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单选题 {{B}}Questions 27-30{{/B}}

单选题{{B}}Statements{{/B}}{{B}}Directions:{{/B}} In this part of the test, you will hear several short statements. These statements will be spoken{{B}} ONLY ONCE{{/B}}, and you will not find them written on the paper; so you must listen carefully. When you hear a statement, read the answer choices and decide which one is closest in meaning to the statement you have heard. Then write the letter of the answer you have chosen in the corresponding space in your {{B}}ANSWER BOOKLET.{{/B}}

单选题Questions 6～10 Steven Spielherg has taken Hollywood"s depiction of war to a new level. He does it right at the start of Saving Private Ryan , in a 25 minute sequence depicting the landing of American forces on Omaha Beach in 1944. This is not the triumphant version of D-Day we"re used to seeing, but an inferno of severed arms, spilling intestines, flying corpses and blood-red tides. To those of us who have never fought in a war, this reenactment—newsreel-like in its verisimilitude, hallucinatory in its impact—leaves you convinced that Spielberg has taken you closer to the chaotic, terrifying sights and sounds of combat than any filmmaker before him. This prelude is so strong, so unnerving, that I feared it would overwhelm the rest of the film When the narrative proper begins, there"s an initial feeling of diminishment, it"s just a movie, after all, with the usual banal music cues and actors going through their paces. Fortunately, the feeling passes. Saving Private Ryan reasserts its grip on you and, for most of its 2 hour and 40 minute running time, holds you in thrall. Our heroes are a squad of eight soldiers lucky enough to survived Omaha Beach. Now they are sent, under the command of Captain Miller (Tom Hanks), to find and safely return from combat a Private Ryan (Matt Damon), whose three brothers have already died in action. Why should they risk their lives to save one man? The question haunts them, and the movie. The squad is a familiar melting-pot assortment of World War Two grunts—the cynical New Yorker (Edward Burns) who doesn"t want to risk his neck; the Jew (Adam Goldberg); the Italian (Vin Diesel); the Bible-quoting sniper from Tennessee (Barry Pepper); the medic (Giovanni Ribisi). The most terrified is an inexperienced corporal (Jeremy Davies) brought along as a translator. Davies seems to express every possible variety of fear on his eloquently scrawny face. Tom Sizemore is also impressive as Miller"s loyal second in command. As written by Robert Rodat, they could be any squad in any war movie. But Spielberg and his actors make us care deeply about their fate. Part of the movie"s power comes from Hank"s quietly mysterious performance as their decent, reticent leader (the men have a pool going speculating about what he did in civilian life). There"s an unhistrionic fatalism in Captain Miller; he just wants to get the job done and get home alive, but his eyes tell you he doesn"t like the odds. The level of work in Saving Private Ryan —from the acting to Janusz Kaminski"s brilliantly bleached-out color cinematography to the extraordinary sound design by Gary Rydstorm—is state of the art. For most of Saving Private Ryan , Spielberg is working at the top of his form, with the movie culminating in a spectacularly staged climactic battle in a French village. The good stuff is so shattering that it overwhelms the lapses, but you can"t help noticing a few Hollywood moments. Sometimes Spielberg doesn"t seem to trust how powerful the material is, and crosses the line into sentimentality. There"s a prelude and a coda, set in a military cemetery, which is written and directed with a too-heavy hand. But the truth is, this movie so wiped me out that I have little taste for quibbling. When you emerges from Spielberg"s cauldron, the world doesn"t look quite the same.

单选题The passage suggests that issues of a free press ______.

