单选题{{B}}Passage Three{{/B}} Forget Harry Potter. No matter that the film about this schoolboy with magic powers broke all box-office records on its opening weekend, taking $94 m in the United States and $23 m in Britain, the truly momentous phenomenon in the film industry is not a pre-pubescent wizard but a humble circular piece of plastic: the digital versatile disc (DVD). Next year, for the first time, sales of movies in DVD format are forecast to outsell those on video cassette in America, reaching a total of $9.5 billion, according to Morgan Stanley, an investment bank. Already, 80% of American households have DVD players. With a DVD recorder now in the shops as well, something that can record from the TV as well as play the discs, Christmas sales are expected to be strong. A technology considered a flop when it was launched in 1997 is now the basis for the fastest-growing consumer appliance ever. Some in the film business complain that people are simply buying DVDs instead of video cassettes: there is no net gain. Yet DVDs can do things that the cassette cannot, such as offer a choice of language in which to watch a movie, not to mention a clearer picture. And the studios have cleverly stuffed DVDs full of lively extra features, such as new clips or interviews with the director. Moreover, people appear to want to build up collections of DVDs, rather as they do of recorded music. The DVD is steadily gaining shelf space, even in the movie-rental store, and it should overtake (赶上，追上) the cassette even there within three years. And shops like DVDs, not least because they take up less space. The DVD could well boost the size of the overall home-video market. Already, recent releases on DVD, such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Star Wars Episode One, have sold millions of copies each. At a time when any revenue growth in the media industry is startling, DVD sales at AOL Time Warner jumped by 44% in the third quarter this year, compared with the same period of 2000, to $279 m. But how lasting will the DVD effect be? Some 80% of a film's revenue comes from its distribution after the cinema release: to home video, pay-TV and the like. "The largest single portion of that revenue will be the DVD business," says Christopher Dixon of UBS Warburg, an investment bank, which in turn will help to reduce the risk involved in making movies. "The DVD is the most exciting development in the film industry," he adds, "but every eight years there has been a new distribution platform in the entertainment business. None of them lasts forever. "

单选题Woman: What do you think of the new novel by William Golding? Man: Well, that one takes a really close reading. Question: What does the man mean?

单选题Prices of food and clothing and almost everything else in the country have steadily gone up. As a result, the buying ______ of the dollar has gone down. A. capacity B. competency C. power D. value

单选题M: I've brought back your Oxford Companion to English Literature. I thought you might use it for your paper. Sorry not to have returned it earlier.W: I was wondering where that book was.Q: What can we infer from the conversation? A. The woman wondered why the man didn't return the book. B. The woman doesn't seem to know what the book is about. C. The woman doesn't find the book useful any more. D. The woman forgot lending the book to the man.

单选题With unemployment rising and housing costs still high, cities around the country are experiencing a new and sudden wave of homelessness. Shelters are overflowing, and more people this year are sleeping on floors in dingy social service centers, living in cars or spending nights on the streets. In New York, Boston and other cities, homelessness is at record levels, a consequence of a faltering (摇晃的) economy that has crumbled even further after the Sept.11 attacks. A survey by the U. S. Conference of Mayors released last week found that requests for emergency shelter in 27 cities had increased an average of 13 percent over last year. The report said the increases were 26 percent in Trenton; 25 percent in Kansas City, Mo.; 22 percent in Chicago; 20 percent in Denver; and 20 percent in New Orleans. An unusual confluence of factors seems to be responsible for the surge. Housing prices, which soared in the expansion of the 1990's, have not gone down, even though the economy has tumbled. A stream of layoffs has newly unemployed people taking low-wage jobs that might have otherwise gone to the poor. Benefits for welfare recipients are expiring under government-imposed deadlines. And charitable donations to programs that help the disadvantaged are down considerably, officials around the country said, because of the economy and the outpouring of donations for people affected by Sept.11. "This is an unprecedented convergence (集中) of calamities (灾难), " said Xavier De Souza Briggs, an assistant professor of public policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. "It's really a crisis. " More than half the cities surveyed by the mayors' group reported that in the last year people had remained homeless longer, an average of six months. There is no total number for the homeless nationwide. Experts said it was difficult to compare the situation with statistics in previous decades, because counting methods have improved. Yet, several experts said they believed that the increases reported by cities like Boston and Chicago reflected a national trend. "My impression is there is more homelessness now than there was 20 years ago, " Gary Burtless, an economist at the Brookings Institution, said, adding that he believed that economic factors were not the sole explanation. "I think that there must be a greater segment of our population that has tenuous connections to family and friends, and therefore has fewer resources to fall back on when something very bad happens like when they lose their job, " he said.

单选题According to the passage, regular physical exercise can make old people ______.

单选题Which of the following statements shows libraries nowadays serve multimedia resource centers?

