单选题President Coolidge"s statement, "The business of America is business," still points to an important truth today—that business institutions have more prestige (威望) in American society than any other kind of organization, including the government. Why do business institutions possess this great prestige? One reason is that Americans view business as being more firmly based on the ideal of competition than other institutions in society. Since competition is seen as the major source of progress and prosperity by most Americans, competitive business institutions are respected. Competition is not only good in itself; it is the means by which other basic American values such as individual freedom, equality of opportunity, and hard work are protected. Competition protects the freedom of the individual by ensuring that there is no monopoly (垄断) of power. In contrast to one all-powerful government, many businesses compete a-gainst each other for profits. Theoretically, if one business tries to take unfair advantage of its customers, it will lose to competing business which treats its customers more fairly. Where many businesses compete for the customers" dollar, they cannot afford to treat them like inferiors or slaves. A contrast is often made between business, which is competitive, and government, which is a monopoly. Because business is competitive, many Americans believe that it is more supportive of freedom than government, even though government leaders are elected by the people and business leaders are not. Many Americans believe, then, that competition is as important, or even more important, than democracy in preserving freedom. Competition in business is also believed to strengthen the ideal of equality of opportunity. Competition is seen as an open and fair race where success goes to the swiftest person regardless of his or her social class background. Competitive success is commonly seen as the American alternative to social rank based on family background. Business is therefore viewed as an expression of the idea of equality of opportunity rather than the aristocratic (贵族的) idea of inherited privilege. (337 words)

单选题He appeared ______ with our team's performance. A. satisfying B. to be satisfying C. to satisfy D. satisfied

单选题 Passage 9 Another cultural difference has to do with the much greater emphasis that Chinese people have traditionally placed on {{U}}(1) {{/U}}, on form (as distant from content), and on being polite. Americans, in contrast, in their daily interaction, do not often talk or think about {{U}}(2) {{/U}} face, gaining face, or giving face. Americans are concerned about reputations and they do think about "looking good" and making others "looking good." {{U}}(3) {{/U}}, in daily interaction they tend to focus more on the substance (content) of the interaction and not on whether or not a particular action will result in someone losing or gaining face. Such issues as {{U}}(4) {{/U}} status, which are important in Chinese {{U}}(5) {{/U}} of face, are less important to American and less likely to enter their minds when thinking aboutsubstantive matters. Similarly, Americans are not so concerned about form. {{U}}(6) {{/U}} their great emphasis on diversity, Americans expect that people will interact in a great {{U}}(7) {{/U}} of ways; they want to be treated courteously, {{U}}(8) {{/U}} they have never had such firmly accepted codes or "rules" for "right behavior," (or standard or proper behavior) as has been customary in China. Americans appreciate people who are {{U}}(9) {{/U}}, but they also have different expectations {{U}}(10) {{/U}} politeness than have been typical in China. For Americans, especially in a medical or academic setting, politeness alone is not enough. Even on a first meeting, Americans seek substance.

单选题{{B}} Drections: For each blank in the following passage, choose the best answer from the choices givenbelow. Mark your answer on the ANSWER SHEET by drawing with a pencil a short bar acrossthe corresponding letter in the brackets.{{/B}} If a farmer wishes to succeed, he must try to keep a wide gap between his consumption andhis production. He must store a large quantity of grain{{U}} 31 {{/U}}consuming all his grain immediately.He can continue to support himself and his family{{U}} 32 {{/U}}he produces a surplus. He must use thissurplus in three ways: as seed for sowing, as an insurance{{U}} 33 {{/U}}the unpredictable effects of badweather and as a commodity which he must sell in order to {{U}} 34 {{/U}}old agricultural implements and obtain chemical fertilizers to{{U}} 35 {{/U}}the soil. He mayalso need money to construct irrigation{{U}} 36 {{/U}}and improve his farm in other ways. If no surplus isavailable, a farmer cannot be{{U}} 37 {{/U}}. He must either sell some of his property or {{U}} 38 {{/U}}extra funds in the form of loans. Naturally he will try to borrow money at a low{{U}} 39 {{/U}}ofinterest, but loans of this kind are not{{U}} 40 {{/U}}obtainable.