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单选题The study of management is at a turning point. What began as the study of "best practice" among large manufacturing firms has grown to encompass specialized fields ranging from finance to government. As the subject matter has changed, so has the role played by its masters. Business schools and management consultants used to spend most of their time training the inexperienced, bringing them up to speed on case studies of "excellent" companies. Now they also create their own theories to challenge the wisdom of businessmen. And those theories have the power to change the ways in which even the best companies do business. The new scope and power of management theories have created an identity crisis. Are teachers of management like historians, distilling the wisdom of the world into a form that others can absorb and imitate? Or are they innovators, changing the world with their new theories and ideas? And, if they are to be innovators, what are to be the doctrine and dogma from which their theories spring? Bright management ideas abound, but two factors make it hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. One is the "Hawthorne effect". Early in the twentieth century, managers at General Electric"s Hawthorne plant began a study of how better lighting might increase productivity. They turned up the lights. Productivity went up. For exactitude, they also turned down the lights, expecting productivity to fall. It didn"t; it went again. In fact, just about anything done to the Hawthorne workers increased productivity. They liked the attention. Given workers" ability to respond positively to extra attention—however abjectly lunatic and misguided—a fallback criterion for measuring the success of a management theory is profits. But here the past seven years of steady economic growth, combined with roaring bull markets, have shown virtually all business ideas in their kindest light. For the time being, professors themselves are left with great leeway to decide which ideas are worth teaching and which are best forgotten. But the perspectives from which they make such decisions are changing fast. Management schools first started cropping up in America at the tuna of the century. Their role was to mould a new type of top manager to run a new type of corporation: the diversified manufacturer. Paragon of the new breed of company was General Motors—as redesigned by Alfred Sloan, who also founded the Sloan School of Management at MIT. To tap economies of scale and scope GM was one of the first firms to organize management by function, creating a finance department, a marketing department, an engineering department and so on. This new organization, in turn, required a new breed of manager at the top—where the functional divisions came together—who could get the most out of the vast and specialized resources spread out beneath him. The new breed of magnate had to understand the various skills he commanded, from finance to manufacturing. Few had time to gain all that knowledge on shop—and trading-room-floors. The new managers also had to be able to translate their knowledge into a common language, which often meant the rows and columns of management accounting. And, because of the complexity of their empires, they had to be more conscious of the theory and practice of organization. In many ways, the logical culmination of this management philosophy was Harlod Geneen of ITT (MBA, Harvard). He created a vast conglomerate based on "management by numbers"—the idea that if one could read management accounts right, one could manage just about anything. But neither conglomerateers nor big manufacturers have had an easy time of late. Not only have economies shifted towards service industries, but the turbulence of recent years has encouraged the break-up of big firms into smaller chunks. Though the required "core" curriculum of most business schools still prepares graduates for life in a firm like GM, only a minority of MBAs now go into big manufacturing companies. Some of the best-publicized successors to Harold Geneen"s manage-by-numbers philosophy have drifted into the mergers and acquisitions departments of investment banks. Others have scattered across the world of business. If today"s MBA can be said to have a typical career, he would begin in finance or consulting and end up founding a business. Business schools, meanwhile, encourage diversity by expanding the number of subjects which they teach. Though programs vary greatly, most MBA curricula can be divided roughly into three parts: a core curriculum of required subjects; a specialized subject that the MBA studies in greater depth; and the educational process itself, which emphasizes the sort of teamwork that MBAs will have to adopt in the real world. The core curriculum includes the facts and skills which every MBA must master. At most business schools it includes marketing (how to discover who might want to buy your product and why), finance (how to get and use capital), management accounting (how to keep financiers abreast of how you are doing), organization (how to create teams that work), manufacturing (how to tell people who make things what to do), and information technology (what computers can do). By the standards of any other graduate program, much of the core MBA is remarkably rudimentary. Business-school students are not expected to know what a bond is, or a share. Accounting courses do not take for granted even the basic principles of double-entry bookkeeping, let alone the basics of reading a balance sheet. Though the level of these courses is a humbling reminder of the lack of business education elsewhere—the average 18-year-old in America or Britain probably knows more about nuclear physics than about business—it can hardly justify MBAs high salaries and high-flying reputations. For that, MBAs must rely on their specialized studies and the sheer process of MBA instruction. Mr. David Norburn, head of the MBA program of London"s Imperial College, is fond of ribbing his students and staff with the argument that his school might as usefully offer a "Masters of Advanced Plumbing" as an MBA. Much of the real value of an MBA, he argues, lies in recreating in MBA studies the feeling of working in business. Problems are structured so that they can be solved only by teams. Pressure is kept high. There is never enough time or information to reach definite conclusions, encouraging inspired guessing and "quality bluffing". And, at the end of the day, there is no pretence of sharing rewards equally among the team—an individual takes the best prizes. For employers, the best part of an MBA often lies in his specialized training. Given inflation into the technicalities of, say, bond trading or market analysis, an MBA can often go straight to work at a level which untrained colleagues may take a year or more to reach on the job. Better, he can bring new ideas to an organization; most home-grown experts cannot. So it is no surprise that some of the most frantic innovation in business schools is the fine- tuning of specialized curricula, and the introduction of new special subjects. The dean of the Stanford School of Business, Mr. Robert Jaedicke, has compiled a list of the new features proposed for tomorrow"s MBAs. It includes: Globalization. As competition increasingly ignores national boundaries, so too must managers. That means that managers must be able to build teams which include various nationalities working side by side. Regulation. Governments and regulatory agencies from GATT to America"s Food and Drug Administration—play a growing role in defining how businesses compete. Managers must be increasingly good at working with (or around) them. Ethics and social responsibility. Businesses have gradually assumed a broad social and political role. They are patrons of the arts. They have become embroiled in social and political change—e. g., in the controversy over apartheid in South Africa and, at home, in "affirmative action programmes" to promote minorities. That means that managers must become sophisticated about balancing their duties to shareholders with their social roles. How will business schools get all this new knowledge? Mr. Jaedicke, for one, plans to borrow it from other parts of his university. He is now trying to get political scientists interested in the problems of business and regulation. He wonders whether, in a few years, he might be recruiting moral philosophers to help businessmen sort out their ethics. Borrowing, he argues, is how management theory grows most healthily—witness the transformation that economists recruited by business schools in the 1960s have wrought on financial markets.