单选题{{B}}Passage One{{/B}} Historically, although the children of immigrants may have grown up bilingual and bicultural, many did not pass on much of their parents' language or culture to their own children. Thus, many grandchildren of immigrants do not speak the language of the old country and are "American" by culture. However, in some parts of the country with established communities that share a common language or culture, bilingualism and biculturalism continue. This is particularly true in communities where new immigrants are still arriving. In general, cultural pluralism (多元化) is more accepted in the United States today than it was in the first half of the 20th century, and many of the school systems have developed bilingual programs and multicultural curricula. At the close of the 20th century, there seemed to be a rise in the consciousness of ethnic groups around the world, and a sense of pride in what makes them unique. This occurs in the United States among many different groups, and in some cases it has resulted in new names to symbolize each group's identity. In the United States, people have become very sensitive to the language used to describe these groups, and they try to be "politically correct" (P. C. ). For example, many black Americans, particularly young people, prefer the term African-American instead of black, to identify with their African heritage. Some Spanish speakers prefer to be called Latinos (referring to Latin America) instead of Hispanics, while others prefer to be identified by their country of origin (Cuban-American or Cuban, Chicano, Mexican-American or Mexican, and so on). In spite of some very important differences, however, there is still a tie that binds Americans together. That tie is a sense of national identity—of "being an American". Incidentally, when citizens of the United States refer to themselves as Americans, they have no intention of excluding people from Latin American countries. There is no word such as United Statesians in the English language, so people call themselves Americans. Thus, what is really a language problem has sometimes caused misunderstandings. Although citizens of Latin American countries may call the people in the United States North Americans, to most people in the United States this makes no sense either, because the term North Americans refer to Canadians and Mexicans as well as citizens of the United States. The word American, then, will be used in this text as the adjective and nationality for the people who live in the United States of America.

单选题It was recently reported that a Japanese banker who had been in serious financial trouble ______ suicide in a moment of wild despair. A. performed B. committed C. executed D. terminated

单选题In November 1965, New York was blacked out by an electricity failure. The authorities promised that it would not happen again. Pessimists were certain that it would occur again within five years at the latest. In July 1997, there was a repeat performance which produced varying degrees of chaos throughout the city of eight million people. In 1965, the failure occurred in the cool autumn and at a time of comparative prosperity. In 1997, the disaster was much more serious because it came when unemployment was high and the city was suffering from one of its worst heat waves. In 1965, there was little crime or looting during the darkness, and fewer than a hundred people were arrested. In 1997, hundreds of stores were broken into and looted. Looters smashed shop windows and helped themselves to jewelry, clothes or television sets. Nearly 4,000 people were arrested but far more disappeared into the darkness of the night. The number of policemen available was quite inadequate and they wisely refrained from using their guns against mobs which far outnumbered them and included armed men. Hospitals had to treat hundreds of people cut by glass from shop windows. Banks and most businesses remained closed the next day. The blackout started at 9:30 p.m., when lightning hit and knocked out vital cables. Many stores were thus caught by surprise. The vast majority of New Yorkers, however, were not involved in looting. They helped strangers, distributed candles and batteries, and tried to survive in a nightmare world without traffic lights, refrigerator, elevators, water and electrical power. For twenty-four hours, New York realized how helpless it was without electricity.

单选题Speaker A: Happy Birthday, Jean.Speaker B: ______

单选题Speaker A: Hello, many happy returns! Speaker B: ______ A. The same to you, too. B. Thank you. C. I am sure I will be happy to come back. D. Oh, I'm so glad to see you again.

单选题Speaker A: Excuse me, do you need a hand? Speaker B: ______

单选题M: You've had your hands full and have been overworked during the last two weeks. I think you really need to go out and get some fresh air and sunshine.W: You are right. That's just what I am thinking about.Q: What is the woman most probably going to do? A. Have a short break. B. Take two weeks off. C. Continue her work outdoors. D. Go on vacation with the man.

单选题Jim"s plans to go to college ______ at the last moment.

单选题The size of the workforce declines when ______.

单选题Man: Are you sure Bob and Tim will come to help today?Woman: No problem. They're men of their words.Question: What does the woman want to tell the man?

单选题Corn originated in the New World and thus was not known in Europe until Columbus found it ______ in Cuba. A. being cultivated B. having cultivated C. has been cultivated D. cultivating

单选题She was ______ by the lack of appreciation shown of her hard work. A. frustrated B. dispersed C. functioned D. displaced

单选题Man: I think it's high time we turned our attention to the danger of drunk driving now.Woman: I can't agree with you more. You see, countless innocent people are killed by drunk drivers each year.Question: What does the woman mean? A. Most people killed in traffic accidents are heavy drinkers. B. She doesn't agree with the man. C. Drunk drivers are not guilty. D. People should pay more attention to the danger of drunk driving.