问答题在数亿球迷的翘首企盼中，一场盛大的体育狂欢正在如火如荼地进行。32支顶尖球队明星云集德国，为争夺大力神杯而杀得昏天黑地。 世界杯会如何影响世界经济?各国球迷们享用四年一度的足球大餐时，可能无暇考虑这等严肃的问题，但冷静的经济学家们却已经研究出了新成果。像奥运会一样，世界杯作为一种商业赛事，对东道主而言，意味着财源滚滚的“金鸡”。有专家预测，今年世界杯，德国将至少获得 200亿美元的直接经济效益。所以，荷兰Hypercube咨询公司干脆提议，国际足联将目前四年一度的世界杯赛的频率加快一倍，变成两年一度的赛事。

问答题Like the replacement of its old buildings with skyscrapers and the widening of two-lane roads into superhighways, China is instituting massive financial reform to foster growth and prosperity. The government has won global respect for its willingness to tackle banking, securities and state enterprise reform and to begin opening China's markets. At the same time, the government has wisely realized that export growth and foreign direct investment alone cannot drive the kind of growth necessary to sustain development in China. The fact is that domestic consumption will become increasingly more important in fueling China's continuing economic growth. As we have seen in many markets around the world, the development of consumer finance has been critical in stimulating domestic consumption. The use of credit plays an essential role in economic development. Credit provides consumers with more options, and allows them to choose from a wider variety of products and services to meet their desired lifestyles. And the use of credit cards in particular gets cash out from under the bed and begins to build banking habits. But the role of credit does not stop here. It is merely a starting point in the economic development cycle. An increase in consumer spending power leads to greater demand for goods and services. This in turn spurs growth in small-to-medium-sized businesses. The end result is a more mature, diversified economy. based around strong domestic demand and supply, and less vulnerable to external pressures. Think of it as an insurance policy against another regional economic downturn. While parallel development of the consumer finance and credit card industries is needed for long-term economic growth, other initiatives are also necessary to fully develop a sound. strong credit environment. China is changing, and so are its consumers. It wasn't so long ago that consumers had limited choices in the purchase of goods and services. But today, consumers are faced with a tremendous amount of choice, which is increasing every day. The development of new payment systems and options must proceed in tandem with growth in consumer choice. To ensure appropriate consumer response and to help make for a smooth transition, educational and legislative programs are paramount. For example, consumer education on the wise use of credit and financial planning will promote responsible card usage. And consumer rights legislation will help instill consumer confidence in the industry. Providing a strong foundation for the sound issuance of credit cards can also be achieved through risk management initiative such as the establishment of a centralized credit bureau. This will allow banks to ascertain if consumers have a past credit rating and are a "good" risk. All these compelling areas—consumer education, legislation, and risk management—combined with continued infrastructure development, will enable China's payment systems to expand and evolve to the next level.

问答题以往几个世纪人口的增长并不能证明人口会无限地直线向上增长直到毁灭的地步。相反地，人口统计史料证明人口的增长完全不是一成不变的。若技术革新的成果开始减少，从250到350年前就在西方开通出现的并且目前还在继续的人口迅速增长可能也会放慢。当然，当前的知识革命也许会持续下去而无法预见其未来。无论如何，与那种认为人口以几何级数持续增长的观点相反，从长远的观点来说，人口可望受到生产力的调节。接受了这一观点，人口的增长就右以被看成是经济进步和人类胜利的标志，而不是社会衰败的标志。

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问答题据消息灵通人土透露，今年春节前，家乐福才与新大新发生“第一次亲密接触”，其中广州市政府无疑起了“红娘”的作用。短短几个月时间，双方“情投意合”。外界关心的是：家乐福到底看中新大新什么地方? 对此，新大新总经理何先生没有作出正面的回应，只是笼统地陈述在广州的百货业中新大新有自己独特的一面。据何先生透露，这次新大新出资持有新组建的公司35%的股份，家乐福占 65%：“这是按照国家有关部门政策，即中方持股不得少于35%的规定拟定的”。

