单选题In the 3rd sentence of the first paragraph the word "pressing" is closest in meaning to

单选题 Questions 17 to 20 are based on the following news broadcast between a newscaster (the woman) and a reporter (the man). You now have 20 seconds to read Questions 17 to 20.

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} While there is no blueprint for transforming a largely government-controlled economy into a free one, the experience of the United Kingdom since 1979 clearly shows one approach that works: privatization, in which state-owned industries are sold to private companies. By 1979, the total borrowings and losses of state-owned industries were running at about ￡ 3 billion a year. By selling many of these industries, the government has decreased these borrowings and losses, gained over ￡ 34 billion from the sales, and now receives tax revenues from the newly privatized companies. Along with a dramatically improved overall economy, the government has been able to repay 12.5 percent of the net national debt over a two-year period. In fact, privatization has not only rescued individual industries and a whole economy headed for disaster, but has also raised the level of performance in every area. At British Airways and British Gas, for example, productivity per employee has, risen by 20 percent. At associated British Ports, labor disruptions common in the 1970's and early 1980's have now virtually disappeared. At British Telecom, there is no longer a waiting list—as there always was before privatization—to have a telephone installed. Part of this improved productivity has come about because the employees of privatized industries were given the opportunity to buy shares in their own companies. They responded enthusiastically to the offer of shares; at British Aerospace. They responded enthusiastically to the offer of shares; at British Aerospace, 89 percent of the eligible work force bought shares; at Associated British Ports, 90 percent; and at British Telecom, 92 percent. When people have a personal stake in something, they think about it, the new employee-owners grew so concerned about their company's profits that during wage negotiations they actually pressed their union to lower its wage demands. Some economists have suggested that giving away free shares would provide a needed acceleration of the privatization process. Yet they miss Thomas Paine's point that "what we obtain too cheap we esteem too lightly. " In order for the far-ranging benefits of individual ownership to be achieved by owners, companies, and countries, employees and other individuals must make their own decisions to buy, and they must commit some of their own resources to the choice.

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} Steve Courtney wrote historical novels. Not, he was quick to explain, over-colourful love stories of the kind that made so much money for so many women writers, but novels set, and correctly set, in historical periods. Whatever difference he saw in his own books, his readers did not seem to notice it, and his readers were nearly all women. He had studied at university, but he had been a particularly good student, and he had never afterwards let any academic knowledge he had gained interfere with his writing. Helen, his wife, who did not have a very high opinion of her husband's ability as a novelist, had been careful to say when she married him that she was not historically minded. Above all, Helen was doubtful whether her relationship with Steve would work at all in the village of Stretton, to which they had just moved. It was Steve who had wanted to move to the country, and she had been glad of the change, in principle, whatever doubts she was now having about Stretton as a choice. But she wondered whether Steve would not, before very long, want to live in London again, and what she would do if he did. The Stretton house was not a weekend cottage. They had moved into it and given up the London flat altogether, partly at least, she suspected, because that was Steve's idea of what a successful author ought to do. However, she thought he was not going to feel like a successful author half as much in Stretton as he had in London. On the other hand, she supposed he might just start dashing up to London for the day to see his agent or have lunch with his publisher, leaving her behind in Stretton, and she thought on the whole she would like that.

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单选题 {{B}}Questions 17 ～ 20 are based on the following talk. You now have 15 seconds to read Question 17 ～ 20.{{/B}}

单选题 Questions 17 to 20 are based on the following news report about Arafat's visit to China. You now have 20 seconds to rend Questions 17 to 20.

单选题According to the passage, now that the slum dwellings have gone, ______.

单选题Questions 1～3 are based on the following passage; listen and choose the best answer.

单选题Who is considered as an initiator of the "stream of consciousness" literature in the 20th century? [A] John Galsworthy. [B] Virginia Woolf. [C] Henry James. [D] T. S. Eliot.

