单选题Workers in this country are getting higher wages while turning out poor products that do not ______ the test of international competition.

单选题In her new novel Annabel, reviewed this week in the magazine, Kathleen Winter ______ the nature-nurture divide.

单选题In his 1976 study of slavery in the United States, Herbert Gutman, like Fogel, Engerman, and Genovese, has rightly stressed the slaves' achievements. But unlike these historians, Gutman gives plantation owners little credit for these achievements. Rather, Gutman argues that one must look to the Black family and the slaves' extended kinship system to understand how crucial achievements, such as the maintenance of a cultural heritage and the development of a communal consciousness, were possible. His findings compel attention. Gutman recreates the family and extended kinship structure mainly through an ingenious use of what any historian should draw upon, quantifiable data, derived in this case mostly from plantation birth registers. He also uses accounts of ex-slaves to probe the human reality behind his statistics. These sources indicate that the two-parent household predominated in slave quarters just as it did among freed slaves after emancipation. Although Gutman admits that forced separation by sale was frequent, he shows that the slaves' preference, revealed most clearly on plantations where sale was infrequent, was very much for stable monogamy. In less conclusive fashion Fogel, Engerman, and Genovese had already indicated the predominance of two-parent households; however, only Gutman emphasizes the preference for stable monogamy and points out what stable monogamy meant for the slaves' cultural heritage. Gutman argues convincingly that the stability of the Black family encouraged the transmission of—and so was crucial in sustaining—the Black heritage of folklore, music, and religious expression from one generation to another, a heritage that slaves were continually fashioning out of their African and American experiences. Gutman's examination of other facets of kinship also produces important findings. Gutman discovers that cousins rarely married, an exogamous tendency that contrasted sharply with the endogamy practiced by the plantation owners. This preference for exogamy, Gutman suggests, may have derived from West African rules governing marriage, which, though they differed from one tribal group to another, all involved some kind of prohibition against unions with close kin. This taboo against cousins' marrying is important, argues Gutman, because it is one of many indications of a strong awareness among slaves of an extended kinship network. The fact that distantly related kin would care for children separated from their families also suggests this awareness. When blood relationships were few, as in newly created plantations in the Southwest, "fictive" kinship arrangements took their place until a new pattern of consanguinity developed. Gutman presents convincing evidence that this extended kinship structure—which he believes developed by the mid-to-late eighteenth century—provided the foundations for the strong communal consciousness that existed among slaves. In sum, Gutman's study is significant because it offers a closely reasoned and original explanation of some of the slaves' achievements, one that correctly emphasizes the resources that slaves themselves possessed.

单选题The rabbi was deep in ______ about the problems of his congregation.

单选题Science is based on experiment, on a willingness to ______ old dogma, on an openness to see the universe as it really is.

单选题Should John resign and Henry succeed him, we would have had a more vigorous leadership. A. B. C. D.

单选题He sent me an ______ biography of Theodore Roosevelt which helped me understand American history better. A. authorized B. authoritative C. authoritarian D. authority

单选题"The highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton," says Emerson, "is that they set at nought books and traditions, and spoke not what men thought but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty." It is strange that any one who has recognized the individuality of all works of lasting influence should not also recognize the fact that his own individuality ought to be steadfastly preserved. As Emerson says in continuation, "Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impressions with good- humored inflexibility, then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else tomorrow a stranger will say with masterful good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our opinion from another." Accepting the opinions of another and the tastes of another is very different from agreement in opinion and taste. Originality is independence, not rebellion. It is sincerity, not antagonism. Whatever you believe to be true and false, that proclaim to be true and false. Whatever you think admirable and beautiful, that should be your model, even if ail your friends and ail the critics storm at you as a crotchet-monger and an eccentric. Whether the public will feel its truth and beauty at once, or after long years, or never cease to regard it as paradox and ugliness, no man can foresee. Enough for you to know that you have done your best, have been true to yourself, and that the utmost power inherent in your work has been displayed.