单选题Questions 27-30

单选题Questions 19-22

单选题 Research into self-awareness consistently shows that most people think and speak highly of themselves. Time and again, subjects see positive traits as more self-descriptive than negative ones, they rate themselves more highly than they rate others, they rate themselves more highly than they are rated by others, they overestimate their contribution to team efforts, and they exaggerate their control over life events. It's not that we consciously flatter ourselves, either. The response is more like a mindless reflex. In fact, when subjects are busy or distracted as they make self-ratings, the judgments they come up with are quicker and even more favorable. Most people also exhibit "unrealistic optimism", a tendency to predict a uniquely bright and rosy future for themselves. College students asked to predict their own future compared to that of their classmates believed, on average, that they were more likely to graduate higher in their class, get a better job, earn a higher salary, have a happier marriage, and bear a gifted child. They also believed that they were less likely to get fired, become depressed, become involved in a car accident, or suffer from a heart attack. Many other examples illustrate this point—as when voters predict that their favored candidate will prevail and sports fans bet on their favorite teams to win. Psychologists used to agree that an accurate perception of reality is vital to mental health. More and more, however, this view is being challenged by research on positive illusions. Are these illusions a sign of well-being or symptoms of disorder? In 1988 two psychologists reviewed the relevant research and noticed that people who are mildly depressed or low in self-esteem have less inflated and sometimes more realistic views of themselves than do others who are better adjusted. Their self-appraisals are more likely to match appraisals of them made by neutral others, they are less likely to exaggerate their control over uncontrollable events, and they make more balanced predictions about the future. Based on these results, psychologists arrived at the provocative conclusion that when it comes to the self, positive illusions—not accurate perceptions of reality—promote health and well-being. In their words, "these illusions help make each individual's world a warmer and more active and beneficent place in which to live." In fact, research involving people under stress—such as people with serious illnesses—shows that perceived control, optimism, and other positive beliefs are "health protective" psychological resources that help people cope with adversity. Others are not so sure that eternal optimists are better off than hard realists. They argue that positive illusions can give rise to chronic patterns of self-destruction—as when people escape from self-awareness through the use of drugs and deny health-related problems until it s too late for treatment. In studies of interpersonal relations, people with inflated rather than realistic views of themselves were rated less favorably on certain dimensions by their own friends. In these studies, self-enhancing men were seen as assertive and ambitious, which are OK, but also as boastful, condescending, hostile, and inconsiderate. Self-enhancing women were seen as more hostile, more defensive and sensitive to criticism, more likely to overreact to minor setbacks, and less well liked by others. Consistent with these findings, other research shows that people filled with high self-esteem are more likely to lash out angrily in response to criticism, rejection, and other bruises to the ego. The result. People with inflated self-images may make a good first impression on others but they are liked less and less as time wears on.

