单选题{{B}}TEXT B{{/B}}
{{B}}Dirty Britain{{/B}} Before the grass has
thickened on the roadside verges and leaves have started growing on the trees is
a perfect time to look around and see just how dirty Britain has become. The
pavements are stained with chewing gum that has been spat out and the gutters
are full of discarded fast food cartons. Years ago I remember travelling abroad
and being saddened by the plastic bags, discarded bottles and soiled nappies at
the edge of every road. Nowadays, Britain seems to look at least as had. What
has gone wrong? The problem is that the rubbish created by our
increasingly mobile lives lasts a lot longer than before. If it is not cleared
up and properly thrown away, it stays in the undergrowth for years; a
semi-permanent reminder of what a tarry little country we have now.
Firstly, it is estimated that 10 billion plastic bags have been given to
shoppers. These will take anything from 100 to 1,000 years to rot. However, it
is not as if there is no solution to this. A few years ago, the Irish government
introduced a tax on non-recyclable carrier bags and in three months reduced
their use by 99%. When he was a minister, Michael Meacher attempted to introduce
a similar arrangement in Britain. The plastics industry protested, of course.
However, they need not have bothered; the idea was killed before it could draw
breath, leaving supermarkets free to give away plastic bags.
What is clearly necessary right now is some sort of combined initiative,
both individual and collective, before it is too late. The alternative is to
continue sliding downhill until we have a country that looks like a vast
municipal rubbish tip. We may well be at the tipping point. Yet we know that
people respond to their environ-meet. If things around them are clean and
tidy, people behave cleanly and tidily. If they are surrounded by squalor, they
behave squalidly. Now, much of Britain looks pretty squalid. What wilt it look
like in five years?
单选题Questions 7 and 8 are based on the following news. At the end of the news item, you will be given 20 seconds to answer the questions. Now listen to the news.
单选题In Old English the word girl can refer to a young person of either sex. Today it is restricted to "a young woman". This is an instance of ______. A. meaning shift B. narrowing C. broadening D. class shift
单选题The second largest city in England,______ is a metropolitan district
and an industrial and manufacturing city.
A. Edinburgh
B. Belfast
C. Glasgow
D. Birmingham
单选题The author thinks that one way to break out of the vicious circle of the pathology of partisanship is to______.
单选题{{B}}TEXT B{{/B}}
The romantic image of the trusty
postman, delivering letters to the farthest-flung corners of the land, makes the
reform of postal services a sensitive subject. This is especially true when the
impetus for reform comes from the European Union. This month the European
Parliament starts work on a directive, drawn up by the European Commission, to
remove the last monopolies in postal markets by 2009--the final stage in a slow
and laborious liberalisation that began in 1992. Directives in 1997 and 2002
chipped away at the centuries-old monopolies enjoyed by national operators, and
the proposed new law will open the whole market to competition by abolishing the
"reserved area" on mail weighing less than 50 grams. But although the
legislative wheels are in motion, some countries are as sceptical as
ever. The commission says it has deliberately pursued postal
liberalisation at a slower pace than other market openings. This is partly due
to its technical complexity. Unlike in telecoms, post has no physical network to
share. Many countries had to create independent regulators from scratch in order
to monitor mar ket access and prices. The size of the heavily unionised postal
industry also prompted caution. It employs some 5m people directly and
indirectly, and its turnover is roughly 1% of Europe's combined GDP.