单选题Passge 3 Almost since the beginning of mankind, govemments have been recording the numbers of their populace. The first known census report took place in 3800 B. C. in Babylonia for the purpose of deciding who should pay taxes. As time went by, governments found other, more creative uses for knowing their numbers. Egyptian King Ramses Ⅱ used the census not only to determine who should pay taxes, but also to figure out how to divide land for farming and to decide who could provide manpower for various government projects. These new ideas came about in the mid-1200s-B.C. William the Conqueror brought the concept of census taking to England in 1085. All landowners were required to name their holdings for the purpose of taxation. By the fifteenth century, Tudor kings found a new twist to the Egyptians' use of the census. They too used the population count as a means of getting ready manpower for important government project, namely, replenishing troops in the ongoing battles in western Europe. A rebellious tide swept over England, however, in the mid-1700s. A bill to authorize a regular census was defeated in Parliament on the grounds that it would give valuable information to England's enemies. But the tide of rebellion soon turned, and in 1800 England established its first regular census. Meanwhile the United States had already had an ongoing census for ten years. It was authorized in the Constitution for the purpose of deciding how many members of Congress would be needed for a fair representation of the American people. The constitutional article also established that the census would be taken in 1790 and every ten years thereafter. And so it has. Since its beginning, the American census has gone through many changes. Today the census provides more than a count of the people who live here. It takes polls on transportation, economic planning, and agriculture. The census also provides data for most government agency statistics, such as the unemployment rate. Counting costs have risen since 1790. The government spent about a penny per person to count post-Revolutionary Americans. Today the census costs $ 250 million--more than a dollar per person. That's a long way since 3800 B.C.

单选题Children are often______sports at an early age. As they get older and start school they participate in sports as a way both to make new friends and be active.

单选题Let's not ______ over such a trifle! A. fall out B. fall through C. fall to D. fall behind

单选题What is the topic of the man's speech?

单选题Because he is ______ , we cannot predict what course he will follow at any moment.

单选题The president's ______ remarks in his speech met with a lot of attacks from other countries. A. offensive B. impressive C. permissive D. expressive

单选题1 In old days, when a glimpse of stocking was looked upon as something far too shock ing to distract the serious work of an office, secretaries were men. Then came the First World War and the male secretaries were replaced by women. A man's secretary became his personal servant, charged with remembering his wife's birth day and buying her presents; taking his suits to the dry-cleaners; telling lies on the tele phone to keep people he did not wish to speak to at bay and, of course, typing and filing and taking shorthand. Now all this may be changing again. The microchip and high technology is sweeping the British office, taking with it much of the routine clerical work that secretaries did. "Once office technology takes over generally, the status of the job will rise again be cause it will involve only the high-powered work and then men will want to do it again. " That was said by one of the executives (male) of one of the biggest secretarial agencies in this country. What he has predicted is already under way in the US. One girl described to me a recent temporary job placing men in secretarial jobs in San Francisco. She noted that all the men she dealt with appeared to be gay so possibly that it was just a new twist to the old story. Over here, though, there are men coming onto the job market as secretaries. Classically, girls have learned shorthand and typing and gone into a company to seek their fortune from the bottom--and that's what happened to John Bowman. Although he joined a national gro cery chain as secretary to its first woman senior manager, he has since been promoted to an administration job. "I filled in the application form and said I could do audio/typing, and in fact I was the only applicant. The girls were reluctant to work for this young, glamorous new woman with all this power in the firm. " "I did typing at school, and then a commercial course. I just thought it would be use ful finding a job. I never got any funny treatment from the girls, though I admit I've never met another male secretary. But then I joined the Post Office as a clerk and carelessly played with the typewriter, and wrote letters, and thought that after all secretaries were getting a good ~1,000 a year more than clerks like me. There was a shortage at that time, you see. " "It was simpler working for a woman than for a man. I found she made decisions, she told everybody what she thought, and there was none of that male bitchiness, or that stuff 'ring this number for me dear, 'which men go in for. " "Don't forget, we were a team—that's how I feel about it—not boss and servant but two people doing different things for the same purpose. " Once high technology has made the job of secretary less routine, will there be male takeover? Men should beware of thinking that they can walk right into the better jobs. There are a lot of women secretaries who will do the job as well, as they are as effi cient and well-trained to cope with word processors and computers as men.

单选题In the last few minutes the conversation has become seemingly ______as if the discussion were of some minor domestic matter and not survival itself. A．crucial B．central C．casual D．causal

单选题Observe the dilemma of the fungus: it is a plant, but it possesses no chlorophyl. While all other plants put the sun's energy to work for them combining the nutrients of ground and air into body structure, the chlorophylless fungus must look elsewhere for an energy supply. It finds it in those other plants which, having received their energy free from the sun, relinquish it at some point in their cycle either to other animals (like us humans) or to fungi. In this search for energy the fungus has become the earth' s major source of rot and decay. Wherever you see mold forming on a piece of bread, or a pile of leaves turning to compost, or a blown-down tree becoming pulp on the ground, you are watching a fungus eating. Without fungus action the earth would be piled high with the dead plant life of past centuries. In fact, certain plants which contain resins that are toxic to fungi will last indefinitely. Specimens of the redwood, for instance, can still be found resting on the forest floor centuries after having been blown down.