单选题______means the lack of a logical connection between the form of something and its expression in sounds.

单选题The book from which "all modern American literature comes" refers to______.A. The Great GatsbyB. The Sun Also RisesC. Moby DickD. The Adventures of Huckberry Finn

单选题A System of Guaranteed Subsistence Minimum A hundred years ago it was assumed and scientifically "proved" by economists that the laws of society made it necessary to have a vast army of poor and jobless people in order to keep the economy going. Today, hardly anybody would dare to voice this principle. It is generally accepted that nobody should be excluded from the wealth of the nation, either by the laws of nature or by those of society. The opinions, which were current a hundred years ago, that the poor owed their conditions to their ignorance, lack of responsibility, are outdated. In all Western industrialized countries, a system of insurance has been introduced which guarantees everyone a minimum of subsistence in case of unemployment, sickness and old age. I would go one step further and argue that, even if these conditions are not present, everyone has the right to receive the means to subsist, in other words, he can claim this subsistence minimum without having to have any "reason". I would suggest, however, that it should be limited to a definite period of time, let's say two years, so as to avoid the encouraging of an abnormal attitude, which refuses any kind of social obligation. This may sound like a fantastic proposal, but so, I think, our insurance system would have sounded to people a hundred years ago. The main objection to such a scheme would be that if each person were entitled to receive minimum support, people would not work. This assumption rests on the fallacy of the inherent laziness in human nature, actually, aside from abnormally lazy people, there would be very few who would not want to earn more than the minimum, and who would prefer to do nothing rather than work. However, the suspicions against a system of guaranteed subsistence minimum are not groundless from the standpoint of those who want to use ownership of capital for the purpose of forcing others to accept the work conditions they offer. If nobody were forced to accept work in order not to starve, work would have to be sufficiently interesting and attractive to induce one to accept it. Freedom of contract is possible only if both parties are free to accept and reject it; in the present capitalist system this is not the case. But such a system would not only be the beginning of real freedom of contract between employers and employees, its principal advantage would be the improvement of freedom in interpersonal relationships in every sphere of daily life.

单选题President ______ was the first American president ordering school desegregation in the South.A. John F. Kennedy B. Jimmy CarterC. Franklin Roosevelt D. Richard Nixon

单选题The Great Charter (Magna Charter) was signed by ______ in 1215.

单选题William, Duke of Normandy, fought king Harold of England at the Battle of Hastings in______.

单选题Fromwhichplacedidtheystarttheirsightseeing?