问答题The most important fact in Washington"s failure on Thursday to be re-elected for the first time since 1947 to the U.N. Human Rights Commission is that it was America"s friends, not its enemies, that engineered the defeat. After all, China and Cuba and other targets of U.S.-led criticism in the committee were always going to vote and lobby against Washington; the shock came in the fact that the European and other Western nations that traditionally ensured U.S. reelection turned their backs on Washington. Many traditional U.S. supporters clearly withdrew their votes to signal displeasure over U.S. unilateralism. They have been increasingly chagrined by Washington"s tendency to ignore the international consensus on issues ranging from the use of land mines to the Kyoto climate change treaty. They are also critical of what they see as Washington"s tendency to publicise the issue of human rights, using annual resolutions at the committee to denounce China or Cuba when that conforms to U.S. foreign policy objectives but for the same reason voting alone in defence of Israel when that country is in the dock over its conduct.

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问答题据说，上海男人是最好的丈夫。他们总是知道该如何讨妻子欢心，从而避免了矛盾，一家人其乐融融。所以从某种程度上讲，上海男人是社会安定和和谐的象征。当妻子快乐时，他也快乐。因而整个城市充满快乐的气氛。 上海男人常被戏谑为“妻管严”，但他们从不屈从于妻子。在与妻子有争议时，他要么保持沉默，要么一笑置之。有时候他会发火，但事后不久他会毫不迟疑地道歉。最终他妻子发现，她总是按照他说的去办。 上海男人，聪明、务实，有时甚至有点圆滑。但最令人印象深刻的是，上海男人在事业上有进取心，对家庭有很强的责任感而且尊重女性。

问答题 Directions: In this part of the test, you will hear 2 passages in English. You will hear the passages ONLY ONCE. After you have heard each passage, translate it into Chinese and write your version in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET. You may take notes while you are listening.

问答题Directions: In this part of the test, you will hear 5 English sentences. You will hear the sentences ONLY ONCE. After you have heard each sentence, translate it into Chinese and write your version in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET.

问答题For Starbucks Corp. , the success of upstart folk rock band Antigone Rising couldn"t be more delicious. The girl group"s debut album, From the Ground Up, was promoted by Starbucks and for now is only on sale at the coffee shops. It"s doing well: 35,000 CDs in its first three weeks. The New York City band has been deluged with requests to appear on late-night TV and music cable shows. But Antigone Rising is one of the few sweet notes in the company"s effort to blend coffee with music. Its new Hear Music media bars, which let customers burn CDs at Starbucks shops from a digital library of more than 150,000 songs, have been as disappointing as a tepid latte. And its broader goal of, as Starbucks Entertainment CEO Ken Lombard puts it, "transforming the way music is discovered and delivered" seems like marketing froth so far. This is Starbucks" most ambitious attempt yet to become known for something more than java, and a stumble could ding one of the world"s best-known brand names. That said, for all of its talk, Starbucks isn"t necessarily looking to make big money in the music business. CIBC World Markets" restaurant analyst John Glass estimates that Starbucks" annual revenues from the music bars could add up to $120 million at most, or just 3% of the company"s $4.5 billion in U. S. retail sales. Glass figures Starbucks breaks even if customers create 1,600 CDs annually at each store. That would add between 4 cents and 7 cents to earnings per share. Even the success last year of Starbucks" multiplatinum Ray Charles album, Genius Loves Company, earned the company more buzz than anything else. Same goes for the Starbucks music channel it launched on XM satellite radio last year. Starbucks is investing cautiously enough that any impact would be minimal should this prove to be another ill-fated attempt to sell something else, anything else, with the Starbucks name on it. Indeed the company is in a position to take some risks: It enjoys a 10.6% operating margin, and its shares are up 34% from its 52-week low. So what"s really at stake here? Chairman Howard Schultz"s deep conviction that Starbucks can be different from other retail chains: that it can offer people a place to do the things we spend much of our time on these days, such as connecting to the Internet and downloading music. Despite evidence that the CD-burning service isn"t doing well at the 45 test shops in Seattle and Austin, Tex. , set up last fall, Starbucks is officially upbeat. It plans to roll out more media bars this year and expects eventually to have them in up to two-thirds of its 4,500 U. S. stores. "Our excitement is as high, if not higher, than when we initially launched our strategy," says Lombard. The reality isn"t so exciting. Hear Music insiders say the response at the stores in Austin—a college and live-music town—has been disappointing. Even in Starbucks" home city of Seattle, few customers were listening to the music during recent visits to four stores with media bars. During several hours at each of the four spots, only one CD was burned. The Austin experiment could be a sign that Starbucks is misreading its customers. The city is full of tech-savvy music downloaders who carry iPods, not portable CD players. Digital music these days means MP3 file mixing and sharing, and that"s not in the business model yet, says digital music analyst Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research Inc. "Starbucks is not going to be a significant contributor to the music economy." Besides the unproven premise that customers want to download music at a coffee shop, Starbucks" fees are high. It costs $2 to use the media bar, $ 8.99 for the first seven songs, and then 99 cents per song. Apple Computer Inc. "s iTunes Music Store charges just 99 cents a song, and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. , just 88 cents. Lombard does seem to sense that the media bars are using yesterday"s technology. With more investment, the bars could become MP3 compatible and dispense with CD burning altogether, he says. Starbucks also could provide exclusive music to its WiFi customers. "We fully expect as digital delivery options change, so will we," he adds. It isn"t the first time an ambitious Starbucks expansion struggled. Its glossy magazine, called Joe, failed in 1999. In 2000, Starbucks killed an Internet lifestyle portal, taking a $ 20.6 million write-down from its investment in Living. com. Starbucks ice cream and bottled coffee sold outside Starbucks have done well, but Starbucks coffee liqueur got the company tossed from socially conscious mutual funds. Investors have remained muted so far because Starbucks is showing financial restraint. The cost per unit, estimates CIBC, is $18,000 to $ 20,000 per store, making the bill for 3,000 stores about $57 million. That"s a small sum compared with the $600 million in total capital-expansion spending that Starbucks has scheduled for fiscal 2005. But more than dollars and cents are at stake for Starbucks. The media bars are all about creating the right atmosphere in stores, an ephemeral quality that executives believe only lasts if it is constantly improved or at least freshened up a bit. The strength of the Starbucks name does give it more room than some others to take risks without losing coffee customers. But music might not be Starbucks" cup of coffee.

