单选题The ______ of finding gold in California attracted a lot of people to settle down there. A. prospects B. speculations C. stakes D. provisions

单选题The traffic was very heavy, ______, and so we arrived after the start of the program.

单选题Composed of song, dance, and personal invective, the old comedy plays also include outspoken political criticism and comment on literary and philosophical topics.

单选题Shopping malls have some advantage in suffering from shorter periods of______business. A. stale B. slack C. ferrous D. abundant

单选题If somebody is ______, he is given a medal or other honor as an official reward for what he has done. A. confirmed B. decorated C. appreciated D. nominated

单选题That battered old hat of his is a ______ joke to all his friends.

单选题 The Commercial Revolution was not confined, of course, to the growth of trade and banking. Included in it also were fundamental changes in methods of production. The system of manufacture developed by the craft guilds in the later Middle Ages was rapidly becoming defunct. The guilds themselves, dominated by the master craftsmen, had grown selfish and exclusive. Membership in them was commonly restricted to a few privileged families. Besides, they were so completely choked by tradition that they were unable to make adjustments to changing conditions. Moreover, new industries had sprang up entirely outside the guild system. Characteristic examples were mining and smelting and the woolen industry. The rapid development of these enterprises was stimulated by technical advances, such as the invention of the spinning wheel and the discovery of a new method of making brass, which saved about half of the fuel previously used. In the mining and smelting industries a form of organization was adopted similar to that which has prevailed ever since. But the most typical form of industrial production in the Commercial Revolution was the domestic system, developed first of all in the woolen industry. The domestic system derives its name from the fact that the work was done in the homes of industrial artisans instead of in the shop of a master craftsman. Since the various jobs in the manufacture of a product were given out on contract, the system is also known as the putting out system. Notwithstanding the petty scale of production, the organization was basically capitalistic. The raw material was purchased by an entrepreneur and assigned to individual worker, each of whom would complete his allotted task for a stipulated payment. In the case of the woolen industry the yam would be given out first of all to the spinners, then to the weavers, fullers, and dyer in succession. When the cloth was finally finished, it would be taken by the clothier and sold in the open market for the highest price it would bring.

单选题Sometimes a dictionary designates a noun as attributive, which Umeans/U that it can be used to describe another noun or name its attributes.

单选题In order to photograph ______ animals, elaborate flashlight equipment is necessary.

单选题It is difficult to Udiscern/U the sample that is on the slide unless the microscope is adjusted properly.

单选题In this factory the machines are not regulated ______ but are jointly controlled by a central computer system;

单选题The new school building is______.completion.

单选题{{B}}Passage 1{{/B}} Two travelers engaged in a warm dispute about the color of the Chameleon. One of them affirmed it was blue, that he had seen it with his own eyes upon the naked branch of a tree, feeding on the air in a very clear day. The other strongly asserted it was green, and that he had viewed it very closely and minutely upon the broad leaf of a fig tree. Both of them were positive, and the dispute was rising to a quarrel; but a third person luckily coming by, they agreed to refer the question to his decision. "Gentlemen," said the Arbitrator, "You could not have been more lucky in your reference, as I happen to have caught one of them last night; but, indeed, you are both mistaken, for the creature is totally black." "Black, impossible." "Nay," said the Umpire, with great assurance, "the matter may be soon decided, for I immediately enclosed my Chameleon in a little box, and here it is." So saying, he drew it out of his pocket, opened the box, and, lo! It was white as snow.

单选题One of the most authoritative voices speaking to us today is, of course, the voice of the advertisers. Its striking clamor dominates our lives. It shots at us from the television screen and the radio loudspeakers, waves to us from every page of the newspaper picks at our sleeves on the escalator, signals to us from the roadside billboards all day and flashes messages to us in coloured lights all night. It has forced on us a whole new conception of the successful man as a man no less than 20 % of whose mail consists of announcements of giant carpet sales. Advertising has been among England's biggest growth industries since the war, in terms of the ratio of money earnings to demonstrable achievement. Why all this fantastic expenditure? Perhaps the answers is that advertising saves the manufactures from having to think about the customer. At the stage of designing and developing a product, there is quite enough to think about without worrying over whether anybody will want to buy it. The designer is busy enough without adding customer--appeal to all his other problems of man--hours and machine tolerances and stress factors. So they just go ahead and make the thing and leave it to the advertiser to find olevon ways of making it appeal to purchasers after they have finished it, by pretending that it confers status, or attracts love, or signifies manliness, if the advertising agency can do this authoritatively enough, the manufacturer is clever. Other manufacturers find advertising saves them changing their product. And manufacturers hate change. The ideal product is one which goes on unchanged forever. If therefore, for one reason or another, some alteration seems called for how much better to change the image, the packet or tile pitch made by the product, rather than go to all the inconvenience of changing the product itself. The advertising man has to combine the qualities of the three most authoritative professions. Church, Bar, and Medicine, The great skill required of our priests, most highly developed in missionaries but present, indeed mandatory, in all, is the kill of getting people to believe in and contribute money to something which can never be logically proved. At the Bar an essential ability is that of presenting the most persuasive case you can to a jury of ordinary people, with emotional appeals masquerading as logical exposition, a case you do not necessarily have to believe in yourself, just one you have studiously avoided discovering to be false. As for medicine, any doctor will confirm that a large part of his job is not clinical treatment but faith healing. Ellis apparently scientific approach enables his nations believe that he knows exactly what is wrong with them and exactly what they need to put them right, just as advertising does "Run down? You need..." "No one will dance with you? A dab will make you popular." Advertising men use statistics rather like a drunk used a lamp-post for support rather than illumination. They will dress anyone up in a white coat to appear like an unimpeachable authority or failing that, they will even be happy with the announcement, "As used by 90% of the actors who play doctors on television." Their engaging quality is that they enjoy having their latest ruses uncovered almost as much as anyone else.

单选题Hopelessly entrapped in the two-year tangle of his own deceit, forced into a confession of past lies, he watched the support of his most loyal defenders collapse in a political maelstrom, driven by their bitterness over the realization that he had betrayed their trust. A. probe B. confusion C. finding D. potential

单选题Questions 25—27 are based on the following conversation. You now have 15 seconds to read questions 25—27.