单选题Miguel knocked on one of the doors. When no one answered, he pushed the door open. He immediately realized his mistake. He'd blundered into another dressing room. Miguel knew he should leave the room immediately, but he couldn't help staring at the guy in the room. He seemed to be taking to himself. No one in the room was talking back. Yet there was someone else there. A girl. Most of her was hidden behind the speaker's broad-shouldered body. Miguel saw a flash of slender hands reaching up, fussing with the front of the guy's light brown hair. "Glenn, hold still!" the girl's voice suddenly cut through the speaker's monologue, "If you don't stop wriggling. I might burn you with this curling iron!" Miguel's blood turned to boiling acid. Leanna! She hadn't wasted any time getting a new boyfriend. Miguel had to see what this loser looked like. "Excuse me," Miguel said, walking toward the couple. "Can you tell me the supply closet?" "This isn't the supply closet," Glenn said arrogantly, "Get lost. " "But I'm already lost," Miguel said cheerfully. He was ignoring Glenn now and watching Leanna for some sort of reaction. Her face was totally drained of color, and her almond eyes were so wide, they almost seemed round. "What are you doing here?" Leanna gasped. "Looking for an extension cord," Miguel replied. He pointed to the white cord connecting the curling iron to the outlet. "How about that one?" "No! That's mine," Glenn said, "Leanna, you only put one wave in my hair. " "Hey, Leanna, you never did my hair when we were dating," Miguel said. He leaned against the wall, almost in Leanna's face, and ruffled his bangs with his fingers. Miguel wasn't sure what he was trying to prove. He couldn't stand seeing Leanna so close to Glenn, touching his hair. If he could goad Leanna into losing her temper, Miguel hoped he'd be able to hate her again, instead of wanting her back. "Get out of here," Leanna said coldly. "You used to go out with this janitor?" Glenn asked Leanna. "I'm not a janitor," Miguel said, "I'm helping Scott with the lights. " "Yeah?" Glenn turned to Miguel, "Make sure you keep that spotlight on me, boy. I'm the star of this show. " "You may be the star," Miguel said, his voice low, "but I'm not your boy. " "I can say whatever I want," Glenn shot back, "My parents pay taxes, but you immigrants sneak into this country illegally and take jobs away from Americans. Do you want me to call Immigration?" Leanna suddenly stepped between them. "I can't believe you, Glenn. Miguel's not an immigrant. His family came here from the Philippines, and—" Glenn's nostrils flared, "These foreigners are taking over the country. It makes me sick!" "I'm a Filipino and I'm proud of it !" Leanna, hands on her hips, was shouting in Glenn's face, "Do I make you sick, Glenn?" "Of course not !" Glenn looked shocked, "You were born here. I'm talking about people who come from other countries. Most of them go on welfare and they run down the neighborhoods and commit crimes. Why should they have the same rights as American citizens ?" "Because we're human beings," Leanna said. Miguel noticed that Leanna had put herself in the same category. She wasn't trying to impress him. She was speaking from the heart. "It's not where you come from that matters," Leanna told Glenn, "It's what kind of person you are inside. Miguel's honest and hardworking, but you're a conceited jerk!" "What's going on in here?" a new voice demanded. The agent, Tyrone Ashby, appeared in the doorway. "Five minutes to curtain time! Glenn, get out there!" "I'm outta here, all right," Glenn said, "You can have your crummy show without me! " Miguel barely noticed Glenn or the agent. All his attention was on Leanna. She turned to him, tears glistening in her eyes. "Miguel, I'm sorry I lied to you," she said, "I know you'll never forgive me. But I wanted to say thank you. Because of you, I've learned to love my Philippine heritage. I hope someday we can be friends. " A lump rose in Migucl's throat, and he knew, suddenly, that friendship would never be enough. "Leanna," he began. But then he felt his body slam into the wall as Glenn pushed roughly past on his way out the door. Miguel had barely caught his breath when Tyrone grabbed his arm. "You've got to take Glenn's place!" Tyrone cried, "You've got the right build, the same shoulders—" "Miguel hates modeling," Leanna said, "He won't do it... will you, Miguel?" Suddenly Miguel knew he'd do whatever it took to make Leanna smile. Beside, it was partly his fault that Glenn had walked out of the fashion show in the first place. If Miguel refused to fill in, lots of people would be disappointed. "Okay," he said, "But no makeup. " "No time for makeup." Tyrone dragged Miguel toward a rack of clothes. "Leanna, go tell them to delay the curtain. " "Leanna !" Miguel called, "Wait a second !" "What?" she asked, looking hopefully. "You can talk to her later!" Tyrone almost shrieked, "Put on this suit!" Miguel pointed to the curling iron. "The extension cord—give it to Scott!" When the show ended, Leanna hurried backstage. She found Miguel talking to Tyrone. But then Miguel looked directly at her. Rescue me, his eyes seemed to say. "There you are!" Miguel said, "Excuse us, Tyrone. We're late for—uh— something. " "What was that all about?" Leanna asked as she followed Miguel down the hallway. "Tyrone keeps saying I have The look. He wants me to enroll at Bayside. But that's not important right now." Miguel yanked open the first door he came to and stepped inside. "Come here, I need to talk to you. " "In a broom closet?" Leanna asked, stepping into a small room filled with brooms. "I guess it's not the most romantic spot," Miguel said, "But this isn't the worst mistake I've made. My worst mistake was breaking up with you. " Leanna caught her breath. "You—you forgive me?" "I was wrong, too." Miguel swallowed hard, "When you said those things to Glenn, I realized I was just as prejudiced as he was. I wanted you to be part of my world, but I wasn't ready to accept yours. I didn't respect the things that were important to you." "I didn't give you the chance to know what was important to me. " Miguel's face turned crimson. "I felt pretty good out on that runway," he admitted, "I see why you like it. Not that I'm ready to enroll at Bayside. " "But you have The look," Leanna teased. She took a step closer. She couldn't keep her hand from trembling as she reached out and brushed Miguel's silky bangs back from his forehead, "All you need are some curls here.., and here. " Leanna felt Miguel's arms tighten around her waist. "Leanna," Miguel began, "can we give it another try?" "I'm willing if you are," Leanna said, "I'm a Filipino, but I'm an American, too. I'd like us to explore both cultures. Together. " Leanna took a deep breath and hoped she'd get her pronunciation right. "Mahal kita, Miguel. " Surprise and pleasure lit Miguel's dark eyes. "I love you, too. " He said. And he sealed it with a kiss.

