单选题War, chiefly the Civil War, in U. S. history has been a vital force in the rise of industrial capitalism, in the change of America from a dominantly agrarian and ______ country to one chiefly manufacturing in nature.

单选题{{B}}Passage 2{{/B}} Don't call him just a college professor. Internet entrepreneur, TV personality, advisor to presidents, and friend to the rich and powerful would be more accurate. Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr. is better known for his activities outside the academy. This week he sold Africana com, a website he created with a fellow Harvard University professor, to Time Warner. Terms of the deal weren't revealed, though the Wall Street Journal pegged the price at more than $10 million, with Gates reaping up to $1 million. Time Warner will incorporate the site, a portal with news and information about people of African descent, into America Online when the two merge as expected. The sense is that Gates got a very good deal. The site is a rich source of scholarship but hardly a rich source of revenue. As recently as the late 1980s Gates, who turns 50 this week, was an obscure professor, penning books on literary theory only a graduate student could love. Now he can't be avoided. He hosted a series about Africa on public television, writes occasional articles for the New Yorker, and even advises the Gore presidential campaign. He counts director Steven Spielberg, Microsoft's Bill Gates and President Clinton as friends. "They're not intimate friends," he insists. Indeed, Gates has evolved into a kind of expert on everything African-American. "He remains the go-to person on the state of African-American affairs," said Perry Steinberg, head of American Program Bureau, a lecture agency. The 30 or so speeches Gates delivers each year are another source of income for the professor. With fame comes controversy. Several other black intellectuals have taken him to task for not being confrontational enough. Gates has heard it before. '"Me? Critics? Oh, what a shock." But he considers himself more a descendent of historian and educator W. E.B. Du Bois than of Malcolm X. His ultimate goal is to build the field of Afro-American studies. "Fifty years from now I want there to be at least 10 great centers of Afro-American studies," he says. If working as a consultant on Spielberg's historical film Amistad or giving A1 Gore advice helps, so be it.

单选题{{B}}Directions:{{/B}} There are 4 reading passages in this part. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. Choose the best answer and mark the corresponding letter on the Answer Sheet with a single line through the center. {{B}}Passage One{{/B}} For my proposed journey, the first priority was clearly to start learning Arabic. I have never been a linguist. Though I had traveled widely as a journalist, I had never managed to pick up more than a smattering of phrases in any tongue other than French, and even my French was laborious for want of lengthy practice. The prospect of tackling one of the notoriously difficult languages at the age of forty, and trying to speak it well, both deterred and excited me. It was perhaps expecting a little too much of a curiously unreceptive part of myself, yet the possibility that I might gain access to a completely alien culture and tradition by this means was enormously pleasing. I enrolled as pupil in a small school in the center of the city. It was run by Mr. Beheit, of dapper appearance and explosive temperament, who assured me that after three months of his special treatment I would speak Arabic fluently. Whereupon he drew from his desk a postcard which an old pupil has sent him from somewhere in the Middle East, expressing great gratitude and reporting the astonishment of local Arabs that he could converse with them like a native. It was written in English. Mr. Beheit himself spent most of his time coaching businessmen in French, and through the thin, partitioned walls of his school one could hear him bellowing in exasperation at some confuse entrepreneur: "Non. M. Jones. le ne suis pas francais. Pas, Pas, Pas." (No Mr. Jones, I'm not, not, NOT). I was gratified that my own tutor, whose name was Ahmed, was infinitely softer and less public in his approach. For a couple of hours every morning we would face each other across a small table, while we discussed in meticulous detail the colour scheme of the tiny cubicle, the events in the street below and, once a week, the hair-raising progress of a window-cleaner across the wall of the building opposite. In between, bearing in mind the particular interest I had in acquiring Arabic, I would inquire the way to some imaginary oasis, anxiously demand fodder and water for my camels, wonder politely whether the sheikh was prepared to grant me audience now. It was all hard going. I frequently despaired of ever becoming anything like a fluent speaker, though Ahmed assured me that my pronunciation was above average for a Westerner. This, I suspected, was partly flattery, for there are a couple of Arabic sounds which not even a gift for mimicry allowed me to grasp for ages. There were, moreover, vast distinctions of meaning conveyed by subtle sound shifts rarely employed in English. And for me the problem was increased by the need to assimilate a vocabulary, that would vary from place to place across five essentially Arabic-speaking countries that practiced vernaculars of their own: so that the word for "people", for instance, might be "nais", "sahab" or "sooken". Each day I was mentally exhausted by the strain of a morning in school, followed by an afternoon struggling at home with a tape recorder. Yet there was relief in the most elementary forms of understanding and progress. When I merely got the drift of a torrent which Ahmed had just release, I was childishly clated. When I managed to roll a complete sentence off my tongue without apparently thinking what I was saying, and it came out right. I beamed like an idiot. And the enjoyment of reading and writing the flowing Arabic script was something that did not leave me once I had mastered it. By the end of June, noone could have described me as anything like a fluent speaker of Arabic. I was approximately in the position of a fifteen-year old who, equipped with a modicum of schoolroom French, nervously awaits his first trip to Paris. But this was something I could reprove upon in my own time. I bade farewell to Mr. Beheit, still struggling to drive the French negative into the still confused mind of Mr. Jones.

