单选题3 The House is expected to pass a piece of legislation Thursday that seeks to significantly rebalance the playing field for unions and employers and could possibly reverse decades of declining membership among private industries. The Employee Free Choice Act would allow a union to be recognized after collecting a majority of vote cards, instead of waiting for the National Labor Relations Board to over-see a secret ballot election, which can occur more than 50 days after the card vote is completed. Representatives of business on Capitol Hill oppose the bill. The National Association of Manufacturers, the National Federation of Independent Business, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups oppose the shift away from secret ballots saying the change could threaten the privacy of the workers. "This isn't about preventing increased unionization, it's about protecting rights," said the National Association of Manufacturer's Jason Straczewski, of his organization's opposition to bill. Straczewski says eliminating the secret-ballot step would open up employees to coercion (强迫，威胁) from unions. Samuel of the AFL-CIO contends the real coercion comes from employers. "Workers talking to workers are equals while managers talking to workers aren't," Samuel said. He cites the 31,358 cases of illegal employer discrimination acted on by the National Labor Relations Board in 2005. Samuel also points out that counter to claims from the business lobby, the secret bal-lot would not be eliminated. The change would only take the control of the timing of the election out of the hands of the employers. "On the ground, the difference between having this legislation and not would be the difference between night and day," said Richard Shaw of the Harris County Central I.abor Council, who says it would have a tremendous impact on the local level. The bill has other provisions (规定，条款) as well. The Employee Free Choice Act would also impose binding arbitration (仲裁) when a company and a newly formed union cannot agree on a contract after 3 months. An agreement worked out under binding compul- sory arbitration would be in effect for 2 years, a fact that Straczewski calls, "borderline unconstitutional. " "I don't see how it will benefit employees if they're locked into a contract," said Straczewski. The bill's proponents point to the trend of recognized unions unable to get contracts from unwilling employers. The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, the organization that oversees arbitration, reported that in 2004, 45 percent of newly formed unions were denied first contracts by employers. The bill would also strengthen the penalties for companies that illegally coerce or intimidate employees. As it stands, the law on the books hasn't changed substantially since the National Labor Relations Act was made into law in 1935. The NLBR can enforce no other penalty than reinstating wrongfully fired employees or recovering lost wages.

单选题The London Stock Exchange has been famous as a place for men only, and women used to be strictly forbidden to enter. But the world is changing day by day, and even the Stock Exchange, which seemed to be a men"s castle, is gradually opening its doors to the other sex. On 16th November 1971, a great decision was taken. The Stock Exchange Council (the body of men that administers the Stock Exchange) decided that women should be allowed onto the new trading floor when it opened in 1973. But the "castle" had not been completely conquered. The first girls to work in "The House" were not brokers or jobbers. They were neither allowed to become partners in stock broking firms, nor to be authorized dealers in stocks and shares. They were simply junior clerks and telephone operators. Women have been trying to get into the Stock Exchange for many years. Several votes have been taken in "The House" to see whether the members would be willing to allow women to become members, but the answer has always been "No". There have been three refusals of this kind since 1967. Now women are admitted, although in a very junior capacity. Two forms of jobbers made an application to the Stock Exchange Council to be allowed to employ girl clerks. Permission was finally given. A member of the Stock Exchange explained after this news had been given, "The new floor is going to be different from the old one. All the jobbers will have their own stands, with space for a telephone and typewriters, therefore there will have to be typists and telephone operators. So women must be allowed in." This decision did not mean a very great victory in the war for equal rights for women. However, it was a step in the fight direction. The Chairman of the new building will eventually lead to women being allowed to have full membership of the Stock Exchange. It is only a matter of time; it must happen.

单选题The candidate realized that he wasU handicapped /Uby his age.

单选题Prof. Wang is so ______ in her work that it would be a pity to disturb her.

单选题I tried to call you lost night but your line was______.

单选题The stoic former general led his civilian life as he had his military life, with simplicity and ______ dignity. A. benevolent B. informal C. austere D. aggressive

单选题The research institute has recruited 25 university graduates ______ in science.

单选题His______directions confused us; we did not know which of the two roads to take.

单选题The storm was______and changed course constantly at sea at that time.

单选题There are some teenagers who have independent tastes, but most of them to______.

单选题In fact, a number of recent developments suggest that new media may actually be the salvation of old media; that online newspapers, Webzines, and e-books could preserve and extend the best aspects of the print culture while augmenting it with their various technological advantages.

单选题Koon has ______ himself in a world of commercialism that most modern artists disdain.