单选题{{B}}TEXT D{{/B}} Within Australia, Australian Hotels Inc. (AHI) operates nine hotels and employs over 2,000 permanent full-time staff, 300 permanent part-time employees and 100 casual staff. One of its latest ventures, the Sydney Airport Hotel (SAH), opened in March 1995. The hotel is the closest to Sydney Airport and is designed to provide the best available accommodation, food and beverage and meeting facilities in Sydney's southern suburbs. Similar to many international hotel chains, however, AHI has experienced difficulties in Australia in providing long-term profits for hotel owners, as a result of the country's high labour-cost structure. In order to develop an economically viable hotel organisation model, AHI decided to implement some new policies and practices at SAH. The first of the initiatives was an organisational structure with only three levels of management -- compared to the traditional seven. Partly as a result of this change, there are 25 percent fewer management positions, enabling a significant saving. This change also has other implications. Communication, both up and down the organisation, has greatly improved. Decision-making has been forced down in many cases to front-line employees. As a result, guest requests are usually me without reference to a supervisor, improving both customer and employee satisfaction. The hotel recognised that it would need a different approach to selecting employees who would fit in with its new policies. In its advertisements, the hotel stated a preference for people with some "service" experience in order to minimize traditional work practices being introduced into the hotel. Over 7,000 applicants filled in application forms for the 120 jobs initially offered at SAH. The balance of the positions at the hotel (30 management and 40 shift leader positions) were predominantly filled by transfers from other AHI properties. A series of tests and interviews were conducted with potential employees, which eventually left 280 applicants competing the 120 advertised positions. After the final interview, potential recruits were divided into three categories. Category A was for applicants exhibiting strong leadership qualities, Category C was for applicants perceived to be followers, and Category B was for applicants with both leader and follower qualities. Department heads and shift leaders then composed prospective teams using a combination of people from all three categories. Once suitable teams were formed, offers of employment were made team members. Another major initiative by SAH was to adopt a totally multi-skilled workforce. Although there may be some limitations with highly technical jobs such as cooking or maintenance, wherever possible, employees at SAH are able to work in a wide variety of positions. A multi-skilled workforce provides far greater management flexibility during peak and quiet times to transfer employees to needed positions. For example, when office staff are away on holidays during quiet periods of the year, employees in either food or beverage or housekeeping departments can temporarily fall in. The most crucial way, however, of improving the labour cost structure at SAH was to find better, more productive ways of providing customer service. SAH management concluded this would first require a process of "benchmarking". The prime objective of the benchmarking process was to compare a range of service delivery processes across a range of criteria using made up of employees from different departments within the hotel which interacted with each other. This process resulted in performance measures that greatly enhanced SAH's ability to improve productivity and quality. The front office team discovered through this project that a high proportion of AHI club member reservations were incomplete. As a result, the service provided to these guests was below the standard promised to them as part of their membership agreement. Reducing the number of incomplete reservations greatly improved guest perceptions of service. In addition, a program modelled on an earlier project called "Take Charge" was implemented. Essentially, Take Charge provides an effective feedback loop from both customers and employees. Customer comments, hot positive and negative, are recorded by staff. These are collated regularly to identify opportunities for improvement. Just as importantly, employees are requested to note down their own suggestion for improvement. (AHI has set an expectation that employees will submit at least three suggestions for every one they receive from a customer.) Employee feedback is reviewed daily and suggestions are implemented within 48 hours, if possible, or a valid reason is given for non-implementation, if suggestions require analysis or data collection, the Take Charge team has 30 days in which to address the issue and come up with recommendations. Although quantitative evidence of AHI's initiatives at SAH are limited at present, anecdotal evidence clearly suggests that these practices are working. Indeed AHI is progressively rolling out these initiatives in other hotels in Australia, whilst numerous overseas visitors have come to see how the program works.

单选题The fiver Thames is in ______.

单选题{{I}} Questions 9 and 10 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. {{/I}}

单选题The Deserted Village was written by ______, the outstanding representative of the sentimentalist school.A. BumsB. PopeC. GoldsmithD. Wordsworth

单选题

单选题{{B}}TEXT D{{/B}} A full moon was shining down on the jungle. Accompanied only by an Indian guide, the American explorer and archaeologist Edward Herbert Thompson—thirteen hundred years after the Mayas had left their cities and made a break for the country farther north—was riding through the New Empire that they had built for themselves, which had collapsed after the arrival of the Spaniards. He was searching for Chichen Itza, the largest, most beautiful, mightiest, and most splendid of all Mayan cities. Horses and men had been suffering intense hardships on the trail. Thompson's head sagged on his breast from fatigue, and each time his horse stumbled be all but fell out of the saddle. Suddenly his guide shouted to him. Thompson woke up with a start. He looked ahead and saw a fairyland. Above the dark treetops rose a mound, height and steep, and on top of the mound was a temple, bathed in cool moonlight. In the hush of the night it towered over the treetops like the Parthenon of some Mayan acropolis. It seemed to grow in size as they approached. The Indian guide dismounted, unsaddled his horse, and roiled out his blanket for the night's sleep. Thompson could not tear his fascinated gaze from the great structure. While the guide prepared his bed, he sprang from his horse and continued on foot. Steep stairs overgrown with grass and bushes, and in part fallen into ruins, led from the base of the mound up to the temple. Thompson was acquainted with this architectural form, which was obviously some kind of pyramid. He was familiar, too, with the function of pyramids as known in Egypt. But this Mayan version was not a tomb, like the pyramids of Gizeh. Externally it rather brought to mind a ziggurat, but to a much greater degree than the Bablyloinan ziggurats it seemed to consist mostly of a stony hill providing support or the enormous stairs rising higher and higher, towards the gods of the sun and moon. Thompson climbed up the steps. He looked at the ornamentation, the rich reliefs. On top, almost 96 feet above the jungle, he surveyed the scene, lie counted one two-three-a half dozen scattered buildings, half-hidden in shadow, often revealed by nothing more than a gleam of moonlight on stone. This, then, was Chichen-Itza. From its original status as advance outpost at the beginning of the great trek to the north, it had grown into a shining metropolis, the heart of the New Empire. Again and again during the next few days Thompson climbed on to the old ruins." I stood upon the roof of this temple one morning" he writes" just as the first rays of the sun reddened the distant horizon. The morning stillness was profound. The noises of the night had ceased, and those of the day were not yet begun. All the sky above and the earth below seemed to be breathlessly waiting for something. Then the great round sun came up, flaming splendidly, and instantly the whole world sang and hummed. The birds in the trees and the insects on the ground sang a grand Te Deum. Nature herself taught primal man to be a sun worshipper and man in his heart of hearts still follows the ancient teaching." Thompson stood where he was, immobile and enchanted. The jungle melted away before his gaze. Wide spaces opened up, processions crept up to the temple site, music sounded, palaces became filled with reveling, the temples hummed with religious adjuration. He try to recognize his task. For out there in the jungle green he could distinguish a narrow path, barely traced out in the weak light, a path that might lead to Chichen-Itza's most exciting mystery: the Sacred Well.

