单选题 BQuestions 11 to 18 are based on the conversation you have just heard./B

单选题 BQuestions 11 to 18 are based on the conversation you have just heard./B

单选题In contrast to the U. S., Japan and Sweden are funding their medical care ________.

单选题 Britain's universities are in an awful spin. Top universities were overwhelmed by the 24% of A-level applicants with indistinguishable straight A's; newer ones are beating the byways for bodies. Curiously, both images of education—the weeping willows of Cambridge and the futuristic architecture of UEL (University of East London)—are cherished by the government. Ministers want to see half of all young people in universities by 2010 (numbers have stalled at 42%), without letting go of the world-class quality of its top institutions. Many argue that the two goals are incompatible without spending a lot more money. Researchers scrabble (寻找) for funds, and students complain of large classes and reduced teaching time. To help solve the problem, the government agreed in 2004 to let universities increase tuition fees. Though low, the fees have introduced a market into higher education. Universities can offer cut-price tuition, although most have stuck close to the ￡3,000. Other incentives are more popular. Newcomers to St. Mark & St. John, a higher-education college linked to Exeter University, will receive free laptops. As universities enter the third week of "clearing (调剂)", the marketing has become weirder. Bradford University is luring students with the chance of winning an MP3 player in a prize draw. Plymouth University students visited Cornish seaside resorts, tempting young holiday-makers with surfboards and cinema vouchers (代金券). These offers suggest that supply has surpassed demand. Not so the top universities that make up the "Russell Group", however. Their ranks include the likes of Imperial College London and Bristol University along with Oxford and Cambridge. Swamped with applicants, only half offer any places through clearing. They have a different problem: They need money to compete for high-quality students and academics, both British and foreign, who could be tempted overseas by better-heeled American universities or fast-improving institutions in developing countries such as India. Higher fees and excess supply are causing students to look more critically at just what different universities have to offer. And the critical situation could become more acute. The number of 18-year-olds in Britain will drop around 2010 and decline over the following ten years, according to government projections. Bahram Bekhradnia, the director of the Higher Education Policy Institute, a think tank, says the government hasn't a hope of getting 50% of young Britons into higher education by 2010. And the decline of home-grown student numbers will have a "differential effect" on universities, he reckons. Those at the bottom end will have to become increasingly "innovative" about whom they admit and some may not survive. The Cambridge shades evoked by Rupert Brooke were gentle, nostalgic (怀旧的) ones. Many vice chancellors today are pursued by far more revengeful monsters of empty campuses, deserted laboratories, failed institutions. Markets, after all, create winners—and losers.

单选题 {{B}}Passage OneQuestions 26 to 28 are based on the passage you have just heard.{{/B}}

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单选题 Conversation Two Questions 22 to 25 are based on the conversation you have just heard.

单选题{{B}}Passage Two{{/B}} The percentage of immigrants (including those unlawfully present) in the United States has been creeping upward for years. At 12.6 percent, it is now higher than at any point since the mid-1920s. We are not about to go back to the days when Congress openly worried about inferior races polluting America's bloodstream. But once again we are wondering whether we have too many of the wrong sort of newcomers. Their loudest critics argue that the new wave of immigrants cannot, and indeed do not want to, fit in as previous generations did. We now know that these racist views were wrong. In time, Italians, Romanians and members of other so-called inferior races became exemplary Americans and contributed greatly, in ways too numerous to detail, to the building of this magnificent nation. There is no reason why these new immigrants should not have the same success. Although children of Mexican immigrants do better, in terms of educational and professional attainment, than their parents, UCLA sociologist Edward Telles has found that the gains don't continue. Indeed, the fourth generation is marginally worse off than the third. James Jackson, of the University of Michigan, has found a similar trend among black Caribbean immigrants. Telles fears that Mexican-Americans may be fated to follow in the footsteps of American blacks--that large parts of the community may become mired (陷入) in a seemingly permanent state of poverty and underachievement. Like African- Americans, Mexican-Americans are increasingly relegated to (降入) segregated, substandard schools, and their dropout rate is the highest for any ethnic group in the country. We have learned much about the foolish idea of excluding people on the presumption of ethnic/racial inferiority. But what we have not yet learned is how to make the process of Americanization work for all. I am not talking about requiring people to learn English or to adopt American ways; those things happen pretty much on their own. But as arguments about immigration heat up the campaign trail, we also ought to ask some broader questions about assimilation, about how to ensure that people, once outsiders, don't forever remain marginalized within these shores. That is a much larger question than what should happen with undocumented workers, or how best to secure the border, and it is one that affects not only newcomers but groups that have been here for generations. It will have more impact on our future than where we decide to set the admissions bar for the latest wave of would-be Americans. And it would be nice if we finally got the answer right.