单选题The doctor told him to be careful when taking sleeping pills because too many could be.

单选题It can be inferred from the passage that rent controls ______.

单选题How men first learnt to invent words is unknown; in other words, the origin of language is a mystery. All we really know is that men, unlike animals, somehow invented certain sound to express thoughts and feelings, actions and things, so that they could communicate with each other; and that later they agreed upon certain signs, called letters, which could be combined to represent those sounds, and which could be written down. Those sounds, whether spoken or written in letters, we call words. The power of words, then, lies in their associations — the things they bring up before our minds. Words become filled with meaning for us by experience; and the longer we live, the more certain words recall to us the glad and sad events of our past; and the more we read and learn, the more the number of words that mean something to us increases. Great writers are those who not only have great thoughts but also express these thoughts in words which appeal powerfully to our minds and emotions. This charming use of words is what we call literary style. Above all, the real poet is a master of words. He can convey his meaning in words which sing like music, and which by their position and association can move men to tears. We should therefore learn to choose our words carefully and use them accurately, or they will make our speech silly and dull.

单选题{{B}}Passage Three{{/B}} Ask an American schoolchild what he or she is learning in school these days and you might even get a reply, provided you ask it in Spanish, but don't bother, here's the answer: Americans nowadays are not learning any of the things that we learned in our day, like reading and writing. Apparently these are considered fusty old subjects, invented by white males to oppress women and minorities. What are they learning? In a Vermont college town I found the answer sitting in a toy store book rack, next to typical kids' books like "Heather Has Two Mommies and Daddy is 'Disfunctional'". It's a teacher's guide called "Happy To Be Me", subtitled "Building Self-Esteem". Self-esteem, as it turns out, is a big subject in American classrooms. Many American schools see building it as important as teaching reading and writing. They call it "whole language" teaching, borrowing terminology from the granola people to compete in the education marketplace. No one ever spent a moment building my self-esteem when I was in school. In fact, from the day I first stepped inside a classroom my self-esteem was one big demolition site. All that mattered was "the subject", be it geography, history, or mathematics. I was praised when I remembered that "near", "fit", "friendly", "pleasing", "like" and their opposites took the dative case in Latin. I was reviled when I forgot what a cosine was good for. Generally, I lived my school years beneath a torrent of castigation so consistent I eventually ceased to hear it as people who live near the sea eventually stop hearing the waves. Schools have changed. Reviling is out, for one thing. More important, subjects have changed. Whereas I learned English, modern kids learn something called "language skills". Whereas I learned writing, modern kids learn something called "communication". Communication, the book tells us, is seven per cent words, twenty three per cent facial expression, twenty per cent tone of voice, and fifty per cent body language. So this column, with its carefully chosen words, would earn at most a grade of seven per cent. That is, if the school even gave out something as oppressive and demanding as grades. The result is that, in place of English classes, American children are getting a course in "How to Win Friends and Influence People". Consider the new attitude toward journal writing. I remember one high school English class when we were required to keep a journal. The idea was to emulate those great writers who confided in diaries, searching their soul and honing their critical thinking on paper. "Happy To Be Me" states that journals are a great way for students to get in touch with their feelings. Tell students they can write one sentence or a whole page. Reassure them that no one, not even you, will read what they write. After the unit, hopefully all students will be feeling good about themselves and will want to share some of their entries with the class. There was a time when no self-respecting book for English teachers would use "great" or "hopefully" that way. Moreover, back then the purpose of English courses (an antique term for "Unit") was not to help students "feel good about themselves", which is good because all that reviling didn't make me feel particularly good about anything.