单选题Henry James was regarded as one of the pioneers of

单选题 All the buzz lately is that the Obama administration is "antibusiness". And there are widespread claims that fears about taxes, regulation and budget deficits are holding down business spending and blocking economic recovery. How much truth is there to these claims? None. Business spending is indeed low, but no lower than one would have expected given widespread overcapacity and weak consumer spending. Ask the Obama-is-scaring-business crowd for some actual evidence supporting their claim, and they'll tell you that business spending on plant and equipment is at its lowest level, as a share of G.D.P., in 40 years. What they don't mention is the fact that business investment always falls sharply when the economy is depressed. After all, why should businesses expand their production capacity when they're not selling enough to use the capacity they already have? And in case you haven't noticed, we still have a deeply depressed economy. So where's the evidence that an antibusiness climate is depressing spending? The Obama's-socialist-policies-are-wrecking-the-economy chorus isn't coming from businesses; it's coming from business lobbyists, which isn't at all the same thing. Read through the latest survey of small business trends by the National Federation for Independent Business, an advocacy group. The commentary at the front of the report is largely a diatribe against government — "Washington is applying leeches and performing blood-letting as a cure" — and you might naively imagine that this diatribe reflects what the surveyed businesses said. But while a few businesses declared that the political climate was deterring expansion, they were vastly outnumbered by those citing a poor economy. The charts at the back of the report, showing trends in business perceptions of their "most important problem," are even more revealing. It turns out that business is less concerned about taxes and regulations than during the 1990s, an era of booming investment. Concerns about poor sales, on the other hand, have surged. The weak economy, not fear about government actions, is what's holding investment down. So why are we hearing so much about the alleged harm being inflicted by an antibusiness climate? For the most part it's the same old, same old: lobbyists trying to bully Washington into cutting taxes and dismantling regulations, while extracting bigger fees from their clients along the way. Beyond that, business leaders are, as I said, feeling unloved: the financial crisis, health insurance scandals, and the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico have taken a toll on their reputation. Somehow, however, rather than blaming their peers for bad behavior, C.E.O.'s blame Mr Obama for "demonizing" business — by which they apparently mean speaking frankly about the culpability of the guilty parties. Well, C.E.O.'s are people, too — but soothing their hurt feelings isn't a priority fight now, and it has nothing at all to do with promoting economic recovery. If we want stronger business spending, we need to give businesses a reason to spend. And to do that, the government needs to start doing more, not less, to promote overall economic recovery.

单选题______ is the pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens.A. Mark Twain B.O.HenryC. Jack London D. Theodore Dreiser

单选题According to the passage, in the late 1960s some residents of Boston were concerned with which aspect of skyscrapers?