But arguably the biggest drag on liberalisation is old-fashioned
resistance to open markets, plus a dash of reverence for letter writing. One
opponent of the 2009 deadline talks of "a noble industry that we want to
protect" and lauds the virtues of pen and paper. All postal operators recognise,
however, that the epistolary habit has taken a hit from the Internet. With
deadening pragmatism, the commission says liberalisation will improve quality
and choice and reduce state subsidies. Countries that have
already opened their markets, such as Sweden and Britain, agree. Since Sweden's
Posten AB was privatised in 1993, prices for business customers have fallen by
30%, though they have risen for consumers. The postal network has been extended,
with new outlets in supermarkets and longer opening hours. Proponents of reform
argue that Sweden, which has one of the lowest population densities in the EU,
disproves the argument that rural countries cannot both have open markets and
provide a standard service for everyone. But France, Spain,
Italy and other countries worry that abolishing the "reserved area" will damage
this universal-service obligation. Last month Francois Loos, France's industry
minister, said 2009 was "an indicative date" for competition rather than a firm
deadline. A spokesman for PostEurop, a lobby group representing European postal
operators, says several countries would prefer a deadline of 2012 at the
earliest, with the wholly implausible argument that more time is needed to
research the impact of liberalisation. The commission knows a
delaying tactic when it sees one. Operators have had years to prepare for
liberalisation. But some countries, such as Greece and Luxembourg, seem to want
to protect their national monopolies at any cost. The attitudes of central
European countries are more difficult to predict. Their governments supported
the liberal services directive, which favoured their mobile, comparatively cheap
workforces, but have expressed doubts about opening protected home markets to
competition. Incumbents may have less to fear from competition
than they think, however. In countries with open markets, the former monopolists
have remained dominant. In Britain the Royal Mail has 96.5% of the market; in
Sweden Posten AB has 91.5%. Regulators do not expect big changes in either
country. Indeed, some advocates of liberalisation worry that open postal markets
will fail to attract new entrants and that eliminating the reserved area will
not guarantee competition. The debate over market opening is an
opportunity to find out what people really want from their postal services and a
chance to rethink how they work, says Michael Critelli, the boss of Pitney
Bowes, a company that makes postal equipment and software. Some people might,
for example, choose to have domestic mail delivered to their offices on
weekdays, he suggests. But such innovations will happen only if national
governments can be discouraged from stamping the commission's proposals "return
to sender".
单选题Speech-act theory *vas first developed by______.
单选题Questions 1 to 5 are based on an interview. At the end of the interview you will be given 10 seconds to answer each of the following questions.
单选题Which of the following statements does the passage support?
单选题Which of the following is NOT the firm's recruitment requirement?
单选题[此试题无题干]
单选题Man, so the truism goes, lives increasingly in a man-made environment. This places a special burden on human immaturity, for it is plain that adapting to such variable conditions must depend very heavily on opportunities for learning, or whatever the processes are that are operative during immaturity. It must also mean that during immaturity man must master knowledge and skills that are either stored in the gene pool or learned by direct encounter, but which are contained in the culture pool--knowledge about values and history, skills as varied as an obligatory natural language or an optional mathematical one, as mute as levers or as articulate as myth telling. Yet, it would be a mistake to leap to the conclusion that because human immaturity makes possible high flexibility, therefore anything is possible for the species. Human traits were selected for their survival value over a four--to five-million-year period with a great acceleration of the selection process during the last half of that period. There were crucial, irreversible changes during that final man-making period: recession of formidable dentition, 50 percent increase in brain volume, the obstetrical paradox- bipedalism and strong pelvic girdle, larger brain through a smaller birth canal--immature brain at birth, and creation of what Washburn has called a "technical-social way of life," involving tool and symbol use. Note, however, that hominidization consisted principally of adaptations to conditions in the Pleistocene. These preadaptations, shaped in response to earlier habitat demands, are part of man's evolutionary inheritance. This is not to say that close beneath the skin of man is a naked ape, that civilization is only a veneer. The technical-social way of life is a deep feature of the species adaptation. But we would err if we assumed a priori that man's inheritance placed no constraint on his power to adapt. Some of the preadaptations can be shown to be presently maladaptive. Man's inordinate fondness for fats and sweets no longer serves his individual survival well. And the human obsession with sexuality is plainly not fitted for survival of the species now, however well it might have served to population the upper Pliocene and the Pleistocene. Nevertheless, note that the species responds typically to these challenges by technical innovation rather than by morphological or behavioral change. Contraception dissociates sexuality from reproduction. We do not, of course, know what kinds and what range of stresses are produced by successive rounds of such technical innovation. Dissociating sexuality and reproduction, for example, surely produces changes in the structure of the family, which in turn redefine the role of women, which in turn alters the authority pattern affecting the child, etc. continuing and possible acceleration change seems inherent in such adaptation. And this, of course, places and enormous pressure on man's uses of immaturity, preparing the young for unforeseeable change-the more so if there are severe restraints imposed by human preadaptations to earlier conditions of life.