单选题Prices determine how resources are to be used. They are also the means by which products and services that are in limited supply are rationed among buyers. The price system of the United States is a very complex network composed of the prices of all the products bought and sold in the economy as well as those of a myriad of services, including labor, professional, transportation, and public utility services. The interrelationships of all these prices make up the "system" of prices. The price of any particular product or service is linked to a broad complicated system of prices in which everything seems to depend more or less upon everything else. If one were to ask a group of randomly selected individuals to define "price", many would reply that price is an amount of money paid by the buyer to the seller for a product or service or, in other words, that price is the money value of a product or service as agreed upon in a market transaction. This definition is, of course, valid as far as it goes. For a complete understanding of a price in any particular transaction, much more than the amount of money involved must be known. Both the buyer and the seller should be familiar with not only the money amount, but with the amount and quality of the product or service to be exchanged, the time and place at which the exchange will take place and other factors. For example, when the payment will be made, the form of money to be used, the credit terms and discounts that apply to the transaction, guarantees on the product or service, delivery terms, and return privileges. In other words, both buyer and seller should be fully aware of all the factors that comprise the total "package" being exchanged for the asked-for amount o money in order that they may evaluate a given price.

单选题Sporting activities are essentially modified forms of hunting behavior. Viewed biologically, the modem foot-bailer is in reality a member of a hunting group. His killing weapon has turned into a harmless football and his prey (猎物) into a goalmouth. If his aim is accurate and he scores a goal, he enjoys the hunter's triumph of killing his prey. To understand how this transformation has taken place we must briefly look back at our forefathers. They spent over a million years evolving as cooperative hunters. Their very survival depended on success in the hunting-field. Under this pressure their whole way of life, even their bodies, became greatly changed. They became chasers, runners, jumpers, aimers, throwers and prey-killers. They cooperated as skillful male-group attackers. Then about ten thousand years ago, after this immensely long period of hunting their food, they became farmers. Their improved intelligence, so vital to their old hunting life, was put to a new use--that of controlling and domesticating their prey. The hunt became suddenly out of date. The food was there on the farms, awaiting their needs. The risks and uncertainties of the hunt were no longer essential for survival.

单选题Many new ______ will be opened up in the future for those with a university education. A. opportunities B. realities C. necessities D. probabilities

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 was (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 travelling around the world. But these dreams (4) to a sudden and dramatic end when a stock I (5) , Texas cellular phone 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 learned how quickly Wall Street (9) companies that misrepresent the (10)

单选题He (was) (born) in a (small) village in (the year) 1970.

单选题 I was addressing a small gathering in a suburban Virginia living room—a women's group that had invited men to join them. Throughout the evening, one man had been particularly talkative, frequently offering ideas and anecdotes, while his wife sat silently beside him on the couch. Toward the end of the evening, I commented that women frequently complain that their husbands don't talk to them. This man quickly nodded in agreement. He gestured toward his wife and said, "She's the talker in our family. " The room burst in laughter; the man looked puzzled and hurt. "It's true," he explained. "When I come home from work I have nothing to say. If she didn't keep the conversation going, we'd spend the whole evening in silence. " This episode crystallizes the irony that although American men tend to talk more than women in public situations, they often talk less at home. And this pattern is wreaking havoc with marriage. The pattern was observed by political scientist Andrew Hacker in the late 1970s. Sociologist Catherine Kohler Riessman reports in her book Divorce Talk that most of the women she interviewed-but only a few of the men-gave lack of communication as the reason for their divorces. Given the current divorce rate of nearly 50 percent, that amounts to millions of cases in the United States every year--a virtual epidemic of failed conversation. In my own research, complaints from women about their husbands most often focused not on tangible inequities such as having given up the chance for a career to accompany a husband to his, or doing far more than their share of daily life--support work like cleaning, cooking and social arrangements. Instead, they focused on communication years before, that most wives want their husbands to be, first and foremost, conversational partners, but few husbands share this expectation of their wives. In short, the image that best represents the current crisis is the stereotypical cartoon scene of a man sitting at the breakfast table with a newspaper held up in front of his face, while a woman glares at the back of it, wanting to talk.

单选题Hairdresser: How would you like to do your hair today? The same style as usual? Mrs. Lee: I have a special party to attend tonight, and I'd like to change styles. Hairdresser: Very well. You're not in a hurry, are you? Mrs. Lee: No. ______.

