单选题{{B}}Text 2{{/B}} For months the Japanese searched fitfully for the right word to describe what was happening. At the Bank of Japan, the nation's central bank, officials spoke of "an adjustment phase." Prime Minister admitted only to "a difficult situation." The Economic Planning Agency, the government's record keeper, referred delicately to a "retreat." Then two weeks ago, for the first time since 1997, the agency dropped its boilerplate reference to the "expansion, from its closely watched Monthly Economic Report, and the word game was over. Japan's economy, the world's second largest, conceded the experts, was in recession. That admission confirmed the had news businessmen had been reading in their spreadsheets for several months. "In 2001 one market after another turned bad," says Yoshihiko Wakamoto, senior vice president of Toshiba Corp. , which now admits that its pretax profits for fiscal 2001, ending March 31, may be down a whopping 42%. In April, when many Japanese companies announce their results for 2001 fiscal Year, most will report declining profits. Blue chips like Sony, NEC and Matsushita have all experienced drops of over 40% in pretax profits. Japan's security houses, hit by declining commissions from a falling stock market, will announce even more dramatic drops. Nomura Securities, once Japan's most profitable company, is talking about an 80% decline in profits. Auto manufacturers, banks, airlines, steel companies, department stores —all are in a slump. Technically, what is happening to the Japanese economy does not meet American criteria for a recession, normally defined as at least two consecutive quarters of negative growth. While economic growth has slowed in Japan, it has not ceased. Government economists are predicting a 3.5% increase in GNP for 2002. Outside experts are not so optimistic. But nearly everyone agrees that GNP growth in Japan is unlikely to slip into negative numbers, as it did last year in the U. S. and Britain. "There's no question that we are in a recession," pronounces Kunio Miyamoto, chief economist of the Sumitomo-Life Research Institute. "But it is a recession, Japanese-style." During the last half of the 1990s, Japanese companies based much of their expansion around the world on the wildly inflated values of the Tokyo Stock Exchange and Japan's frenzied real estate market. Now both those markets have collapsed. And with long-term interest rates up from 5% to 7%, Japanese companies are less able to sell vast quantities of high-quality goods at razor-thin profit margins. Added to this are pressures from shareholders for a greater return on investments, from Japan's trading partners for restraints on its aggressive trade practices, and from its own citizens for a reduction in their working hours so they can enjoy the fruits of 40 years of relentless toil.

单选题{{B}}Part A{{/B}}{{B}}Directions:{{/B}}Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1. {{B}}Text 1{{/B}} The history of the computer in the twentieth century is one of dramatic adaptation and expansion. The computer had modest beginnings in areas where it was used as a specialist tool. The first electronic computer was built in the 1930s and was solely for the use of undergraduate students in Iowa State University to handle mathematical computations in nuclear physics. In the 1960s an early version of the Internet, ARPPANET was used in computer science and engineering projects. However, only 10 years later computers were starting to change our life style, the way we do business and many other things and by the late 1980s' networks were expanding to embrace sections of the general public. Computerization has changed US high school education in many ways. Three different changes that consider being important. The first is the use of the computer as teaching aid for teachers. The next is the massive data storage and fast data retrieval facilitated by computer. Then comes the changes brought about by the introduction of simulation software. How prevalent is the use of computers in schools! As recently as the early 1980s only 20% of secondary science teachers in the USA were using microcomputers. However, since then high schools in the US have computerized rapidly. By 1987, schools had acquired about 1.5 million computers with 95% of public schools having at least one computer. Computers can be used as teaching aids both in schools and in homes. In schools, for example, teachers can plug a computer into an especially equipped overhead projector to bring texts, graphics, sound and videos into a classroom. By these multimedia computer animations, teachers can more readily attract and retain students' attention. Ann concludes that computer aided teaching can attract and motivate students who were dropping out when more traditional methods were being used. Let us now turn to the Internet. This is a global network connecting many local networks. Over the Internet, high school students can retrieve information and databases from every networked library around the world in seconds. The World Wide Web provides an easy way to access hard-to-find information. Students can now reach any library through the global network and find what they want. The final step is to download the scanned image. Though the slow transmission of signal through the network is a major limiting factor, it can still save us much time in finding useful information, and thus it is an invaluable tool to both high school teachers and students.

单选题As large as learning to use a word processor is concerned the writer of the passage feels that Hammond ______.

单选题"That extra cost"(Line 7, Para. 5) probably refers to

单选题According to the passage, silversmiths and coppersmiths in colonial America were similar in which of the following ways?

单选题Why do women seem less likely to fall in love with the objects themselves?

单选题Many magazines charge the consumers some money________.

单选题Which of*the following is the best title of the text?