问答题Questions 7～10 College rankings are dead! Long live college rankings! At a meeting of the country"s leading liberal arts schools this week in Annapolis, Md., a majority of the 80 or so college presidents in attendance said they would no longer participate in the popular annual rankings conducted by US News and World Report. Instead, the Annapolis Group announced it will help develop an alternative set of data to aid students and their families in the bewildering quest to figure out how one school differs from the next. College presidents have long been critical of the US News rankings, in part because 25% of a school"s score is based on a survey filled in by roughly half of college presidents and other top administrators, who rate schools based on reputation but often only selectively, leaving most of the list blank and unjudged. The peer survey strikes many in higher education as silly. But they believe the rankings have an additional and more nefarious component. Several college presidents have publicly complained that the rankings" emphasis on the average SAT scores of incoming freshmen has led colleges to fight over high-achieving (and often wealthy) students by offering them merit scholarships and thus leaving fewer financial-aid dollars available to low-income students. But now the Annapolis Group, whose 124 members take up most of the slots in U. S. News"s list of the top 100 liberal arts schools, is putting its collective weight behind a web-based alternative to the rankings that is being spearheaded by the 900-member National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU). NAICU"s easy-to-read template, which is expected to be rolled out by hundreds of schools in September, allows students and their families to pull up extensive information organized in an objective format that includes such data as what percentage of students graduate in four years compared to those who graduate in five or six years. It plans to provide a level of detail that is not included in the US News rankings, but that could be very important to parents" checkbooks. The NAICU template also lists the four most common majors at each school and gives a complete breakdown on class sizes, revealing how many classes have fewer than 20 students, fewer than 40, fewer than 100 or more than 100. NAICU is trying to provide a more complete picture than US News, and the new format doesn"t gloss over unpleasant details. For example, it will list a school"s current tuition alongside the sticker price from each of the previous four years (Parents, get ready to watch those bar charts keep climbing upwards over time!). It will also include the percentage of students who receive financial aid as well as what the average net tuition is for financial aid recipients. The new set of ratings also contains links to such sought-after details as a school"s campus safety report, internship and career-placement services and information about how many of its graduates go on to graduate school or are employed in the field of their choice within a certain amount of time after graduation. However, NAICU stops short of ranking schools in numerical order and although the association will serve as a central repository for all the new data, which can also be accessed through an individual school"s site, students and their families will have to print out the two-page profiles if they want to see how one institution stacks up against another. "We"re letting consumers rank the institutions based on their needs," says NAICU spokesman Tony Pals. Of course, there"s nothing to keep US News or anyone else from plugging all this new data into a rankings formula. And more than a few college presidents think that isn"t such a bad thing. "Some of my colleagues are ethical purists, and I applaud them," Millsaps College President Dr. Frances Lucas says of the US News rankings" most strident critics at the Annapolis meeting. "But many of us live in the real world." And since the US News rankings are likely here to stay, Lucas and other presidents are hoping that if schools provide more data in a more meaningful, transparent manner, the rankings will become more meaningful, too.