单选题 {{B}}TEXT A{{/B}} At the age of 16, Lee Hyuk Joon's life is a living hell. The South Korean 10th grader gets up at 6 in the morning to go to school, and studies most of the day until returning home at 6 p. m. After dinner, it's time to hit the books again—at one of Seoul's many so-called cram schools. Lee gets back home at 1 in the morning, sleeps less than five hours, then repeats the routine—five days a week. It's a grueling schedule, but Lee worries that it may not be good enough to get him into a top university. Some of his classmates study even harder. South Korea's education system has long been highly competitive. But for Lee and the other 700,000 high-school sophomores in the country, high-school studies have gotten even more intense. That's because South Korea has conceived a new college-entrance system, which will be implemented in 2008. This year's 10th graders will be the first group evaluated by the new admissions standard, which places more emphasis on grades in the three years of high school and less on nationwide SAT-style and other selection tests, which have traditionally determined which students go to the elite colleges. The change was made mostly to reduce what the government says is a growing education gap in the country: wealthy students go to the best colleges and get the best jobs, keeping the children of poorer families on the social margins. The aim is to reduce the importance of costly tutors and cram schools, partly to help students enjoy a more normal high-school life. But the new system has had the opposite effect. Before, students didn't worry too much about their grade-point averages; the big challenge was beating the standardized tests as high-school seniors. Now students are competing against one another over a three-year period, and every midterm and final test is crucial. Fretful parents are relying even more heavily on tutors and cram schools to help their children succeed. Parents and kids have sent thousands of angry online letters to the Education Ministry complaining that the new admissions standard is setting students against each other. "One can succeed only when others fail," as one parent said. Education experts say that South Korea's public secondary-school system is foundering, while private education is thriving. According to critics, the country's high schools are almost uniformly mediocre—the result of an egalitarian government education policy. With the number of elite schools strictly controlled by the government, even the brightest students typically have to settle for ordinary schools in their neighbourhoods, where the curriculum is centred on average students. To make up for the mediocrity, zealous parents send their kids to the expensive cram schools. Students in affluent southern Seoul neighbourhoods complain that the new system will hurt them the most. Nearly all Korean high schools will be weighted equally in the college-entrance process, and relatively weak students in provincial schools, who may not score well on standardized tests, often compile good grade-point averages. Some universities, particularly prestigious ones, openly complain that they cannot select the best students under the new system because it eliminates differences among high schools. They've asked for more discretion in picking students by giving more weight to such screening tools as essay writing or interviews. President Roh Moo Hyun doesn't like how some colleges are trying to circumvent the new system. He recently criticized "greedy" universities that focus more on finding the best students than trying to "nurture good students". But amid the crossfire between the government and universities, the country's 10th graders are feeling the stress. On online protest sites, some are calling themselves a "cursed generation" and "mice in a lab experiment". It all seems a touch melodramatic, but that's the South Korean school system.