单选题The word "bolsters" (Line 1, Paragraph 2) most probably means

单选题Many people invest in the stock market hoping to find the next Microsoft and Dell. However, I know (1) personal experience how difficult this really is. For more than a year, I waw (2) hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars a day investing in the market. It seemed so easy, I dreamed of (3) my job at the end of the year, of buying a small apartment in Paris, of traveling around the world. But these dreams (4) to a sudden and dramatic end when a stock I (5) , Texas cellular pone wholesaler, fell by more than 75 percent (6) a one year period. On the (7) day, it plunged by more than $ 15 a share. There was a rumor the company was (8) sales figures. That was when I leamed how quickly Wall street (9) companies that misrepresent the (10) . In a (11) , I sold all my stock in the company, paying (12) margin debt with cash advances from my (13) card. Because I owned so many shares, I (14) a small fortune, half of it from money I borrowed from the brokerage company. One month, I am a (15) , the next, a loser. This one big loss was my first lesson in the market. My father was a stockbroker, as way my grandfather (16) him. (In fact, he founded one of Chicago's earliest brokerage firms. ) But like so many things in life, we don't learn anything until we (17) it for ourselves. The only way to really understand the inner (18) of the stock market is to invest your own hard-earned money. When all your stocks are doing (19) and you feel like a winner, you learn very little. It's when all your stocks are losing and everyone is questioning your stock-picking (20) that you find out if you have what it takes to invest in the market.

单选题Teachers grumble over pay everywhere, but in West Virginia Wesleyan College the anger is acute. Salaries here have barely moved since 2000, and the average assistant professor's pay has fallen below that at Southern West Virginia Community and Technical College. On a campus with just 86 full-time faculty, a sociology professor said, a few hundred thousand dollars more spent on teaching could make a real difference. Wesleyan President William Haden says the college plans to raise faculty pay. But he says Wesleyan is nothing without students -- "they vote with their feet" -- and the college has no choice but to address their wants and needs. He says technology has been a big part of that, and some recent graduates agree that it's valuable -- though maybe not essential. Daniel Simmons, a 1999 graduate and also a middle-school teacher, praised the technology program. "If I had gone to another school it wouldn't have been available to me," he said. "It was very convenient and it was top of the line." But as with the faculty, the quality of human instructors is a big concern among Wesleyan alumni. "A little bit more money should have been put into keeping people," said Evan Keeling, a 2002 graduate now pursuing a doctorate at the University of Virginia. He found the quality in the classroom uneven, and, notably, neither he nor the Daniel Simmons came to Wesleyan because of technology. The program was a bonus, not the primary draw. Skinner, the director of admission and financial planning, acknowledged that seems widely true. Prospective students pay more attention to more tangible signs of growth. "It did open some doors for us, but would I have liked to have had a new residence hall or recreational facility? I probably would have preferred that," Skinner said. His daily. struggle remains filling the freshman class, which may be down 50 people or more this year, due to changes in government financial aid programs and the shuttering of the nursing program. The college still accepts about 80 percent of its applicants, and no longer requires online applications. Haden acknowledges that, with the benefit of hindsight, he might have handled details of how the program was financed differently. But he makes no apologies for taking bold steps which he says have indeed set Wesleyan apart. "We needed to make a statement about our commitment to technology and our belief that it would enhance the quality of education and the preparation of our students," he said. "And I'm still believing that./

单选题What is the dominating obstacle in the process of EAMU?

单选题The term "fisticuffs" (Line 9, Paragraph 2) probably means

单选题The question which is discussed in the passage is

单选题How many really suffer as a result of labor market problems ? This is one of the most critical yet contentious social policy questions. In many ways, our social statistics exaggerate the degree of hardship. Unemployment does not have the same dire consequences today as it did in the 1930"s when most of the unemployed were primary breadwinners, when income and earnings were usually much closer to the margin of subsistence, and when there were no countervailing social programs for those failing in the labor market. Increasing affluence, the rise of families with more than one wage earner, the growing predominance of secondary earners among the unemployed, and improved social welfare protection have unquestionably mitigated the consequences of joblessness. Earnings and income data also overstate the dimensions of hardship. Among the millions with hourly earnings at or below the minimum wage level, the over-whelming majority are from multiple earners, relatively affluent families. Most of those counted by the poverty statistics are elderly or handicapped or have family responsibilities which keep them out of the labor force, so the poverty statistics are by no means an accurate indicator of labor market pathologies. Yet there are also many ways our social statistics underestimate the degree of labor-market-related hardship. The unemployment counts exclude the millions of fully employed workers whose wages are so low that their families remain in poverty. Low wages and repeated or prolonged unemployment frequently interact to undermine the capacity for self-support. Since the number experiencing joblessness at some time during the year is several times the number unemployed in any month, those who suffer as a result of forced idleness can equal or exceed average annual unemployment, even though only a minority of the jobless in any month really suffer. For every person counted in the monthly unemployment tallies, there is another working part-time because of the inability to find fulltime work, or else outside the labor force but wanting a job. Finally, income transfers in our country have always focused on the elderly, disabled, and dependent, neglecting the needs of the working poor, so that the dramatic expansion of cash and in kind transfers does not necessarily mean that those failing in the labor market are adequately protected. As a result of such contradictory evidence, it is uncertain whether those suffering seriously as a result of thousands or the tens of millions, and, hence, whether high levels of joblessness can be tolerated or must be countered by job creation and economic stimulus. There is only one area of agreement in this debate—that the existing poverty, employment, and earnings statistics are inadequate for one of their primary applications, measuring the consequences of labor market problems.

单选题The 1990s' decision led Shell to

单选题The attempts to foster women' s career made by General Electric are motivated by