since been proved to be incorrect. "These causes will produce in the course of time a language in North America as different from the modern Dutch, Danish and Swedish are from the German or from one another." Webster had underrated the mount of social intercourse between England and her former colony. Even before Webster had started to compile his dictionary, words and expressions from the America had already infiltrated the British language, for example "canoe" and "hatchet". Secondly, there are some generalizations that can be made about American and British English which can reveal the nature of the two nations and their peoples. British speech tends to be less general, and directed more, in nuances of meaning, attendant murmurings and pauses, carries a wealth of shared assumptions and attitudes. In other words, the British are preoccupied with their social status within society and speak and act accordingly to fit into the social class they aspire to. This is particularly evident when talking to someone from "the middle class" when he points out that he is "upper middle class" rather than "middle class" or "lower middle class". John Major (the former UK Prime Minister) may have said that we are now living in a "classless society" but the class system still prevails. At that moment both he and the Leader of the Opposition, Tony Blair, were talking about capturing the "middle England", " middle class vote" as the key to winning the next general election. American speech tends to be influenced by the over-heated language of much of the media, which is designed to attach an impression of exciting activity to passive, if sometimes insignificant events. Yet, curiously, really violent activity and life-changing events are hidden in blind antiseptic tones that serve to disguise the reality. Two examples come readily to mind—the US Military with their "friendly fire" and "collateral damages" and the business world with their "downsizing". British people tend to understatement whereas Americans towards hyperbole. A Briton might respond to a suggestion with a word such as "Terrific!" only if he is expressing rapturous enthusiasm, whereas an American might use the word merely to signify polite assent. Thirdly, The American language has less regard than the British for grammatical form, and will happily bulldoze its way across distinctions rather than steer a path between them. American English will casually use one form of a word for another, for example turning nouns into verbs or verbs and nouns into adjectives.
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