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单选题 {{B}}Questions 19 to 21 arc based on the conversation you have just heard.{{/B}}

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单选题Passage ThreeQuestions 33 to 35 are based on the passage you have just heard.

单选题We can learn from the passage that the author regards the saying of "supercomputer on a chip" as_______.

单选题Some people think that a translation, or word-foreword _______ translation, is easier than a free translation.

单选题{{B}}Passage One{{/B}} Racket, din clamor, noise. Whatever you want to call it, unwanted sound is America's most widespread nuisance. But noise is more than just a nuisance. It constitutes a real and present danger to people's health. Day and night, at home, at work, and at play, noise can produce serious physical and psychological stress. No one is immune to this stress. Though we seem to adjust to noise by ignoring it, the ear, in fact, never closes and the body still responds—sometimes with extreme tension, as to a strange sound in the night. The annoyance we feel when faced with noise is the most common outward symptom of the stress building up inside us. Indeed, because irritability is so apparent, legislators have made public annoyance the basis of many noise abatement(消除) programs. The more subtle and more serious health hazards associated with stress caused by noise traditionally have been given much less attention. Nevertheless, when we are annoyed or made irritable by noise, we should consider these symptoms fair warning that other things may be happening to us, some of which may be damaging to our health. Of the many health hazards related to noise, hearing loss is the most dearly observable and measurable by health professionals. The other hazards are harder to pin down. For many of us, there may be a risk that exposure to the stress of noise increases susceptibility to disease and infection. The more susceptible among us may experience noise as a complicating factor in heart problems end other diseases. Noise that causes annoyance and irritability in healthy persons may have serious consequences for those already ill in mind or body. Noise affects us throughout our lives. For example, there are indications of effects on the unborn child when mothers are exposed to industrial and environmental noise. During infancy and childhood, youngsters exposed to high noise levels may have trouble falling asleep and obtaining necessary amounts of rest. Why, than, is there not greater alarm about these dangers? Perhaps it is because the link between noise and many disabilities or diseases has not yet been conclusively demonstrated. Perhaps it is because we tend to dismiss annoyance as a price to pay for living in the modern world. It may also be because we still think of hearing loss as only an occupational hazard.

单选题Passage One Questions 52 to 56 are based on the following passage. Each year Universum, a Swedish consulting firm, asks American MBA students where they would most like to work. The 2007 survey showed a few surprises in its top 50 companies named: Hewlett-Packard and Cisco Systems had fell, while old reliables such as General Electronic, Coca-Cola and General Mills had jumped up the list. But the most desired industry remains consulting, despite the beating it has taken since the end of the dotcom boom, and the top firm remains McKinsey. Perhaps the reason is: in recent years McKinsey has done as much as any company to provide MBA graduates with increasingly better and more profitable positions. The reason for this was the firm's popularization of a concept known as "war for talent". It advocated finding the best and brightest and rewarding their innovations (创新) in proportion to "talent" instead of their performance or seniority (资格). But what is talent? And how does a company measure its employees' talent, especially when assigning them to new projects? The "war for talent" recommends a careful assessment of the inner skills and characteristics ready for success but gives few clues as to what those inner skills might be, which might make the war standardless. For a company focused on quick growth, one shortcut could be young hires who had already been rewarded for their talent by receiving MBAs from well-respected schools. Thus as the idea of finding talented employees who could quickly learn the skills took off, so did the asking price of the star MBA graduates. Unfortunately, now the "war for talent" seems less of a brilliant idea. The economic downturn, bringing with it less competition for the available talent, also did its part to control in indulgent (纵容的) employers. Similarly, Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer emphasized that cultivating a talent means not just hiring the most effective performers, but being able to deal quickly and firmly with the least effective C performers. But he adds that the C refers not to the person but to the individual's performance in a given job. Some low-performing managers were A or B performers earlier in their careers — and may attain that level of performance again. MBA programs will remain attractive recruiting areas, but the MBA model itself has come under increasing criticism. Prof. Pfeffer, in a 2007 article found little evidence that an MBA had much effect on future salary or career. Future MBA students might need to provide more evidence of their talent to impress potential employers.