问答题Some people would say that the Englishman"s home is no longer his castle; that it has become his workshop. This is partly because the average English is keen on working with his own hands and partly because he feels, for one reason or another, that he must do for himself many household jobs for which, some years ago, he would have hired professional help. The main reason for this is a financial one: the high cost of labour has meant that the builders" and decorators" costs have reached a level which makes them prohibitive for house. proud English people of modest means. So, if they wish to keep their houses looking bright and smart, they have to tackle some of the repairs and decorating themselves. As a result, there has grown up in the post-war years what is sometimes referred to as the "Do-it-yourself Movement". The "Do-it-yourself Movement" began with home decorating but has since spread into a much wider field. Nowadays there seem to be very few things that cannot be made by the "do-it-yourself" method. A number of magazines and handbooks exist to show hopeful handymen of all ages just how easy it is to build anything from a coffee table to a fifteen-foot(4.5 meters) sailing dinghy. All you need, it seems, is a hammer and a few nails. You follow the simple instructions step by step and, before you know where you are, the finished article stands before you, complete in every detail. Unfortunately, alas, it is not always quite as simple as it sounds! Many a budding "do-it-yourself" has found to his cost that one cannot learn a skilled craftsman"s job overnight. How quickly one realizes, when doing it oneself, that a job which takes the skilled man an hour or so to complete takes the amateur handyman five to six at least. And then there is the question of tools. The first thing the amateur learns is that he must have the right tools for the job. But tools cost money. There is also the wear and tear on the nerves. It is not surprising then that many people have come to the conclusion that the expense of paying professionals to do the work is, in the long run, more economical than "do-it-yourself".