单选题Hunting for a job late last year, lawyer Gant Redmon stumbled across Career Builder, a job database on the Internet. He searched it with no success but was attracted by the site"s "personal search agent". It"s an interactive feature that lets visitors key in job criteria such as location, title, and salary, then e-mail them when a matching position is posted in the database. Redmon chose the key words legal, intellectual property, and Washington, D. C. Three weeks later, he got his first notification of an opening. "I struck gold," says Redmon, who e-mailed his resume to the employer and won a position as in-house counsel for a company. With thousands of career-related sites on the Internet, finding promising openings can be time consuming and inefficient. Search agents reduce the need for repeated visits to the databases. But although a search agent worked for Redmon, career experts see drawbacks. Narrowing your criteria, for example, may work against you, "Every time you answer a question, you eliminate a possibility," says one expert. For any job search, you should start with a narrow concept what you think you want to do—then broaden it. "None of these programs do that," says another expert. "There"s no career counseling implicit in all of this." Instead, the best strategy is to use the agent as a kind of tip service to keep abreast of jobs in a particular database; when you get an e-mail, consider it a reminder to check the database again. "I would not rely on agents for finding everything that is added to a database that might interest me," says the author of a job-searching guide. Some sites design their agents to tempt job hunters to return. When Career Site"s agent sends out messages to those who have signed up for its service, for example, it includes only three potential jobs—those it considers the best matches. There may be more matches in the database; job hunters will have to visit the site again to find them—and they do. "On the day after we send our messages, we see a sharp increase in our traffic," says Seth Peets, vice president of marketing for Career Site. Even those who aren"t hunting for jobs may find search agents worthwhile. Some use them to keep a close watch on the demand for their line of work or gather information on compensation to arm themselves when negotiating for a raise. Although happily employed, Redmon maintains his agent at Career Builder. "You always keep your eyes open," he says. Working with a personal search agent means having another set of eyes looking out for you.

单选题Daring a business lunch it' s important to______.

单选题Our corporation's obligation under this ______ is limited to repair or replacement.

单选题Can animals have a sense of humor? Sally Blanchard, publisher of a newsletter called the Pet Bird Report, thinks a pet parrot may have pulled her leg. That's one explanation for the time her African gray parrot, named Bongo Marie, seemed to feign distress at the possible death of an Amazon parrot named Paco. It happened one day when Blanchard was making Cornish game hen for dinner. As Blanchard lifted her knife, the African gray threw back its head and said. "Oh, no! Paco!" Trying not to laugh, Blanchard said, "That's not Paco." and showed Bongo Marie that the Amazon was alive and well. Mimicking a disappointed tone. Bongo Marie said. "Oh. no." and launched into a hoarse laugh. Was the parrot joking when it seemed to believe the other bird was a goner? Did Bongo Marie comprehend Blanchard's response? Studies of African grays have shown that they can understand the meaning of words, for example, that red refers to a color, not just a particular red object. Parrots also enjoy getting a reaction out of humans, and so, whether or not Bongo Marie's crocodile tears were intentional, the episode was thoroughly satisfying from the parrot's point of view.

单选题The town planning commission said that their financial ______ for the next fiscal year was optimistic; they expect increased tax revenues.

单选题The close relationship between poetry and music scarcely needs to be argued. Both are aural modes which employ rhythm, rime, and pitch as major devices; to these the one adds linguistic meaning, connotation, and various traditional figures, and the other can add, at least in theory, all of these plus harmony, counterpoint, and orchestration techniques. In English the two are closely bound historically. Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry seems certainly to have been read or chanted to a harpist's accompaniment; the verb used in Beowulf for such a performance, the Finn episode, is singan, to sing, and the noun gyd, song. A major source of the lyric tradition in English poetry is the songs of the troubadours. The distance between the gyd in Beowulf and the songs of Leonard Cohen or Bob Dylan may seem great, but is one of time rather than aesthetics. The lyric poem as a literary work and the lyrics of a popular song are both still essentially the same thing: poetry. Whether the title of the work be "Gerontion", or "Hound Dog", our criteria for evaluating the work must remain the same. The most important prerequisite for both a significant poem and significant lyrics in a popular song is that the writer be faithful to his own personal vision or to the vision of the poem he is writing. Skill and craft for writing poetry are indeed necessary because these are the only means by which a poet can preserve the integrity of this vision in the poem. A poet must not, either because of lack of skill or because of worship of popularity, wealth, or critical acclaim, go outside of his own or his own poem's vision — on pain of writing only the derivative or the trivial. Historically, the writers and singers of the lyrics of popular songs have seemed often to be incapable of personal vision, and to have confused both originality and morality with a servile compliance to popular taste.

单选题In scores of experiments, scientists are changing the genetic endowments of plants and animals, and the results could______ a revolution in farm fields, feedlots and dairy barns.

单选题Jim cooperated on the condition that he would be ______ from prosecution.

单选题______ you promise you will work hard, ______ support you to college. A. If only...will I B. Only...I will C. Only if...will I D. Only if...I will