单选题Many businesses' promotion campaigns ______ because they never fulfill what they have said in their ads. A. pass away B. get by C. fall through D. give away

单选题Genghis Khan was not one to agonize over gender roles. He was into sex and power, and he didn't mind saying so. "The greatest joy a man can know is to conquer his enemies and drive them before him." The emperor once thundered. Genghis Khan conquered two thirds of the known world during the early 13th century and he may have set an all-time record for what biologists call reproductive success. An account written 33 years after his death credited him with 20,000 descendants. Men's manners have improved markedly since Genghis Khan's day. At heart, though, we're the same animals we were 800 years ago, which is to say we are status seekers. We may talk of equality and fraternity. We may strive for classless societies. But we go right on building hierarchies, and jockeying for status within them. Can we abandon the tendency? Probably not. As scientists are now discovering, status seeking is not just a habit or a cultural tradition. It's a design feature of the male psyche--a biological drive that is rooted in the nervous system and regulated by hormones and brain chemicals. How do we know this relentless one-upmanship is a biological endowment? Anthropologists find the same pattern virtually everywhere they 10ok and so do zoologists. Male competition is fierce among crickets, crayfish and elephants, and it's ubiquitous among higher primates, for example, male chimpanzees have an extraordinarily strong drive for dominance. Coincidence? Evolutionists don't think so. From their perspective, life is essentially a race to repro-duke, and natural selection is bound to favor different strategies in different organisms. In reproductive terms, they have vastly more to gain from it. A female can't flood the gene pool by commandeering extra mates; no matter how much sperm she attracts, she is unlikely to produce more than a dozen viable offspring. But as Genghis Khan's exploits make clear, males can profit enormously by out mating their peers. It's not hard to see how that dynamic, played out over millions of years, would leave modern men fretting over status. We're built from the genes that the most determined competitors passed down. Fortunately, we don't aspire to families of 800. As monogamy and contraceptives may have leveled the reproductive playfield, power has become its own psychological reward. Those who achieve high status still enjoy more sex with more partners than the rest of us, and the reason is no mystery. Researchers have consistently found that women favor signs of "earning capacity" over good looks. For sheer sex appeal, a doughy (脸色苍白的) bald guy in a Rolex will outscore a stud (非常英俊的男子) in a Burger King uniform almost every time.

单选题Man: ______ Woman: No... but it's a non-smoking section, I'm afraid. A. Cigarette? B. Mind if I have a smoke here? C. Is this a smoking zone? D. Is smoking allowed in here?

单选题They hardly speak to each other nowadays, ______ they? A. don't B. do C. haven't D. have

单选题A: I'm afraid I have spilled some coffee on the tablecloth. B: ______ A. Oh. don't worry about that. B. You needn't apologize. C. I feel sorry for that. D. Oh. you shouldn't have done that.

单选题In the 1920s demand for American farm products fell, as European countries began to recover from World War I and instituted austerity (紧缩) programs to reduce their imports. The result was a sharp drop in farm prices. This period was more disastrous for farmers than earlier times had been, because farmers were no longer self-sufficient. They were paying for machinery, seed, and fertilizer, and they were also buying consumer goods. The prices of the items fanners bought remained constant, while prices they received for their products fell. These developments were made worse by the Great Depression, which began in 1929 and extended throughout the 1930s. In 1929, under President Herbert Hoover, the Federal Farm Board was organized. It established the principle of direct interference with supply and demand, and it represented the first national commitment to provide greater economic stability for farmers. President Hoover"s successor attached even more importance to this problem. One of the first measures proposed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt when he took office in 1933 was the Agricultural Adjustment Act, which was subsequently passed by Congress. This law was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court on the grounds that general taxes were being collected to pay one special group of people. However, new laws were passed immediately that achieved the same result of resting soil and providing flood-control measures, but which were based on the principle of soil conservation. The Roosevelt Administration believed that rebuilding the nation"s soil was in the national interest and was not simply a plan to help farmers at the expense of other citizens. Later the government guaranteed loans to farmers so that they could buy farm machinery, hybrid (杂交) grain, and fertilizers. (287 words)