单选题{{B}}TEXT B{{/B}} The bizarre antics of
sleepwalkers have puzzled police, perplexed scientists, and fascinated writers
for centuries. There is an endless supply of stories about sleepwalkers. Persons
have been said to climb on steep roofs, solve mathematical problems, compose
music, walk through plate-glass windows, and commit murder in their
sleep. How many of these stories have a basis in fact, and how
many are pure fakery? No one knows, but if some of the most sensational stories
should be taken with a barrel of salt, others are a matter of record.
In Revere, Massachusetts, a hundred policemen combed a waterfront
neighborhood for a lost boy who left his home in his sleep and woke up five
hours later on a strange sofa in a strange living room, with no idea how he had
got there. There is an early medical record of a somnambulist
who wrote a novel in his sleep. And the great French writer Voltaire knew
a sleepwalker who once got out of bed, dressed himself, made a polite bow,
danced a minuet, and then undressed and went back to bed. At the
University of Iowa, a student was reported to have the habit of getting up in
the middle of the night and walking three-quarters of a mile to the Iowa River.
He would take a swim and then go back to his room to bed. The
world's champion sleepwalker was supposed to have been an Indian, Pandit
Ramrakha, who walked sixteen miles along a dangerous road without realizing that
he had left his bed. Second in line for the title is probably either a Vienna
housewife or a British farmer. The woman did all her shopping on busy streets in
her sleep. The farmer, in his sleep, visited a veterinarian miles
away. The leading expert on sleep in America claims that he has
never seen a sleepwalker. He is Dr. Nathaniel Kleitman, a physiologist at the
University of Chicago. He is said to know more about sleep than any other living
man, and during the last thirty-five years has lost a lot of sleep watching
people sleep. Says he, "Of course, I know that there are sleepwalkers because I
have read about them in the newspapers. But none of my sleepers ever walked, and
if I were to advertise for sleepwalkers for an experiment, I doubt that I'd get
many takers." Sleepwalking, nevertheless, is a scientific
reality. Like hypnosis, it is one of those dramatic, eerie, awe-inspiring
phenomena that sometimes border on the fantastic. It lends itself to controversy
and misconceptions. What is certain about sleepwalking is that it is a symptom
of emotional disturbance, and that the only way to cure it is to remove the
worries and anxieties that cause it. Doctors say that somnambulism is much more
common than is generally supposed. Some have estimated that there are four
million somnambulists in the United States. Others set the figure even
higher. Many sleepwalkers do not seek help and so are never put on record, which
means that an accurate count can never be made. The simplest
explanation of sleepwalking is that it is the acting out of a vivid dream. The
dream usually comes from guilt, worry, nervousness, or some other emotional
conflict. The classic sleepwalker is Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth. Her nightly
wanderings were caused by her guilty conscience at having committed murder.
Shakespeare said of her, "The eyes are open but their sense is shut. "
The age-old question is: ls the sleepwalker actually awake or asleep?
Scientists have decided that he is about half-and-half. Like Lady Macbeth, he
has weighty problems on his mind. Dr. Zeida Teplitz, who made a ten-year study
of the subject, says, "Some people stay awake all night worrying about their
problems. The sleepwalker thrashes them out in his sleep. He is
awake in the muscular area, partially asleep in the sensory area." In other
words, a person can walk in his sleep, move around, and do other things, but he
does not think about what he is doing. There are many myths
about sleepwalkers. One of the most common is the idea that it's dangerous or
even fatal to waken a sleepwalker abruptly. Experts say that the shock suffered
by a sleepwalker suddenly awakened is no greater than that suffered in waking up
to the noise of an alarm clock. Another mistaken belief is that sleepwalkers are
immune to injury. Actually most sleepwalkers trip over rugs or bump their heads
on doors at some time or other.
单选题During World War Ⅱ, the leaders of the United States, ______ and
Britain met three times.
A.Canada
B.Australia
C.the Soviet Union
D.China
单选题 Questions 8 and 9 are based on the following news. At
the end of the news item, you will be given 10 seconds to answer each question.
Now listen to the news.
单选题[此试题无题干]
单选题Having heard that Toronto was becoming one of the continent's noblest cities, we flew from New York to investigate. New Yorkers proud of their city's reputation and concerned about challenges to its stature have little to worry about.
After three days in residence, our delegation noted an absence of shrieking police and fire sirens at 3 A.M. or any other hour, for that matter. We spoke to the city authorities about this. What kind of city was it, we asked, that expected its citizens to sleep all night and rise refreshed in the morning? Where was the incentive to awaken gummy-eyed and exhausted, ready to scream at the first person one saw in the morning? How could Toronto possibly hope to maintain a robust urban divorce rate?
