In his classic novel, "The Pioneers", James Fenimore Cooper has his hero, a land developer, take his cousin on a tour of the city he is building. He describes the broad streets, rows of houses, a teeming metropolis. But his cousin looks around bewildered. All she sees is a stubby forest. "Where are the beauties and improvements which you were to show me?" she asks. He"s astonished she can"t see them." Where! Why everywhere," he replies. For though they are not yet built on earth, he has built them in his mind, and they are as concrete to him as if they were already constructed and finished. Cooper was illustrating a distinctly American trait, future-mindedness: the ability to see the present from the vantage point of the future; the freedom to feel unencumbered by the past and more emotionally attached to things to come. "America is therefore the land of the future," the German philosopher Hegel wrote. "The American lives even more for his goals, for the future, than the European," Albert Einstein concurred. "Life for him is always becoming, never being." In 2012, America will still be the place where the future happens first, for that is the nation"s oldest tradition. The early Puritans lived in almost Stone Age conditions, but they were inspired by visions of future glories, God"s kingdom on earth. The early pioneers would sometimes travel past perfectly good farmland, because they were convinced that even more amazing land could be found over the next ridge. The founding Fathers took 13 scraggly colonies and believed they were creating a new nation on earth. The railroad speculators envisioned magnificent fortunes built on bands of iron. It"s now fashionable to ridicule the visions of dot-com entrepreneurs of the 1990s, but they had inherited the urge to leap for the horizon. "The Future is endowed with such a life, that it lives to us even in anticipation," Herman Melville wrote. "The Future is the Bible of the Free." This future-mindedness explains many modern features of American life. It explains workaholism: the average American works 350 hours a year more than the average European. Americans move more, in search of that brighter tomorrow, than people in other land. They also, sadly, divorce more, for the same reason. Americans adopt new technologies such as online shopping and credit cards much more quickly than people in other countries. Forty-five percent of world Internet use takes place in the United States. Even today, after the bursting of the stock-market bubble, American venture-capital firms—which are in the business of betting on the future—dwarf the firms from all other nations. Future-mindedness contributes to the disorder in American life, the obliviousness to history, the high rates of family breakdown, the frenzied waste of natural resources. It also leads to incredible innovations. According to the Yale historian Paul Kennedy, 75 percent of the Nobel laureates in economies and the sciences over recent decades have lived or worked in the United States. The country remains a magnet for the future-minded from other nations. One in twelve Americans has enjoyed the thrill and challenge of starting his own business. A study published in the Journal of International Business Studies in 2000 showed that innovative people are spread pretty evenly throughout the globe, but Americans are most comfortable with risk. Entrepreneurs in the U. S. are more likely to believe that they possess the ability to shape their own future than people in, say, Britain, Australia or Singapore. If the 1990s were a great decade of future-mindedness, we are now in the midst of a season of experience. It seems cooler to be skeptical, to pooh-pooh all those IPO suckers who lost their money betting on the telecom future. But the world is not becoming more French. By 2012, this period of chastisement will likely have run its course, and future-mindedness will be back in vogue, for better or worse. We don"t know exactly what the next future-mindedness frenzy will look like. We do know where it will take place: the American suburb. In 1979, three quarters of American office space were located in central cities. The new companies, research centers and entrepreneurs are flocking to these low buildings near airports, highways and the Wal-Mart malls, and they are creating a new kind of suburban life. There are entirely new metropolises rising-boom suburbs like Mesa, Arizona, that already have more people than Minneapolis or St. Louis. We are now approaching a moment in which the majority of American office space, and the hub of American entrepreneurship, will be found in quiet office parks in places like Rockville, Maryland, and in the sprawling suburbosphere around Atlanta. We also know that future-mindedness itself will become the object of greater study. We are discovering that there are many things that human beings do easily that computers can do only with great difficulty, if at all. Cognitive scientists are now trying to decode the human imagination, to understand how the brain visualizes, dreams and creates. And we know, too, that where there is future-mindedness, there is hope.