单选题{{B}}Passage One{{/B}} I was introduced to the concept of literacy animator in Oladumi Arigbede's (1994) article on high illiteracy rates among women and school dropout rates among girls. According to Arigbede, literacy animators view their role as assisting in the self-liberating development of people in the world who are struggling for a more meaningful life. Animators are a family of deeply concerned and committed people whose gut-level rejection of mass human pauperization compels them to intervene on the side of the marginalized. Their motivation is not derived from a love of literacy as merely another technical life skill, and they accept that literacy is never culturally or ideologically neutral. Arigbede writes from her experiences as an animator working with women and men in Nigeria. She believes that literacy animators have to make a clear choice about whose culture and whose ideology will be fostered among those with whom they work. Do literacy educators in the United States consider whether the instruction they pursue conflicts with their students' traditional cultures or community, or fosters illiteracies in learners' first or home languages or dialects and. in their orality? Some approaches to literacy instruction represent an ideology of individualism, control, and competition. Consider, for example, the difference in values conveyed and represented when students engage in choral reading versus the practice of having one student read out loud to the group. To identify as a literacy animator is to choose the ideology of "sharing, solidarity, love, equity, co-operation with and respect of both nature and other human beings". Literacy pedagogy that matches the animator ideology works on maintaining the languages and cultures of millions of minority children who at present are being forced to accept the language and culture of the dominant group. It might lead to assessment that examines the performance outcomes of a community of literacy learners and the social significance of their uses of literacy, as opposed to measuring what an individual can do as a reader and writer on a standardized test. Shor (1993) describes literacy animators as problerm-posing, community-based, dialogic educators. Do our teacher-education textbooks on reading and language arts promote the idea that teachers should explore problems from a community-based dialogic perspective?

单选题Nature constantly yields to man in New York: witness those fragile side walk trees gamely straggling against encroaching cement and petrol fumes.

单选题Cowards and cheats are______.

单选题{{B}}Directions:{{/B}} There are 5 reading passages in this part. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. Fox' each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C, and D. You should decide on the best choice and mark your answer on the ANSWER SHEET by blackening the corresponding letter in the brackets. The opposite of adaptive divergence is an interesting and fairly common expression of evolution. Whereas related groups of organisms take on widely different characters in becoming adapted to unlike environments in the case of adaptive divergence. We find that Unrelated groups of organisms exhibit adaptive convergence when they spot similar modes of life or become suited for special sorts of environments. For example, invertebrate marine animals living firmly attached to the sea bottom or to some foreign object tend to develop a sub- cylindrical or conical form. This is illustrated by coral individuals, by many sponges, and even by the diminutive tubes of bryozoans. Adaptive convergence in taking this coral-like form is shown by some brachiopods and pelecypods that grew in fixed position. More readily appreciated is the streamlined fitness of most fishes for moving swiftly through water; they have no neck, the contour of the body is smoothly curved so as to give minimum resistance, and the chief propelling organ is a powerful tail fin. The fact that some fossil reptiles (ichthyosaurs) and modem mammals (whales, dolphins) are wholly fishlike in form is an expression of adaptive convergence, for these air-breathing reptiles and mammals, which are highly efficient swimmers, are not closely related to fishes. Unrelated or distantly related organisms that develop similarity of form are sometimes designated as homeomorphs (having same form).

单选题This book will show the readers ______ can be used in other contexts.

单选题(略){{B}}Part Ⅱ Reading Comprehension{{/B}} Few people would defend the Victorian attitude to children, but if you were a parent in those days, at least you knew where you stood: children were to be seen and not heard. Freud and company did away with all that and parents have been bewildered ever since. The child's happiness is all-important, the psychologists say, but what about the parents' happiness? Parents suffer continually from fear and guilt while their children gaily romp about pulling the place apart. A good "old-fashioned" spanking is out of the question: no modern child-rearing manual would permit such barbarity. The trouble is you are not allowed even to shout. Who knows what deep psychological wounds you might inflict? The poor child may never recover from the dreadful traumatic experience. So it is that parents bend over backwards to avoid giving their children complexes which a hundred years ago hadn't even been heard of. Certainly a child needs love, and a lot of it. But the excessive permissiveness of modern parents is surely doing more harm than good. Psychologists have succeeded in undermining parents' confidence in their own authority. And it hasn't taken children long to get wind of the fact. In addition to the great modern classics on childcare, there are countless articles in magazines and newspapers. With so much unsolicited advice flying about, mum and dad just don't know what to do any more. In the end, they do nothing at all. So, from early childhood, the kids are in charge and parents' lives are regulated according to the needs of heir offspring. When the little dears develop into teenagers, they take complete control. Lax authority over the years makes adolescent rebellion against parents all the more violent. If the young people are going to have a party, for instance, parents are asked to leave the house. Their presence merely spoils the fun. What else can the poor parents do but obey'? Children are hardy creatures (far hardier than the psychologists would have us believe) and most of them survive the harmful influence of extreme permissiveness which is the normal condition in the modern household. But a great many do not. The spread of juvenile delinquency in our own age is largely due to parental laxity. Mother, believing that little Johnny can look after himself, is not at home when he returns from school, so little Johnny roams the streets. The dividing-line between permissiveness and sheer negligence is very fine 'indeed. The psychologists have much to answer for. They should keep their mouths shut and let parents get on with the job. And if children are knocked about a little bit in the process, it may not really matter too much. At least this will help them to develop vigorous views of their own and give them something positive to react against. Perhaps there's some truth in the idea that children who have had a surfeit of happiness in their childhood appear like stodgy puddings and fail to make a success of life.

单选题He was present in his ______ role of school manager, church warden and donor.