单选题Last month Hansen Transmissions International, a maker of gearboxes for wind turbines, was listed on the London Stock Exchange. Nothing noteworthy about that, you might say, despite the jump in the share price on the first day of trading and the handsome gain since: green technology is all the rage, is it not? But Hansen exemplifies another trend, too, which should prove every bit as durable: the rise of multinational companies from emerging economies. Its parent is Suzlon, an Indian fin that began life as a textile manufacturer, but is now among the world's five leading makers of wind turbines. Along the way, Suzlon has acquired not only Hansen, originally Belgian, but also RE power, a German wind-energy firm, spending over $ 2 billion on the pair. The world is now replete with Suzlons: global companies from emerging economies buying businesses in rich countries as well as in poorer places. Another Indian company, Tata Motors, looks likely to add to the list soon, by buying two grand old names of British car-making, Jaguar and Land Rover, from America's enfeebled Ford. As a symbol of a shift in economic power, this is hard to match. Economic theory says that this should not happen. Richer countries should export capital to poorer ones, not the other way round. Economists have had to get used to seeing this turned on its head in recent years, as rich countries have run large current-account deficits and borrowed from China and other emerging economies (notably oil exporters) with huge surpluses. Similarly, foreign direct investment (FDI)—the buying of companies and the building of factories and offices abroad—should also flow from rich to poor, and with it managerial and entrepreneurial prowess. It is not yet time to tear up the textbook on FDI. According to the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD),in 2006 the flow of FDI into developing economies exceeded the outflow by more than $ 200 billion. But the transfer of finance and expertise is by no means all in one direction. Developing economies accounted for one-seventh of FDI outflows in 2006, most of it in the form of takeovers. Indian companies have done most to catch the eye, but firms from Brazil, China and Mexico, in industries from cement to consumer electronics and aircraft manufacture, have also gone global. Up to a point, emerging-market multinationals have been buying Western know-how. But they have been bringing managerial and entrepreneurial skill, as well as just money, to the companies they buy: British managers bear grudging witness to the financial flair of Mexican cement bosses; Boeing and Airbus may have learnt a thing or two from the global supply chains of Brazil's Embracer. Perhaps no one should be surprised. Half a century ago, Japan was a poor country: today Sony and Toyota are among the best-known and mightiest companies on the planet. South Korea is still listed as a developing country in Uncial’s tables, but that seems bizarrely outdated for the homes of Samsung. Now another generation is forming. To its critics, globalization may be little more than a license for giant Western companies to colonies the emerging world, yet more and more firms from poorer economies are planting their flags in rich ground. Alas, further liberalization is not certain. The Doha round of global trade talks has been bogged down, partly in squabbles about farm trade but also over industrial tariffs in the emerging world. The services negotiations are half-hearted and direct talks on FDI were ruled out long ago, largely because of developing countries' fears about rich invaders. And the gains forgone are considerable: a new book by the World Bank estimates that reforming services in developing countries could raise their growth rates by a percentage point. Were OECD countries to allow temporary immigration of skilled workers in service industries, the global gains might exceed $ 45 billion. A few emerging-market giants—notably India's software firms—have been prepared to stand up for liberalization. But most have not made their voices heard. How sad for free trade: such companies would provide much better illustrations of the success of globalization than the familiar Western names do (unless you think Coca-colonization sounds really cool). And how short sighted of them. Even if some of these adolescents grew up behind tariff barriers, that represents their past: their future will surely lie in global markets. If the Doha round fails, the next opportunity may be a long time coming.

单选题{{B}}TEXT C{{/B}} Taking charge of yourself involves putting to rest some very prevalent myths. At the top of the list is the notion that intelligence is measured by your ability to solve complex problems; to read, write and compute at certain levels; and to resolve abstract equations quickly. This vision of intelligence asserts formal education and bookish excellence as the true measures of self-fulfillment. It encourages a kind of intellectual prejudice that has brought with it some discouraging results. We have come to believe that someone who has more educational merit badges, who is very good at some form of school discipline is "intelligent." Yet mental hospitals are filled with patients who have all of the properly lettered certificates. A truer indicator of intelligence is an effective, happy life lived each day and each present moment of every day. If you are happy, if you live each moment for everything it's worth, then you are an intelligent person. Problem solving is a useful help to your happiness, but if you know that given your inability to resolve a particular concern you can still choose happiness for yourself, or at a mini mum refuse to choose unhappiness, then you are intelligent. You are intelligent because you have the ultimate weapon against the big N. B. D. Nervous Break Down. "Intelligent' people do not have N. B. D. 's because they are in charge of themselves. They know how to choose happiness over depression, because they know how to deal with the problems of their lives. You can begin to think of yourself as truly intelligent on the basis of how you choose to feel in the face of trying circumstances. The life struggles are pretty much the same for each of us. Every one who is involved with other human beings in any social context has similar difficulties. Disagreements, conflicts and compromises are a part of what it means to be human. Similarly, money, growing old, sickness, deaths, natural disasters and accidents are all events which present problems to virtually all human beings. But some people are able to make it, to avoid immobilizing depression and unhappiness despite such occurrences, while others collapse or have an N. B.D. Those who recognize problems as a human condition and don' t measure happiness by an absence of problems are the most intelligent kind of humans we know; also, the roost rare.