Harry Truman didn"t think his successor had the right training to be president. "Poor Ike—it won"t be a bit like the Army," he said. "He"ll sit there all day saying” do this, do that", and nothing will happen." Truman was wrong about Ike. Dwight Eisenhower had led a fractious alliance—you didn"t tell Winston Churchill what to do—in a massive, chaotic war. He was used to politics. But Truman"s insight could well be applied to another, even more venerated Washington figure: the CEO-turned cabinet secretary. A 20-year bull market has convinced us all that CEOs are geniuses, so watch with astonishment the troubles of Donald Rumsfeld and Paul O"Neill. Here are two highly regarded businessmen, obviously intelligent and well-informed, foundering in their jobs. Actually, we shouldn"t be surprised. Rumsfeld and O"Neill are not doing badly despite having been successful CEOs but because of it. The record of senior businessmen in government is one of almost unrelieved disappointment. In fact, with the exception of Robert Rubin, it is difficult to think of a CEO who had a successful career in government. Why is this? Well, first the CEO has to recognize that he is no longer the CEO. He is at best an adviser to the CEO, the president. But even the president is not really the CEO. No one is. Power in a corporation is concentrated and vertically Structured. Power in Washington is diffuse and horizontally spread out. The secretary might think he"s in charge of his agency. But the chairman of the congressional committee funding that agency feels the same. In his famous study "Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents", Richard Neustadt explains how little power the president actually has and concludes that the only lasting presidential power is "the power to persuade". Take Rumsfeld"s attempt to transform the cold-war military into one geared for the future. It"s innovative but deeply threatening to almost everyone in Washington. The Defense Secretary did not try to sell it to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Congress, the budget office or the White House. As a result, the idea is collapsing. Second, what power you have, you must use carefully. For example, O"Neill"s position as Treasury Secretary is one with little formal authority. Unlike Finance Ministers around the world, Treasury does not control the budget. But it has symbolic power. The secretary is seen as the chief economic spokesman for the administration and, if he plays it right, the chief economic adviser for the president. O"Neill has been publicly critical of the IMF"s bailout packages for developing countries while at the same time approving such packages for Turkey, Argentina and Brazil. As a result, he has gotten the worst of both worlds. The bailouts continue, but their effect in bolstering investor confidence is limited because the markets are rattled by his skepticism. Perhaps the government doesn"t do bailouts well. But that leads to a third role: you can"t just quit. Jack Welch"s famous law for re-engineering General Electric was to be first or second in any given product category, or else get out of that business. But if the government isn"t doing a particular job at peak level, it doesn"t always have the option of relieving itself of that function. The Pentagon probably wastes a lot of money. But it can"t get out of the national-security business. The key to former Treasury Secretary Rubin"s success may have been that he fully understood that business and government are, in his words, "necessarily and properly very different". In a recent speech he explained, "Business functions around one predominate organizing principle, profitability… Government, on the other hand, deals with a vast number of equally legitimate and often potentially competing objectives—for example, energy production versus environmental protection, or safety regulations versus productivity." Rubin"s example shows that talented people can do well in government if they are willing to treat it as its own separate, serious endeavor. But having been bathed in a culture of adoration and flattery, it"s difficult for a CEO to believe he needs to listen and learn, particularly from those despised and poorly paid specimens, politicians, bureaucrats and the media. And even if he knows it intellectually, he just can"t live with it.

Questions 6 to 10 are based on the following news.