Our criticism went unheeded, such is the torpor with which Toronto pursues true urbanity. The fact appears to be that Toronto has very little grasp of what is required of a great city.
Consider the garbage picture. It seems never to have occurred to anybody in Toronto that garbage exists to be heaved into the streets. One can drive for miles without seeing so much as a banana peel in the gutter or a discarded newspaper whirling in the wind.
Nor has Toronto learned about dogs. A check with the authorities confirmed that, yes, there are indeed dogs resident in Toronto, but one would never realize it by walking the sidewalks. Our delegation was shocked by the presumption of a town's calling itself a city, much less a great city, when it obviously knows nothing of either garbage or dogs.
The subway, on which Toronto prides itself, was a laughable imitation of the real thing. The subway cars were not only spotlessly clean, but also fully illuminated. So were the stations. To New Yorkers, it was embarrassing, and we hadn't the heart to tell the subway authorities that they were light-years away from greatness.
We did, however, tell them about spray paints and how effectively a few hundred children equipped with spray-paint cans could at least give their subway the big-city look.
It seems doubtful they are ready to take such hints. There is a disturbing distaste for vandalism in Toronto which will make it hard for the city to enter wholeheartedly into the vigour of the late twentieth century.
A board fence surrounding a huge excavation for a new high-rise building in the downtown district offers depressing evidence of Toronto's lack of big-city impulse. Embedded in the fence at intervals of about fifty feet are loudspeakers that play recorded music for passing pedestrians.
Not a single one of these loudspeakers has been mutilated. What's worse, not a single one has been stolen.
It was good to get back to the Big Apple. My coat pocket was bulging with candy wrappers from Toronto and such is the lingering power of Toronto it took me two or three hours back in New York before it seemed natural again to toss them into the street.
单选题What is the main idea of the forth paragraph?
单选题{{B}}TEXT E{{/B}} Rabies is an ordinarily
infectious disease of the central nervous system, caused by a virus and, as a
rule, spread chiefly by domestic dogs and wild flesh-eating animals. Man and all
warm-blooded animals are susceptible to rabies. The people of ancient Egypt,
Greece and Rome ascribed rabies to evil spirits because ordinarily gently and
friendly animals suddenly became vicious and violent without evident cause and,
after a period of maniacal behaviour, became paralysed and died.
Experiments carried out in Europe in the early nineteenth century of
injecting saliva from a rabid dog into a normal dog proved that the disease was
infectious. Preventive steps, such as the destruction of stray dogs, were taken
and by 1826 the disease was permanently eliminated in Norway, Sweden and
Denmark. Though urban centres on the continent of Europe were cleared several
times during the nineteenth century, they soon became reinfected since rabies
was uncontrolled among wild animals. During the early stages of
the disease, a rabid animal is most dangerous because it appears normal and
friendly, but it will bite at the slightest provocation. The virus is present in
the sailvary glands(腺) and passes into the saliva so that the bite of the
infected animal introduces the virus into a fresh wound. If no action is taken,
the virus may become established in the central nervous system and finally
attack the brain. The incubation(潜伏期) period varies from ten days to eight
months or more, and the disease develops more quickly the nearer to the brain
the wound is. Most infected dogs become restless, nervous, and irritable and
vicious, then depressed and paralysed. With this type of rabies, the dog's death
is inevitable and usually occurs within three to five days after the onset of
the symptoms. Anti-rabies vaccine(疫苗) is widely used nowadays in
two ways. Dogs may be given three-year protection against the disease by one
powerful injection, while persons who have been bitten by rabid animals are
given a course of daily injections over a week or ten days. The mortality rate
from all types of bites from rabid animals has dropped from 9% to 0.5%. In rare
cases, the vaccine will not prevent rabies in human beings because the virus
produces the disease before the person's body has time to build up enough
resistance. Because of this, immediate vaccination is essential for anyone
bitten by an animal observed acting strangely and the animal should be captured
circumspectly, and examined professionally or destroyed.
单选题Who is NOT the representative writer of the moderate enlighteners?A. Alexander Pope B. Joseph AddisonC. Jonathan Swift D. Daniel Defoe