单选题Why was reading aloud common before the nineteenth century'?

单选题Questions 11--13 are based on the following passage.

单选题The word "obsession" in the fourth paragraph means ______.

单选题What time is it now?

单选题Questions 22 to 25 are based on the passage you have just heard.

单选题 Questions 18～21 are based on the following conversation.

单选题What are the two speakers talking about?

单选题Labor force is defined as being the total number of people who are available to work and earn in- come. This definition includes everyone who is employed or seeking paid employment, so it includes employees and the self-employed: Labor is one of the Country's resources which can be combined with other resources to produce the goods and services required by the community. Though the size of the workforce relies greatly on the size of the total population, there are several other aspects which also affect it. The age distribution of the total population has a very marked effect on the available workforce. If the population has a high proportion of very young people or of those too old to work, then the available workforce would be lower than if there were an evenly spread age distribution. If the population grows rapidly from natural increase, i.e. the number of births greatly exceeds the number of deaths, then as a total population increases the proportion in the workforce declines. Sometimes a population is described as aging, which means that the birth rate is either falling or growing very slowly, and as people retire from the workforce there are inadequate numbers of young people entering it to take place of those who are leaving it. The population is top-heavy with older people. So the percentage of the population in the workforce declines when there is either a rapid in- crease in births or a falling birth rate. The age distribution of the population has several important influences on the economy. If the population is aging and there is an increase in the number of people retiring without a corresponding increase in the number entering the workforce, this raises the problem of the ability of the economy to provide a reasonable level of social services to the retired group. If the aged are to be cared for in special homes or hotels, finance must be available for that purpose. If the size of the workforce is small relative to the total population, then the government tax receipts are relatively low and either the government has less money available to it or the workforce members have to be taxed more heavily.

单选题You will hear 10 short dialogues. For each dialogue, there is one question and four possible answers. Choose the correct answer—A, B, C or D, and mark it in your test booklet. You will have 15 seconds to answer the question and you will hear each dialogue ONLY ONCE.

单选题It is estimated that much of a teenager's time is spent ______ with friends. A. to talk B. talking C. being talked D. having talked

单选题Questions 11 to 14 are based on the passage you have just heard.

单选题Whenever advertisers want you to stop thinking about the product and to start thinking about something bigger, better, or more attractive than the product, they use that very popular word "like". The word "like" is the advertiser''s equivalent of the magician''s use of misdirection. "Like" gets you to ignore the product and concentrate on the claim the advertiser is making about it. "For skin like peaches and cream" claims the ad for a skin cream. What is this ad really claiming? It doesn''t say this cream will give you peaches-and-cream skin. There is no verb in this claim, so it doesn''t even mention using the product. How is skin ever like "peaches and cream"? Remember, ads must be read exactly according to the dictionary definition of words. This ad is making absolutely no promise for this skin cream. If you think this cream will give you soft, smooth, and youthful-looking skin, you are the one who has read the meaning into the ad. The wine that claims "It''s like taking a trip to France" wants you to think about a romantic evening in Paris as you walk along the street after a wonderful meal in an intimate cafe. Of course, you don''t really believe that a wine can take you to France, but the goal of the ad is to get you to think pleasant, romantic thoughts about France and not about how the wine tastes or how expensive it may be. That little word "like" has taken you away from crushed grapes into a world of your own imaginative making. Who knows, maybe the next time you buy wine, you''ll think those pleasant thoughts when you see this brand of wine, and you''ll buy it. How about the most famous "like" claim of all, " Winston tastes good like a cigarette should"? Ignoring the grammatical error here, you might want to know what this claim is saying. Whether a cigarette tastes good or bad is a subjective judgment because what tastes good to one person may well taste horrible to another. There are many people who say that all cigarettes taste terrible , other people who say only some cigarettes taste all right, and still others who say all cigarettes taste good.

单选题The market investigation is indispensable to sales promotion. They are closely related as the lips and teeth, so to speak. What you produce is for sale on the market. It would be impossible to succeed in selling a product without first investigating the market. In the international market, goods on sale coming from different countries and suppliers are always facing keen competition. Under such circumstances, they will try everything possible to familiarize themselves with the market conditions. In making investigations, we ought to get information about what similar items the competitors ale offering on the market, what prices they are quoting, what features their products have, who are their regular customers, etc. Then, how can we obtain such information? There are many channels that we can make use of in doing this sort of work. The commercial counselor's offices of our embassies stationed abroad can help us in making market investigations. Nowadays, our import and export corporations send their trade groups abroad every now and then. One of their purposes is to make market surveys on the spot. Certainly, face-to-face talks with foreign businessmen are also important channels to get market information. The Chinese Export Commodities Fairs and some other fairs of similar nature as well as visits of foreign businessmen provide us with such opportunities. Of course, there are some other ways of making market investigations.