The miserable fate of Enron"s employees will be a landmark in business history, one of those awful events that everyone agrees must never be allowed to happen again. This urge is understandable and noble, thousands have lost virtually all their retirement savings with the demise of Enron stock. But making sure it never happens again may not be possible, because the sudden impoverishment of those Enron workers represents something even larger than it seems. It"s the latest turn in the unwinding of one of the most audacious promise of the 20th century. The promise was assured economic security--even comfort--for essentially everyone in the developed world. With the explosion of wealth, that began in the 19th century it became possible to think about a possibility no one had dared to dream before. The fear at the center of daily living since caveman days-- lack of food, warmth, shelter—would at last lose its power to terrify. That remarkable promise became reality in many ways. Governments created welfare systems for anyone in need and separate programmes for the elderly (Social Security in the U.S.). Labour unions promised not only better pay for workers but also pensions for retirees. Giant corporations came into being and offered the possibility—in some cases the promise—of lifetime employment plus guaranteed pensions? The cumulative effect was a fundamental change in how millions of people approached life itself, a reversal of attitude that most rank as one of the largest in human history. For millennia the average person"s stance toward providing for himself had been. Ultimately I"m on my own. Now it became, ultimately I"ll be taken care of. The early hints that this promise might be broken on a large scale came in the 1980s. U.S. business had become uncompetitive globally and began restructuring massively, with huge layoffs. The trend accelerated in the 1990s as the bastions of corporate welfare faced reality. IBM ended it"s no-layoff policy. AT＆T fired thousands, many of whom found such a thing simply incomprehensible, and a few of whom killed themselves. The other supposed guarantors of our economic security were also in decline. Labor union membership and power fell to their lowest levels in decades. President Clinton signed a historic bill scaling back welfare. Americans realized that Social Security won"t provide social security for any of us. A less visible but equally significant trend is affected pensions. To make costs easier to control, companies moved away from defined benefit pension plans, which obligate them to pay out specified amounts years in the future, to defined contribution plans, which specify only how much goes into the play today. The most common type of defined-contribution plan is the 401(k). The significance of the 401(k) is that it puts most of the responsibility for a person"s economic fate back on the employee. Within limits the employee must decide how much goes into the plan each year and how it gets invested—the two factors that will determine how much it"s worth when the employee retires. Which brings us back to Enron? Those billions of dollars in vaporized retirement savings went in employees" 401(k) accounts. That is, the employees chose how much money to put into those accounts and then chose how to invest it. Enron matched a certain proportion of each employee"s 401(k) contribution with company stock, so everyone was going to end up with some Enron in his or her portfolio; but that could be regarded as a freebie, since nothing compels a company to match employee contributions at all. At least two special features complicate the Enron case. First, some shareholders charge top management with illegally covering up the company"s problems, prompting investors to hang on when they should have sold. Second, Enron"s 401 (k) accounts were locked while the company changed plan administrators in October, when the stock was falling, so employees could not have closed their accounts if they wanted to. But by far the largest cause of this human tragedy is that thousands of employees were heavily overweighed in Enron stock. Many had placed 100% of their 401(k) assets in the stock rather than in the 18 other investment options they were offered. Of course that wasn"t prudent, but it"s what some of them did. The Enron employees" retirement disaster is part of the larger trend away from guaranteed economic security. That"s why preventing such a thing from ever happening again may be impossible. The huge attitudinal shift to I"ll-be-taken-care-of took at least a generation. The shift back may take just as long. It won"t be complete until a new generation of employees see assured economic comfort as a 20m-century quirk, and understand not just intellectually but in their bones that, like most people in most times and places, they" re on their own.

Questions 6 to 10 are based on the following news.

Everyday, science seems to chip away at our autonomy. When researchers aren"t uncovering physical differences in the way men and women use their brains, they"re asserting genetic influences on intelligence, sexual orientation, obesity or alcoholism. Or they"re suggesting that the level of some brain chemical affects one"s chances of committing violent crimes. Each new finding leaves the impression that nature is winning out over nurture—that biology is destiny and free will an illusion. But the nature-nurture dichotomy is itself an illusion. As many scholars are now realizing, everything we associate with "nurture" is at some level a product of our biology—and every aspect of our biology, from brain development to food preference, has been shaped by an environment. Asking whether nature or nurture is more important is like asking whether length or width is a better gauge of size. Darwin recognized more than 100 years ago that Homo sapiens evolved by the same process as every other species on earth. And philosophers such as William James were eager to apply Darwin"s insights to human psychology. But during the first part of this century, the rise of "social Darwinism" (a non-Darwinian, sink-or-swim political philosophy) and late Nazi eugenics spawned a deep suspicion of biologically inspired social science. By 1954, anthropologist Ashley Montagu was declaring that mankind has "no instincts because everything he is and has becomes what she has learned, acquired, from his culture." The distinction between innate and acquired seems razor sharp, until you try slicing life with it. Consider the development of the brain. While gestating in the womb, a child develops some 50 trillion neurons. But those cells become functional only as they respond to outside stimuli. During the first year of life, the most frequently stimulated neurons form elaborate networks for processing information, while the others wither and die. You could say that our brains determine the structure of our brains. Social behavior follows the same principle. From the old nature-versus-nurture perspective, a tendency that isn"t uniformly expressed in every part of the world must be "cultural" rather than "natural". But there is no reason to assume that a universal impulse would always find the same expression. As the evolutionists John Tooby and Leda Cosmildes have observed, biology can"t dictate what language a child will speak, what games she"ll feel guilty or jealous about. But it virtually guarantees that she"ll do all of those things, whether she grows up in New Jersey or New Guinea. Biology, in short, doesn"t determine exactly what we" Il do in life. It determines how different environments will affect us. And our biology is itself a record of the environments our ancestors encountered. Consider the sexes" different perceptual styles. Men tend to excel at spatial reasoning, women at spotting stationary objects and remembering their locations. Such discrepancies may have a biological basis, but researchers have traced the biology back to specific environmental pressures. Archeological findings suggest that men hunted, and women foraged, throughout vast stretches of revolutionary time. And psychologists Irwin Silverman and Marion Eals have noted that "tracking and killing animals entail different kinds of spatial problems than does foraging for edible plants."

