单选题Is it more truly democratic to hold a ______, rather than let the government alone decide an important issue.

单选题With increasing prosperity, West European youth is having a fling that is creating distinctive consumer and cultural patterns. The result has been the increasing emergence in Europe of that phenomenon well known in America as the "youth market." This is a market in which enterprising businesses cater to the demands of teenagers and older youths in all their beatlemania and pop-art forms. In the United States, the market is wide-ranging and well established, almost an industry, which with this country's emphasis on "youthfulness," even extends beyond teenager groups. As in the United States, youthful tastes in Europe extend over a similar range of products-records and record players, leather jackets and "wayout," extravagantly styled clothing, cosmetics and soft drinks. Generally it now is difficult to tell in which direction trans-Atlantic teenage influences are flowing. Also, a pattern of conformity dominates European youth as in this country, though in Britain the object is to wear clothes that "make the wearer stand out," but also make him "in," such as tight trousers and precisely tailored jackets. Worship and emulation of "idols" in the entertainment field, especially the "pop" singers and other performers, can be viewed as another similarity. There is also the same exuberance and unpredictability in sudden fad switches. In Paris, buyers of stores catering to the youth market carefully watch what dress is being worn by a popular television teenager singer to be ready for a sudden demand for copies. In Stockholm other followers of teenage fads call the youth market "attractive bat irrational." Actually, the scope and nature of the youth market varies considerably from country to country, being large and lively in some and only beginning to show itself in others. But there are also these important dissimilarities generally with the American youth-market: In the European youth-market, unlike that of the United States, it is the working youth who provides the bulk of purchasing power. On the average, the school-finishing age still tends to be 14 years. This is the maximum age to which compulsory education extend, and with Europe's industrial manpower shortage, thousands of teenage youths may soon attain incomes equal in many cases to that of their fathers. Although, because of general prosperity, European youths are beginning to continue school studies beyond the compulsory maximum age, they do not receive anything like the pocket-money or "allowances" of American teenagers. Working youth, consequently, are the big spenders in the European youth market, but they also have less leisure than those staying on at school, but these in turn have less buying power.

单选题The writer of this passage is most likely to be ______.

单选题What does the word "adopt" (para. 2, Line 2) mean in the passage?

单选题Brazilian music is thoroughly imbued with African themes, and illustrious composers have long found inspiration in the black musical heritage. A. imaginative B. sensitive C. distinguished D. persistent

单选题She had a shy, retiring side to her personality that was completely at odds with her public ______. A. persona B. tummy C. steppe D. rendezvous

单选题What is vexing the Bush administration and other public-health professionals is the fact that the United States is not particularly well prepared in the event a bird flu pandemic does strike in the near future.

单选题Paralleling the growth of interest among professional historians during the early 1960s, I had a simultaneous ______ of popular interest in the Afro-American past that was directly stimulated by the drama of the protest movement. A. respite B. fray C. obsolescence D. groundswell

单选题Natural selection is defined as the process ______ the course of evolution by preserving those traits best adapted for an organism's survival. A. to which directs B. of which directs it C. directs it D. that directs

单选题In most American cities, the rent for a one-bedroom apartment was $250 or more per month in recent years. In some smaller cities such as Louisville, Kentucky or Jacksonville, Florida the rent was less, but in larger cities it was more. For example, if you lived in Los Angeles, you had to pay $400 or more to rent a one-bedroom apartment, and the same apartment rented for $625 and up in Chicago. The most expensive rents in the U. S. were in New York City, where you had to pay at least $700 a month to rent a one-bedroom apartment in most parts of the city. Renters and city planners are worried about the high cost of renting apartments. Many cities now have rent control laws to keep the cost of renting low. These laws help low-income families who cannot pay high rents. Rent controls in the United States began in 1943 when the government imposed rent controls on all American cities to help workers and the families of soldiers during World War Ⅱ. After the war, only one city—New York—continued these World War Ⅱ controls. Recently, more and more cities have returned to rent controls. At the beginning of the 1980s, nearly one fifth of the people in the United States lived in cities with rent-control laws. Many cities have rent-control laws, but why are rents so high? Builders and landlords blame rent controls for the high rents. Rents are high because there are not enough apartments to rent, and they blame rent controls for the shortage of apartments. Builders want more money to build more apartment buildings, and landlords want more money to repair their old apartment buildings. But they cannot increase rents to get this money because of the rent-control laws. As a result, landlords are not repairing their old apartments, and builders are not building new apartment buildings to replace the old apartment buildings. Builders are building apartments for high-income families, not low income families, so low-income families must live in old apartments that are in disrepair. Builders and landlords claim that rent-control laws really hurt low income families. Many renters disagree with them. They say that rent control is not the problem. Even without rent controls, builders and landlords will continue to ignore low-income housing because they can make more money from high-income housing. The only answer, they claim, is more rent controls and government help for low-income housing.