单选题It can be inferred that the labor force described in the passage is made up of __________

单选题It can be inferred that biological orthodoxy favors

单选题Wherecantheboyuseaphotocopyingmachine?A.AtBright's.B.AtHatchers'.C.Atthepostoffice.D.Atabookshop.

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} Interest is steadily spreading from a minority of enthusiasts in developing renewable sources of energy--wind, wave and solar power, tidal and geothermal energy. Additional support for them has come with a proposal to explore the untapped sources of hydro-electric power in Scotland. The details are provided by Mr. William Manser in a study provided for an expert committee to look at the developments possible for hydro-electric sites and, more important, for means of financing them. There is a clear industrial connection in Mr. Manser's study because it was done for the Federation of Civil Engineering Contractors; hydro-electric schemes, by definition, have a large civil engineering component in them. Mr. Manser estimates that wind power could theoretically provide more than 7 percent of electricity supply in the United Kingdom, provided suitable sites for generators could be found. However, the practical viability of wind power generation is not likely to be understood until 1990. Other developments using renewable energy sources are also at an early stage as far as their commercial possibilities are concerned, he believe. The best developed and most suitable form of renewable energy is, in his view, hydro power. The technology has been developed over centuries and is still progressing. At present it is the cheapest form of electricity generation. Mr. Manser studied past surveys of the north of Scotland and identified several as suitable for hydro-electric generation. Those are in the remote areas, usually of great natural beauty. But Mr. Manser says a well-designed dam can be impressive in itself. It is also possible to make installation as unobtrusive as possible, to the point of burying parts of them. Hydro generation involves no water pollution, smoke creation or unsightly stocking-out yards. The main trouble, which appears from his report, is financing an undertaking which has a heavy initial capital cost, and very low running costs. However, Mr. Manser does not see that as an unfamiliar position for the electricity industry. He cites the proposed construction of the new nuclear power station at Sizewell in Suffolk, which will have a high initial capital cost. The argument at Sizewell that the reason for the expenditure is that the capital will provide a benefit in lower costs and higher returns in the long-term, applies equally to hydro-electric generation.

单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} The Village Green in New Milford, Connecticut, is a snapshot of New England charm: a carefully manicured lawn flanded by scrupulously maintained colonial homes. Babysitters dandle kids in the wooden gazebo, waiting for commuter parents to return from New York. On a lazy afternoon last week Caroline Nicholas, 16, had nothing more pressing to do than pinken in the early-summer sunshine and discuss the recent events in town. "I don't think a lot of older people knew there were unhappy kids in New Milford," she said, "I could see it coming." In a five-day period in early June eight girls were brought to New Milford Hospital after what hospital officials call suicidal gestures. The girls, all between 12 and 17, tried a variety of measures, including heavy doses of alcohol, over-the-counter medicines and cuts or scratches to their wrists. None was successful, and most didn't require hospitalization; but at least two attempts, according to the hospital, could have been vital. Their reasons seemed as mundane as the other happen-stances of suburban life. "I was just sick of it all," one told a reporter. "Everything. Life." Most alarming, emergency-room doctor Frederick Lohse told a local reporter that several girls said they were part of a suicide pact. The hospital later backed away from this remark. But coming in the wake of at least sixteen suicide attempts over the previous few months, this sudden cluster—along with the influx of media—has set this well-groomed suburb of 23,000 on edge. At a town meeting last Wednesday night, Dr Simon Sobo, chief of psychiatry at the hospital, told more than 200 parents and kids, "We're talking about a crisis that has really gotten out of hand." Later he added. "There have been more suicide attempts this spring than I have seen in the 13 years I have been here." Sobo said that the girls he treated didn't have serious problems at home or school. "Many of those were popular kids," he said. "They got plenty of love, but beneath the reassuring signs, a swath of teens here are not making it. Some say that drugs, both pot and 'real drugs', are commonplace. Kids have shown up with LIFE SUCKS and LONG LIVE DEATH penned on their arms. A few girls casually display scars on their arms where they cut themselves." "You'd be surprised how many kids try suicide," said one girl, 17. "You don't want to put pain on other people; you put it on yourself." She said she used to cut herself "just to release the pain". Emily, 15, a friend of three of the girls treated in June, said one was having family problems, one was "upset that day" and the third was "just upset with everything else going on". She said they weren't really trying to kill themselves—they just needed concern. As Sobe noted, "What's going on in New Milford is not unique to New Milford." The same underlying culture of despair could be found in any town. But teen suicide, he added, can be a "contagion". Right now New Milford has the bug—and has it bad.