A censorship battle between protecting freedom of speech and protecting children from harmful Internet material is being fought on a rather unlikely field—the public library. In almost every city, town and village in the United States there is a public library, and every one of them now has computer terminals for public use. On one side of the battle, the American Library Association (ALA) is opposed to content filters on library computers with Internet access. On the opposing side, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that libraries must install filters to block indecent websites from library patrons under the age of eighteen. For the time being, the battle scene has stilled, but the ultimate winners in the all-out war for access versus control of the Web in public libraries have yet to be declared. The debate first raged in the U. S. due to the enactment of the federal Children"s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) in 1999. Public libraries, including school libraries, were forced to install content filters on Internet access terminals or lose certain federal funding. In response, the ALA started a legal battle to have the requirement reversed. In its 1943 Bill of Rights, the ALA said that libraries should present materials that represent many points of view on current and historical issues and not remove materials with unpopular viewpoints. At the same time, it is the responsibility of libraries to challenge censorship if they suspect it. However, in 2003, the Supreme Court ruled that the filtering was constitutional, and the law should stand. In its decision, the Supreme Court found that filters are "at least as effective" as government regulation of website operators. Earlier laws imposed criminal punishments on website operators for publishing harmful material. In contrast, CIPA places the burden on those who receive federal funds—public libraries and school districts—to ensure that children do not have access to obscene, pornographic, or other harmful images and text. According to supporters of the law, filters effectively keep out harmful Web content and do not have a negative impact on users. Whereas some libraries such as the San Francisco library system oppose the law and have stated they will not abide by it. Other libraries favor the filters and had even used blocking software on their computers before the law required it. In 1998, 15 percent of U. S. libraries used Internet filters, according to one survey. In the middle are libraries that have compromised by installing filters only on library terminals reserved for children. Opponents rightly argue that legitimate research sites are being blocked by excessive and harmful filters. They point to numerous examples of harmless websites—such as home pages of religious and academic institutions- that are blocked by the filter software. Anti-filter groups also charge that the devices do not filter out a substantial portion of inappropriate Internet material. A recent study found that the filters failed to block the transmission of pornography, violence, and hate speech 25 percent of the time. Dr. Martha McCarthy, an education professor at Indiana University, expects the Web war between law-makers and librarians to continue to produce court battles. "Despite the Supreme Court decision, there may be challenges to the application of CIPA in some public libraries," said McCarthy. For instance, she said that adults may allege that it is too complicated to turn off the filters when they want to use the computers. She went on to say that the battle between freedom of speech and protection of children is likely to continue with regard to content on the Internet. Clearly, the government needs to find a more viable solution, or the free expression war will continue to rage.