问答题Questions 7～10 It is with a queasy feeling that the world"s bankers enter 2008. Within 12 months, they have seen record profits crumble, once-booming debt businesses blighted by write—owns, and the troubles of some former high-flyers in the mortgage industry threaten the soundness of the financial system. Fresh obstacles loom in 2008, including a new regulatory regime, known as Basel 2, whose shortcomings have emerged even before it has been officially born. More worrying still would be a slowdown in the world economy. That is not all. The maelstrom in credit markets in 2007 exposed flaws in a banking model that has transformed the finance industry: the banks" ability to sell loans that they don"t want to keep to investors hungry for high-yielding assets. This "U-Haul" model of distributed risk had been widely considered one of the marvels of modern finance, until trouble hit. The ability of American banks to turn their loans, via Wall Street"s alchemists, into packages of high-yielding securities and sell them to investors was supposed to have enabled banks to diversify their exposure to credit risk. Bank failures had for years been minimal, even during the Asian and Russian debt crises of 1997 and 1998 and the dotcom collapse. By keeping fewer loans on their balance sheets, banks reported stronger returns on their assets, helping to generate bumper earnings. The coming year will test how much of that risk has indeed been spread, and how much of the diversification was illusory. Did banks simply replace the risk of lending on their own doorstep with exposures from outside their sphere of expertise? Some lenders appear to have bamboozled naive borrowers into taking on mortgages they couldn"t afford, knowing they could sell the unsound loans into the market with few questions asked. Others made themselves vulnerable by financing long- term loans in the short-term money markets, rather than from depositors or through issuance of bonds. They were strangled when the money markets seized up. Taking such risks will be far harder in 2008, because everyone has been sharply reminded of the maturity mismatch between assets and liabilities that is at the heart of banking. So banks will have to court depositors, not the capital markets. When they make loans, they will have to keep them, monitor them and ensure repayment, rather than passing them on like hot potatoes. "There will be a mad rush back to traditional banking," predicts Dick Bove, banking analyst at Punk Ziegel. The process will not be smooth. Politicians, especially in the American Congress, may tie up lenders with red tape. And Basel 2, with its new capital-adequacy framework for banks, will be roiled out across the European Union from January (it will affect some American banks in 2009). At least for less sophisticated banks, it leans heavily on rating agencies as arbiters of credit quality. But their credibility has been damaged by the over-optimistic assessments they made of some of the riskier debt instruments. Basel 2 also focuses on credit risk, and largely skates over the fickleness of liquidity that bedevilled markets in 2007. It has been a long time since banks have faced such torments, but their business has always been a cyclical one and only the foolish will have forgotten that. (As the saying goes, a banker is someone who lends you an umbrella when it is sunny, and asks for it back when it rains.) To tide them over, all those profits have left banks with plenty of capital in the vaults. Should that run out, central bankers in America and Europe have also shown a remarkable willingness to provide liquidity to the financial system to prevent panic. Tougher conditions are also reducing competition from non-bank financial players, which had flourished in the easy-money era. Aggressive mortgage banks, such as Countrywide in America and Northern Rock in Britain, have revealed their frailties. The big American banks—such as Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase—have retail-banking franchises that may expand by acquiring stricken competitors. The same holds true for well-capitalised retail banks in Europe. Investment banks that falter may find nationwide American banks offering to buy them; or European banks such as Italy"s UniCredit taking audacious advantage of their hour of need. Lurking in the background is another potential source of support, deep-pocketed governments in China and the Middle East, keen to invest part of their wealth in Western banks" assets and expertise. According to Morgan Stanley, sovereign-wealth funds spent $ 26 billion in the six months to October 2007 on big financial firms such as Barclays, a British bank, Blackstone, a private-equity group, and the London Stock Exchange. Banks, for their part, covet access to big emerging markets, and a strategic stake sold to the Chinese government, say, may ease the way to a strategic stake in a Chinese bank. But government ownership of banks is always tricky. That should not be forgotten just because an injection of yuan, roubles or petrodollars might provide a quick and easy way to keep a bad bank on life support.

问答题More people live by themselves. And more women work. And more money is available. These are the reasons why one of every three American food dollars now goes to restaurants or fast-food shops.

问答题For kids who are exposed to books at home, the loss of a library is sad. But for kids who come from environments where people don"t read, the loss of a library is a tragedy that might keep them from ever discovering the joys of reading—or from gathering the kind of information that will decide their lot in life. Jonathan Kozol, for decades an advocate for disadvantaged children, has observed that school libraries "remain the clearest window to a world of pure satisfactions and enticements that most children in poor neighborhoods will never know." Kids deprived of access to good libraries are also being kept from developing the information skills they need to keep up in workplaces that are increasingly dependent on rapidly changing information. The ability to conduct research is probably the most essential skill today"s students can have. The knowledge students acquire in school is not going to serve them throughout their lifetimes. Many of them will have four to five careers in a lifetime. It will be their ability to navigate information that will matter.

问答题有时候发生在你身上的一些事情起初看起来很可怕、很痛苦、很不公平，但是深思熟虑之后你会发现，如果没有克服过这些困难，你就永远不会意识到自己的潜力、实力、毅力和勇气。疾病、伤害、错失真正伟大的时刻以及极度愚蠢的言行，所有这些事情的出现都是在考验你灵魂的极限。无论它们是什么，如果不经历这些小的考验，你的生活只是一条平坦之路，却毫无目的。它也许是安全而舒适的，但也是枯燥和毫无意义的。如果某些人伤害了你，背叛了你或者伤了你的心，请原 谅他们，因为是他们帮助你明白了什么是信任，帮助你懂得了要谨慎选择你要交心的人。珍惜每一天，珍惜每一刻，并且带走每一刻所能得到的东西，因为你可能再也不能重复这个过程了。跟那些你从来没有说过话的人说话，并且倾听他们的话语。你可以做任何你想做的事情。创造自己的生活，然后走出去，去毫无遗憾地享受生活吧。