单选题Hotels were among the earliest facilities that bound the United States together. They were both creatures and creators of communities, as well as symptoms of the frenetic quest for community. Even in the first part of the nineteenth century, Americans were already forming the habit of gathering from all corners of the nation for both public and private, business and pleasure purposes. Conventions were the new occasions, and hotels were distinctively American facilities making conventions possible. The first national convention of a major party to choose a candidate for President (that of the National Republican Party, which met on December 12,1831, and nominated Henry Clay for President) was held in Baltimore, at a hotel that was then reputed to be the best in the country. The presence in Baltimore of Barnum's City Hotel, a six-story building with two hundred apartments, helps explain why many other early national political conventions were held there. In the longer nm, too, American hotels made other national conventions not only possible but pleasant and convivial. The growing custom of regularly assembling from afar the representatives of all kinds of groups not only for political conventions, but also for commercial, professional, learned, and avocational ones--in turn supported the multiplying hotels. By mid-twentieth century, conventions accounted for over a third of the yearly room occupancy of all hotels in the nation; about eighteen thousand different conventions were held annually with a total attendance of about ten million persons. Nineteenth-century American hotelkeepers, who were no longer the genial, deferential "hosts' of the eighteenth-century European inn, became leading citizens. Holding a large stake in the community, they exercised power to make it prosper. As owners or managers of the local "palace of the public", they were makers and shapers of a principal community attraction. Travelers from abroad were mildly shocked by this high social position.

单选题Questions 4～6 are based on the following talk; listen and choose the best answer.

单选题The estimates of the numbers of home-schooled children vary widely. The U.S. Department of Education estimates there are 250,000 to 350,000 home-schooled children in the country. Home-school advocates put the number much higher — at about a million. Many public school advocates take a harsh attitude toward home-schoolers, perceiving their actions as. the ultimate slap in the face for public education and a damaging move for the children. Home-schoolers harbor few kind words for public schools, charging shortcomings that range from lack of religious perspective in the curriculum to a herdlike approach to teaching children. Yet, as public school officials realize they stand little to gain by remaining hostile to the home-school population, and as home-schoolers realize they can reap benefits from public schools, these hard lines seem to be softening a bit. Public schools and home-schoolers have moved closer to tolerance and, in some cases, even cooperation. Says John Marshall, an education official, " We are becoming relatively tolerant of home-schoolers. The idea is, '' Let''s give the kids access to public school so they''ll see it''s not as terrible as they''ve been told, and they''ll want to come back. Perhaps, but don''t count on it, say home-school advocates. Home-schoolers oppose the system because they have strong convictions that their approach to education — whether fueled by religious enthusiasm or the individual child''s interests and natural pace — is best. "The bulk of home-schoolers just want to be left alone," says Enge Cannon, associate director of the National Center For Home Education. She says home-schoolers choose that path for a variety of reasons, but religion plays a role 85% of the time. Professor Van Galen breaks home-schoolers into two groups. Some home-schoolers want their children to learn not only traditional subject matters but also " strict religious doctrine and a conservative political and social perspective. Not incidentally, they also want their children to learn — both intellectually and emotionally — that family is the most important institution in society. " Other home-schoolers contend "not so much that the schools teach heresy, but that, schools teach whatever they teach inappropriately," Van Galen writes. " These parents are highly independent and strive to '' take responsibility'' for their own lives within a society that they define as bureaucratic and inefficient. "

单选题Questions 14 ～ 16 are based on the following talk. You now have 15 seconds to read Questions 14 ～ 16.