In developing a model of cognition, we must recognize that perception of the external world does not always remain independent of motivation. While progress toward maturity is positively correlated with differentiation between motivation and cognition, tension will, even in the mature adult, militate towards a narrowing of the range of perception. Cognition can be seen as the first step in the sequence events leading from the external stimulus to the behavior of the individual. The child develops from belief that all things are an extension of its own body to the recognition that objects exist independent of his perception. He begins to demonstrate awareness of people and things which are removed from his sensory apparatus and initiates goal-directed behaviors. He may, however, refuse to recognize the existence of barriers to the attainment of his goal, despite the fact that his cognition of these objects has been previously demonstrated. In the primitive beings, goal-directed behavior can be very simple motivated. The presence of an attractive object will cause an infant to reach for it; its removal will result in the cessation of that action. Studies have shown no evidence of the infant"s frustration; rather, it appears that the infant ceases to desire the object when he cannot see it. Further indications are that the infant"s attention to the attractive object increase as a result of its not being in his grasp. In fact, if he holds a toy and another is presented, he is likely to drop the first in order to clutch the second. Often, once he has the one desired in his hands, he loses attention and turns to something else. In adult life, mere cognition can be similarly motivational, although the visible presence of the opportunity is not required as the instigator of response. The mature adult modifies his reaction by obtaining information, interpreting it, and examining consequences. He formulates a hypothesis and attempts to test it. He searches out implicit relationships, examines all factors, and differentiates among them. Just as the trained artist can separate the value of color, composition, and technique, while taking in and evaluating the whole work, so, too, the mature person brings his cognitive learning strengths to bear in appraising a situation. Understanding that cognition is separate from action, his reactions are only minimally guided from conditioning, and take into consideration anticipatable events. The impact of the socialization process, particularly that of parental and social group ideology, may reduce cognitively directed behavior. The tension thus produced, as for instance the stress of fear, anger, or extreme emotion, will often be the overriding influence. The evolutionary process of development from body schema through cognitive learning is similarly manifested in the process of language acquisition. Auditing develops first, reading and writing much later on. Not only is this evident in the development of the individual being from infancy on, but also in the development of language for humankind. Every normal infant has the physiological equipment necessary to produce sound, but the child must first master their use for sucking, biting, and chewing before he can control his equipment for use in producing the sounds of language. The babble and chatter of the infant are precursors to intelligible vocal communication. From the earlier times, it is clear that language and human thought have been intimately connected. Sending or receiving messages, from primitive warnings of danger to explaining creative or reflective thinking, this aspect of cognitive development is also firmly linked to the needs and aspirations of society.

At eight o" clock every morning from Tuesday to Saturday, French television viewers can watch a subtitled version of the previous evening"s CBS news from New York. Not long ago, this would have provoked growls of protesting about America"s cultural invasion of France. But the remarkable fact is that Mr. Dan Rather"s arrival on French television screens has gone virtually unremarked. This calmness requires an explanation. Is it that France has simply given up trying to protect itself from a seductive flood of American films, food, television programmes and music? Not quite. Calmness need not mean submission. The French film industry, for example, is calling for help against competition from French television, whose programming is padded out with old American films and series. Is it rather that France has overcome its old cultural fears and dislike of America? Again, no. On the whole, French people have always had a rather positive image of America. True, the French can be snobbish about American culture—often intensely so; but, whether of right or left, this snobbery is usually confined to elites. The anniversaries of the 1787 American constitution and the 1789 French revolution are giving many French and American academics an excuse to celebrate how much the two republics have in common. No, the calmness on the French side has a lot to do with a growing knowledge of America in France. As piecemeal, factual views of America replace more fanciful or all-or-nothing ones, France is waking up to the fact that the cultural trade between it and America is more of a two-way street than the periodic excitement about "American cultural imperialism" suggests. American studies in France are enjoying, if not a boom, at least a slow and comfortable growth, according to Professor Rene Vincent, the director of the Revue Francoise des Etudies Americans. This has taken a while. French universities did not take America seriously enough until some years after the Second World War, when young French scholars on Fulbright scholarships came back to France to teach American literature and history. Even then, America lurked in Britain"s shadow in French universities. But American study has won its independence from les Anglicistes. And, as it does so, American study in France is drifting away from literature towards history and politics. Helping, of course, is the fact that learning English in France is now widely felt to be indispensable to getting ahead. About half of France"s universities now offer courses in American studies. At the French equivalent of post-graduate level, some 50 doctorates on American topics are awarded each year. But American studies in France still have a long way to go. Paris has flourishing British, German, Latin-American and Spanish institutes; it will soon have an Arab institute. But there is no American institute. Talks about starting one have dragged on for years. One reason for the lack of enthusiasm—and money—on the American side is the absence of a large community of French immigrants in the United States. Though the Fulbright programme provides many university exchanges, there is no proper equivalent of the West German Marshall Fund. There are plenty of American banks and companies in Paris, but the trickle-down from American business is small. The Franco-American Foundation promotes scholarly exchanges but has a tiny budget. Another case of sad neglect is the once-famous American library in Paris. Set up after the First World War, it is so short of money it opens only part-time. This neglect is all the more regrettable because many of the best American universities have a keen interest in France. Despite the fact that Spanish might seem the obvious choice, French is still, at least on the east coast, the favoured foreign language in universities. For politics, Harvard"s French studies programme is famous. At the beginning of October, New York and Columbia Universities brought to America a large part of the teaching faculty of France"s Institute des Etudes Politiques for three days of talk with American experts about the state of France. Yale has long been an American centre of "French studies". As an import point for French philosophy and literary theory, Yale"s dockside has been worn bare by the sheer volume of traffic. However quickly schools changed in Paris, Yale was able to tool up on the latest one: structuralism, Lacanian theories of psychoanalysis, deconstructionism. Johns Hopkins in Baltimore is another big entrepot for French ideas in the United States. Historians of the school stress geography, population and social change, not the dramas of princes. Binghampton University in New York has a Braudel Institute; Harvard University Press is publishing a "History of Private Life" edited by Mr. Georges Duby and the late Philippe Aries, both colleagues of Braudel. The Statue of Liberty has not been France"s only gift to America.