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单选题Questions 16～20 Stratford-on-Avon, as we all know, has only one industry—William Shakespeare—but there are two distinctly separate and increasingly hostile branches. There is the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), which presents superb productions of the plays at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre on the Avon. And there are the townsfolk who largely live off the tourists who come, not to see the plays, but to look at Anne Hathaway"s Cottage, Shakespeare"s birthplace and the other sights. The worthy residents of Stratford doubt that the theatre adds a penny to their revenue. They frankly dislike the RSC"s actors, them with their long hair and beards and sandals and noisiness. It"s all deliciously ironic when you consider that Shakespeare, who earns their living, was himself an actor (with a beard) and did his share of noise-making. The tourist streams are not entirely separate. The sightseers who come by bus—and often take in Warwick Castle and Blenheim Palace on the side—don"t usually see the plays, and some of them are even surprised to find a theatre in Stratford. However, the playgoers do manage a little sight- seeing along with their play going. It is the playgoers, the RSC contends, who bring in much of the town"s revenue because they spend the night (some of them four or five nights) pouring cash into the hotels and restaurants. The sightseers can take in everything and get out of town by nightfall. The townsfolk don"t see it this way and local council does not contribute directly to the subsidy of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Stratford cries poor traditionally. Nevertheless every hotel in town seems to be adding a new wing or cocktail lounge. Hilton is building its own hotel there, which you may be sure will be decorated with Hamlet Hamburger Bars, the Lear Lounge, the Banquo Banqueting Room, and so forth, and will be very expensive. Anyway, the townsfolk can"t understand why the Royal Shakespeare Company needs a subsidy. (The theatre has broken attendance records for three years in a row. Last year its 1,431 seats were 94 percent occupied all year long and this year they"ll do better.) The reason, of course, is that costs have rocketed and ticket prices have stayed low. It would be a shame to raise prices too much because it would drive away the young people who are Stratford"s most attractive clientele. They come entirely for the plays, not the sights. They all seem to look alike (though they come from all over)—lean, pointed, dedicated faces, wearing jeans and sandals, eating their buns and bedding down for the night on the flagstones outside the theatre to buy the 20 seats and 80 standing-room tickets held for the sleepers and sold to them when the box office opens at 10:30 a. m.