单选题 Developing a peaceful, understanding, and supportive relationship between parents and children is not an easy task. Failures can and do occur at any age level, and at times the results are the abuse, neglect, and even death of children. Child abuse has become a major topic in child development and an issue of much national concern. In the span of four legislative years, 1963～1967, all fifty states enacted laws calling for the reporting of injuries inflicted on children. By 1973, the United States Congress passed the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (Public Law 93-247), This law not only reflected the mood of concerned citizens, but it also did much to clear up the confusion and disagreement over what is child abuse. The question "what causes child abuse?" has prompted much debate. The single most persistent myth which had plagued efforts to understand causes is the notion that parents who abuse children are mentally disturbed or ill. Although there is no specific psychiatric diagnosis which comprises the behavior and personalities of abuser, they seem to share a common style of child rearing. Those parents demand high levels of child performance and they often use severe physical punishment to ensure the child's proper behavior, Abusive parents themselves were raised In similar family situations and their own childhood experience has a lasting influence on their behavior as adults. Current research has suggested, however, that the "abuser is sick" hypothesis is too limited, A broader social, psychological approach recognizes that some personal problems are implicit but that psychological factors arise out of a social context. Social factors include unemployment, social isolation, and unwanted pregnancy. Moreover, findings that abuse occurs more frequently in larger families and families with low income, poor education, and low occupational status suggest that many such parents cannot withstand the twenty-four-hour-a-day responsibility to raise and care for their children. These problems aggravate the situation, especially when combined with the general approval in our culture of violence.

单选题We must_____the problem of poverty as soon as possible.

单选题All the parts of these washing machines are ______, so that it is very convenient tO replace them.

单选题Although a few contemporaries ______ the book, most either ignored or mocked it.

单选题After their misfortunes the once wealthy family slowly became______ again.

单选题Resistance to the 1954 United States Supreme Court decision terminating segregation placed the schools in the middle of a bitter and sometimes violent dispute. By 1965, when a measure of genuine integration had become a reality in many school districts, tile schools again found themselves in the eye of a stormy controversy. This time the question was not which children were going to what schools but what kind of education society should provide for the students. The goal of high academic performance, which had been revived by criticisms and reforms of the 1950s and early 1960s, began to be challenged by demands for more liberal and free schooling. Many university and some high-school students from all ethnic groups and classes had been growing more and more frustrated--some of them desperately so--over what they felt was a cruel and senseless war in Vietnam and a cruel, discriminatory, competitive, loveless society at home. They demanded curriculum reform, improved teaching methods, and greater stress and action on such problems as overpopulation, pollution, international strife, deadly weaponry, and discrimination. Pressure for reform came not only from students but also from many educators. While students and educators alike spoke of the greater need for what was taught, opinions as to what was relevant varied greatly. The blacks wanted new textbooks in which their people were recognized and fairly represented, and some of them wanted courses in black studies. They, and many white educators, also objected to culturally biased intelligence and aptitude tests and to academic college entrance standards and examinations. Such tests, they said, did not take into account the diverse backgrounds of students who belonged to ethnic minorities and whose culture was therefore different from that of the white middle-class student. Whites and blacks alike also wanted a curriculum that touched more closely on contemporary social problems and teaching methods that recognized their existence as individual human beings rather than as faceless robots competing for grades. Alarmed by the helplessness and hopelessness of the urban ghetto schools, educators began to insist on curricula and teaching methods flexible enough to provide for differences in students' social and ethnic backgrounds. Moreover, for educational reformers the urban ghetto school became a symbol of a general failure of American education to accomplish the goal of individual development. Also reminiscent of those decades were the child-centered schools that sprang up in the later 1960s as alternatives to and examples for tile traditional schools. The clash between the academically and the humanistically oriented schools of thought, therefore, was in many ways one more encounter in the continuing battle between conservative and liberals.

单选题His strange behavior had greatly ______ me and my friends as well that evening.