Questions 1 to 5 are based on the following conversation.

The Greek word utopia has been used by those who envision a perfect world. The social reformers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, like the British industrialist Robert Owen and the French theorist Charles Fourier, are considered Utopians because they believed in impossibly ideal conditions of social organization. Convinced that they possessed the truth, Utopians often exhibited a sense of mission by which they tried to persuade the unbeliever to accept the truth of their visions. Nonviolent but persuasive. Utopians relied heavily on providing unbelievers with information to convert them to the Utopian vision so that they joined the cause. Utopians relied on informal education to make their messages known to an ever-widening audience Owen and Fourier, for example, were tireless writers who produced volumes of essays and other publications. In particular, Owen was a frequent lecturer and organizer of committees designed to advance his Utopian beliefs. Education was designed to create a popular movement for joining the Utopian cause. In this journalist or lecture stage, Utopian education consisted of two elements. First, it mentioned the ills of society and suggested how they might be remedied. Second, it presented a picture of life, often minutely detailed, in the new society. Utopians believed that modern industrialism had caused individuals to lose interest in the values of both family and the larger society, resulting in personal and social disorganization. To overcome this sense of alienation Utopians sought to create perfectly integrated communities. Like the ancient Greek city-state, the new community would be a totally instructive environment. Work, leisure, art, and social and economic relationships would reinforce the sense of community and cultivate communitarian values. Fourier"s form of communal organization, the phalanstery, consisted of 2,000 members and was organized into flexible groups that provided for production, education, and recreation. In addition to communal workshops, kitchens, and laundries, the phalanstery would also provide libraries, concert halls, and study rooms for its members. Utopian theorists, especially Owen, emphasized the education of the young in institutes and schools. The child, they reasoned, held the key to continuing the new society. Rejecting older concepts of child depravity and inherited human weakness, Utopians believed that human nature can be molded. Owen and other Utopians advocated beginning children"s education as early as possible. Young children, they reasoned, were free of the prejudices and biases of the previously established social order. If they were educated in community nurseries, they would be free from the contaminating ideas of those who had not yet been cured of the vices of the established society. They could be shaped into the desired type of communitarian human beings. Community nurseries and infant schools performed a second function: freeing women from the burdens of child rearing and allowing them to have full equality with the male residents of Utopia. According to Fourier, the family and the school in the previously established social order were agencies used to criticize and correct children. Fourier intended to replace them with associative or group-centered education in which peer friends would correct negative behavior in the spirit of open friendship. Fourier"s associative form of education involved mutual criticism and group correction, which was a form of character molding that brought about community social control and conformity. Fourier believed that children, like adults, had instincts and interests that should be encouraged rather than repressed. He envisioned a system of miniature work shops in which children could develop their industrious instincts. His associative education was also intended to further the children"s complete development. First, the body and its senses were exercised and developed. Second, cooking, gardening, and other productive activities would cultivate the skills of making and managing products. Third, mental, moral, and spiritual development would incline the child to truth and justice. Schooling in the Utopian designs of Owen, Fourier, and others rejected learning that was highly verbal, rigidly systematic, and dominated by classical languages. Because of its concern for forming character, it often led to pioneering in sights in early childhood education. It was intended, however, to bring about a sense of conformity to group norms and rules. While immersion in the group diminished the personal alienation caused by industrial society, it also restricted the opportunity to develop individual difference and creativity.