单选题 Question 15-18

单选题 Filled with the euphoria of victory and dreams of their first Big Ten title in 11 years, Penn State University students rushed the field as time expired in their win over Ohio State. In the chaos that followed, the campus police struggled to keep control, and identifying the overzealous fans seemed impossible, impossible, that is, until the police department turned to a new crime-fighting tool: facebook. com. Penn State officers had warned the students in advance last October that crossing over from the stands was a safety hazard and would not be permitted. When the rules were broken, a quick search online revealed the facebook, com photo album "1 rushed the field after the OSU game and lived." The album creator had even helpfully tagged all of those involved — offering the campus police an easy way to issue stem warnings. "It was really dangerous and not acceptable behavior," says Tyrone Parham, assistant director at the PSU police. "We needed to send a message. We searched the group, contacted the individuals and said that this was not tolerable behavior." Long a student favorite and the seventh most-trafficked Internet site, facebook. com has found a new following — those who wear blue. Traditionally, campus police forces have followed noise reports in their attempt to keep Saturday nights safe. But the advent of social networking sites is starting to revolutionize campus detective work. George Washington University police department chief Dolores Stafford claims, "Facebook exists and can certainly be a tool, but we're not out there looking at the site." Students at the college, however, are not so sure. When rumors flew that campus cops were using the student social network to infringe their right to party, GWU students decided to exact revenge. In a carefully executed plan, students filled facebook, com with chatter about a raging party they were throwing, hoping the police would be watching. They were not disappointed. When the officers arrived, they found shots glasses brimming with chocolate cake, Beirut cups filled with frosting, and party-goers loaded up on sugar rather than alcohol. While the GWU police deny using the Internet to find the party, the students felt vindicated. "Cake Party" attendee Kyle Stoneman comments: "From a larger standpoint, there's nothing immoral or illegal about the police using facebook. com. I guess they'll play their game, we'll play ours, and we'll see who wins." For college police forces, however, the issue is about more than winning. Instead, they try to find that delicate balance between upholding the law (read: preventing underage drinking) and maintaining good relations with the students (read: turning a blind eye). "It's a never-ending struggle," says Fisher College Chief of Campus Police John McLaughlin. "Like any other college and university, we want this to be as open of a relationship as possible. We don't want to be too obtrusive and we also don't want to be too strict. It requires real diligence."

单选题Why did the author mention the "massive one-day protest" in Paragraph 2?

单选题What'stherelationshipbetweenthemanandthewoman?[A]Bossandsecretary.[B]Fatheranddaughter.[C]Customerandassistant.

单选题Question 21-25 Species interdependence in nature confers many benefits on the species involved, but it can also become a point of weakness when one species involved in the relationship is affected by a catastrophe. Thus, flowering plant species dependent on insect pollination, as opposed to self- pollination or wind pollination, could be endangered when the population of insect-pollinators is depleted by the use of pesticides. In the forests of New Brunswick, for example, various pesticides have been sprayed in the past 25 years in efforts to control the spruce budworm, an economically significant pest. Scientists have now investigated the effects of the spraying of Matacil, one of the anti-budworm agents that is least toxic to insect-pollinators. They studied Matacil"s effects on insect mortality in a wide variety of wild insect species and on plant fecundity, expressed as the percentage of the total flowers on an individual plant that actually developed fruit and bore seeds. They found that the most pronounced mortality after the spraying of Matacil occurred among the smaller bees and one family of flies, insects that were all important pollinators of numerous species of plants growing beneath the tree canopy of forests. The fecundity of plants in one common indigenous species, the red-osier dogwood, was significantly reduced in the sprayed areas as compared to that of plants in control plots where Matacil was not sprayed. This species is highly dependent on the insect-pollinators most vulnerable to Matacil. The creeping dogwood, a species similar to the red-osier dogwood, but which is pollinated by large bees, such as bumblebees, showed no significant decline in fecundity. Since large bees are not affected by the spraying of Matacil, these results add weight to the argument that spraying where the pollinators are sensitive to the pesticide used decreases plant fecundity. The question of whether the decrease in plant fecundity caused by the spraying of pesticides actually causes a decline in the overall population of flowering plant species still remains unanswered. Plant species dependent solely on seeds for survival or dispersal are obviously more vulnerable to any decrease in plant fecundity that occurs, whatever its cause. If, on the other hand, vegetative growth and dispersal (by means of shoots or runners) are available as alternative reproductive strategies for a species, then decreases in plant fecundity may be of little consequence. The fecundity effects described here are likely to have the most profound impact on plant species with all four of the following characteristics, a short life span, a narrow geographic range, an incapacity for vegetative propagation, and a dependence on a small number of insect- pollinator species. Perhaps we should give special attention to the conservation of such plant species since they lack key factors in their defenses against the environmental disruption caused by pesticide use.