单选题 The question of ethics in the legal profession is one that has plagued the industry since its inception. The common image of an attorney is one who will resort to any unethical trick to twist the laws to fit his purposes. In the more specific industry of criminal law, defense attorneys are often criticized for advocating on behalf of defendants who are "obviously guilty," thus becoming roadblocks on the path to justice. Much to the contrary, however, defense attorneys provide a valuable serve that should earn them praise, not scorn. While it is true that every lawyer will do everything within his power to interpret the laws in the manner most beneficial to his client, such a characterization is by no means limited to defense attorneys. The prosecutor will do the same thing, employing all his legal knowledge and know-how to establish the guilt of the defendant. In this respect, the vague nature of the law is highlighted, and it becomes a virtual necessity for each side to use every tool at their disposal, on the assumption that the other side will also use every tool at his. The net result emerges as a positive, in which the tricks of the opposing attorneys cancel one another out, leaving only the truth, clearer and devoid of manipulation, presented for the jury's consideration. Further, the defense attorney is a vital element of the American judicial system, in that without him the defendant would stand no chance whatsoever. Under the constitution, even the most "obvious guilty" defendants are guaranteed the right to a fair trial, involving someone able and willing to advocate on his behalf. Of course, there are bad apples in the industry who are unethical and care nothing for actual justice, and whose only concerns are their wallets. Generally speaking, however, without defense attorneys, the system would crumble into a mere machine in which defendants are assumed guilty, without a chance to argue or prove otherwise, and many innocent people falsely charged with crimes would be severely punished for transgressions that they didn't commit. It is a basic fact that the adversarial system of justice in the United States is necessary in order to ensure the fairest and most unbiased presentation and evaluation of the facts possible. Without defense attorneys, that system cannot be carried out, and would result in a loss of the civil liberties that the nation enjoys and treasures. To that end, all of those who make that process a reality, including defense attorneys, deserve our support and admiration, not our suspicion and disdain.

单选题Salt, shells or metals are still used as money in out-of-the-way parts of the world today. Salt may seem rather a strange (1) to use as money, (2) in countries where the food of the people is mainly vegetable, it is often an (3) necessity. Cakes of salt, stamped to show their (4) , were used as money in some countries until recent (5) , and cakes of salt (6) buy goods in Borneo and Darts of Africa. Sea shells (7) as money at some time (8) another over the greater part of the Old World. These were (9) mainly from the beaches of the Maldives Islands in the Indian Ocean, and were traded to India and China. In Africa, shells were traded fight across the (10) from East to West. Metal, valued by weight, (11) coins in many parts of the world. Iron, in lumps, bars or rings, is still used in many countries (12) paper money. It can either be exchanged (13) goods, or made into tools, weapons, or ornaments. The early money of China, apart from shells, was of bronze, (14) in flat, round pieces with a hole in the middle, called "cash". The (15) of these are between three thousand and four thousand years old-older than the earliest coins of the eastern Mediterranean. Nowadays, coins and notes have (16) nearly all the more picturesque (17) of money, and (18) in one or two of the more remote countries people still keep it for future use on ceremonial (19) such as weddings and funerals, examples of (20) money will soon be found only in museums.

单选题{{B}}Passage Two{{/B}} Each semester, Andrew Tom receives a term bill outlining his expenses: tuition, dorm fee, student center fee, recreation fee, resident activity fee, health insurance. {{U}}If only the rest of his expenses were as easy to quantify.{{/U}} "It's like you start out the semester with plenty of money and then $ 20 for dinner out here and $100 at the department store there, it's gone," said Tom, a Northeastern University third-year student. "And there are so many things you need like toothpaste or laundry detergent (洗涤剂) that you don't think about until you get here and need it." From the books lining their shelves to the fashionable clothes filling their closets, college students say the expenses of a college education go well beyond tuition and a dining hall meal plan. Many say they arrive on campus only to be overwhelmed by unexpected costs from sports fees to the actual price of a slice of pizza. Balancing a job with schoolwork, especially at colleges known for their heavy workloads like Harvard and MIT, can be tough. So can the pressure students often feel to financially keep pace with their friends. "When you get dragged along shopping, you're going to spend money; if you get dragged to a party and everyone wants to take a cab but you're {{U}}cheap{{/U}} and want to take a bus. Chances are you"ll end up sharing the fee for the cab," said Tom. "I guess you could say no, but no one wants to be the only one eating in the snack bar while your friends are ont to dinner. " Max Cohen, a biology major at MIT, said he is accustomed to watching fellow students spend $ 40 a night to have dinner delivered or $ 50 during a night out at a bar. During the school's recent spring break, friends on trips for the week posted away messages that read like a world map—Paris, Rome, Tokyo. "Meanwhile I stay home and work," said Cohen. "I didn't realize when I came here how much money I would spend or how hard I would have to work to get by." It is a lesson some younger students learn quickly. Others, surrounded by credit card offers, go into debt, or worse, are forced to leave school. "A lot of people don't think twice about how much they spend," said a first-year student at MIT, "and you feel the pressure sometimes to go along with them."