Questions 16 to 20 are based on the following talk.

Questions 11 to 15 are based on the following interview.

Questions 1 to 5 are based on the following conversation.

填空题It is difficult to give a description of 1 because they vary from state to state and city to city. Some towns allow the sale of very weak, 2 , known as "three-two" beer. Some places 3 of any alcohol on Sundays, not only in bars but also in shops. You may find a locked bar over the alcohol shelves. In many parts of America, you are not allowed to drink alcohol 4 . That is, you may not sit in a park or 5 drinking beer, and you cannot even take a nice bottle of wine 6 . In some public places, people can be seen taking drinks from cans 7 . These are not cans of Coca-Cola. 8 you are not allowed to drink alcohol while driving, or even 9 container in the car. Some bars 10 only for beer and wine. Others are also allowed to sell spirits and thus, as Americans say, " 11 ". Many bars have a period 12 , often longer than an hour, when they sell drinks with prices 13 . This is usually around 5p.m. and may be only 14 of the week. Legal drinking age varies from state to state but is generally 15 . Some states permit 16 at 18 but spirits only at 21. Others permit the consumption only of "three-two" beer from 18 to 21. 17 , in some parts of the USA, young people 18 , marry, raise children, keep full-time jobs, be tried in courts as adults, join the army and even buy guns but not 19 . In some places 18 to 21 year olds are allowed into bars but not allowed to drink. Another even more interesting aspect of American drinking-age laws is that in some places people 20 are not even allowed to sell alcohol.

填空题How many time do you spend with your parents? 75.______ Your parents are your dearer people in the world 76.______ when you are young. And they always care of you 77.______ deep. But even though many children still love their 78.______ mum and dad, families may become more close 79.______ as you get older. The end of the year is a time for80.______ families to get together. Have you ever thought of 81.______ how you can show your parents that you love them? 82.______ Find a chance and do something for them or to have 83.______ sincere talk with them. If you can do this, your parents 84.______ will be very happy.

填空题We all have problems and barriers that block our progress or prevent us from moving into new areas. When that happens, consider the following three ways of dealing with a 1 . One way is to pretend it doesn"t exist. 2 it, deny it, and lie about it. However, this approach leaves the barrier 3 . A second approach is to fight the barrier. This often 4 the barrier"s magnitude. The more one struggles, the 5 the problem gets. The third 6 is to love the barrier. Accept it. Totally experience it. Tell the 7 about it. When you do this, the barrier 8 its power. Suppose one of your barriers is being afraid of 9 in front of a group. You can use any of these three approaches. First, you can 10 you"re not afraid about speaking in public. The second way is to 11 the barrier. You could tell yourself, "I"m not scared," and then try to keep your knees from knocking. Generally, this doesn"t 12 . The third approach is to get up and look out into the 13 , and say to yourself, "Yup, I"m scared and that"s OK. I"m going to 14 this speech even though I"m scared." And you might discover if you examine the fear, accept it, and totally 15 it, the fear itself also 16 . Remember two ideas: First, loving a problem is not necessarily the same as 17 it. Love in this sense means total and unconditional acceptance. Second, "unconditional acceptance" is not the same as unconditional 18 . Often the most effective 19 come when we face a problem squarely—diving into it headfirst and getting to know it in 20 .

填空题{{B}}A: Spot Dictation{{/B}} Direction: In this part of the test, you will hear a passage and read the same passage with blanks in it. Fill in each of the blanks with the words you have heard on the tape. Write your answer in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET. Remember you will hear the passage ONLY ONCE. Wall Street Stocks are mixed with blue chips rebounding from {{U}}(1) {{/U}}. Right now the DOW industrials are up nearly 12 points at {{U}}(2) {{/U}}. It has been down 21 points. But the NASDAQ composite is {{U}}(3) {{/U}}, at 13.43. Bonds also rebounded from their {{U}}(4) {{/U}}, the treasuries 30-year issue is up eleven thirty seconds of a point {{U}}(5) {{/U}}, pulling the yield down to 6.62 percent. ITT is offering to {{U}}(6) {{/U}}, an Italian phone book publisher. The hotel and casino giant is {{U}}(7) {{/U}} to complete the 1.6 billion dollar deal. ITT actually made the offer long before. Hilton hotels {{U}}(8) {{/U}} its 6.5 billion dollar take-over bid for ITT. But just a few weeks ago, ITT said it would stick to {{U}}(9) {{/U}} and sell other assets to help fend off Hilton's bid. The US dollar is mixed against most major currencies, after {{U}}(10) {{/U}} on Thursday. The dollar is now up {{U}}(11) {{/U}} of the yen on the Japanese currency. It's up slightly on the German Mark, but it's down {{U}}(12) {{/U}} on the British pound. Turning to European stock market, shares in Germany {{U}}(13) {{/U}} on Friday. In Frankfurt, the DAX is 12 points to finish the day at {{U}}(14) {{/U}}. British and French stocks are also weak. In London, the Financial Times 100 Index is down 34 points. And in Paris the Cackulaunt is down 1 point. {{U}}(15) {{/U}} in the European tire market is forcing Michelin to slash nearly 1,500 jobs. The French tire markets said the cut will {{U}}(16) {{/U}} early retirements, transfers and other measures. Union Baker Switzerland reporting 1996 loss of 235 million dollars, but most of that is due to a big charge for {{U}}(17) {{/U}}. Separately, USB has tracked down a third of its 7 million dollar in dormant accounts {{U}}(18) {{/U}} World War Ⅱ. But it says none of the money {{U}}(19) {{/U}} holocaust victims. Later, on world business today we'll look what this means to {{U}}(20) {{/U}}.

填空题You probably know that asthma can cause breathing problems. So can kids with asthma play sports? (1) ! Being active and playing sports is an especially good idea if you have asthma. Why? Because it can (2) , so they work better. Some athletes with asthma have done more than develop stronger lungs. They've played (3) , and they've even won medals at the Olympic Games! Some sports are less likely to bother a person's asthma. (4) are less likely to trigger flare-ups, and soare sports like baseball, football and gymnastics. In some sports, you need to (5) . These activities may be harder for people with asthma. They (6) , cycling, soccer, basketball, cross-country skiing, (7) . But that doesn't mean you can't play these sports if (8) .In fact, many athletes with asthma have found that with the (9) , they can do anysport they choose. But before playing sports, it's important that your asthma is (10) . That means you aren't having lots of (11) . To make this happen, it's very important that you (12) just as your doctor tells you to, even when (13) . Your doctor will also tell you some other things you can do to avoid flare-ups. This may mean (14) when there is lots of pollen in the air, wearing (15) when you play outside during the winter, or making sure you always have time for (16) . Make sure your coach and team-mates know about your asthma. That way, they will understand if you (17) because of breathing trouble. It's also helpful if your coach (18) if you have a flare-up. Listen to your body and (19) you’re your doctor gave you for handling breathing problems. And if you keep your asthma in good control, you'll be in the game and (20) !You probably know that asthma can cause breathing problems. So can kids with asthma play sports? (1) ! Being active and playing sports is an especially good idea if you have asthma. Why? Because it can (2) , so they work better. Some athletes with asthma have done more than develop stronger lungs. They've played (3) , and they've even won medals at the Olympic Games! Some sports are less likely to bother a person's asthma. (4) are less likely to trigger flare-ups, and soare sports like baseball, football and gymnastics. In some sports, you need to (5) . These activities may be harder for people with asthma. They (6) , cycling, soccer, basketball, cross-country skiing, (7) . But that doesn't mean you can't play these sports if (8) .In fact, many athletes with asthma have found that with the (9) , they can do anysport they choose. But before playing sports, it's important that your asthma is (10) . That means you aren't having lots of (11) . To make this happen, it's very important that you (12) just as your doctor tells you to, even when (13) . Your doctor will also tell you some other things you can do to avoid flare-ups. This may mean (14) when there is lots of pollen in the air, wearing (15) when you play outside during the winter, or making sure you always have time for (16) . Make sure your coach and team-mates know about your asthma. That way, they will understand if you (17) because of breathing trouble. It's also helpful if your coach (18) if you have a flare-up. Listen to your body and (19) you’re your doctor gave you for handling breathing problems. And if you keep your asthma in good control, you'll be in the game and (20) !