阅读理解Directions: Read the following passages and answer the questions. Choose the most appropriate answer for each question and circle the letter on the answer sheet. Remember to write the letter corresponding to the question number.The Alaska pipeline starts at the frozen edge of the Arctic Ocean. It stretches southward across the largest and northernmost state in the United States, ending at a remote ice-free seaport village nearly 800 miles from where it begins. It is massive in size and extremely complicated to operate.The steel pipe crosses windswept plains and endless miles of delicate tundra(冻土带) that tops the frozen ground. It weaves through crooked canyons, climbs sheer mountains, plunges over rocky crags, makes its way through thick forests, and passes over or under hundreds of rivers and streams. The pipe is 4 feet in diameter, and up to 2 million barrels (or 84 million gallons) of crude oil can be pumped through it daily.Resting on H-shaped steel racks called “bents,” long sections of the pipeline follow a zigzag course high above the frozen earth. Other long sections drop out of sight beneath spongy or rocky ground and return to the surface later on. The pattern of the pipeline’s up-and-down route is determined by the often harsh demands of the arctic and subarctic climate, the tortuous lay of the land, and the varied compositions of soil, rock, or permafrost (permanently frozen ground). A little more than half of the pipeline is elevated above the ground. The remainder is buried anywhere from 3 to 12 feet, depending largely upon the type of terrain and the properties of the soil.One of the largest in the world, the pipeline cost approximately $8 billion and is by far the biggest and most expensive construction project ever undertaken by private industry. In fact, no single business could raise that much money, so 8 major oil companies formed a consortium in order to share the costs. Each company controlled oil rights to particular shares of land in the oil fields and paid into the pipeline-construction fund according to the size of its holdings. Today, despite enormous problems of climate, supply shortages, equipment breakdowns, labor disagreements, treacherous terrain, a certain amount of mismanagement, and even theft, the Alaska pipeline has been completed and is operating.

阅读理解Directions: There are 7 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C, and D. You should decide on the best choice.Passage 6It was the worst tragedy in maritime history, six timesmore deadly than the Titanic. When the German cruise shipWilhelm Gustloff was hit by torpedoes fired from a Russiansubmarine in the final winter of World War II, more than10, 000 people - mostly women, children and old peoplefleeing the final Red Army push into Nazi Germany - werepacked aboard. An ice storm had turned the decks intofrozen sheets that sent hundreds of families sliding intothe sea as the ship tilted and began to go down. Othersdesperately tried to put lifeboats down. Some whosucceeded fought off those in the water who had thestrength to try to claw their way aboard. Most peoplefroze immediately. I’ ll never forget the screams, saysChrista Ntitzmann, 87, one of the 1, 200 survivors. Sherecalls watching the ship, brightly lit, slipping into itsdark grave - and into seeming nothingness, rarelymentioned for more than half a century.Now Germany’ s Nobel Prize-winning author Gtinter Grasshas revived the memory of the 9, 000 dead, including morethan 4, 000 children - with his latest novel Crab Walk,published last month. The book, which will be out inEnglish next year, doesn’ t dwell on the sinking; itsheroine is a pregnant young woman who survives thecatastrophe only to say later: Nobody wanted to hearabout it, not here in the West (of Germany) and not at allin the East. The reason was obvious. As Grass put it in arecent interview with the weekly Die Woche: Because thecrimes we Germans are responsible for were and are sodominant, we didn’ t have the energy left to tell of ourown sufferings. ”The long silence about the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloffwas probably unavoidable - and necessary. By unreservedlyowning up to their country’ s monstrous crimes in theSecond World War, Germans have managed to win acceptanceabroad, marginalize the neo- Nazis at home and make peacewith their neighbors. Today’ s unified Germany is moreprosperous and stable than at any time in its long,troubled history. For that, a half century of willfulforgetting about painful memories like the German Titanicwas perhaps a reasonable price to pay. But even the mostpolitically correct Germans believe that they’ ye nowearned the right to discuss the full historical record.Not to equate German suffering with that of its victims,but simply to acknowledge a terrible tragedy.

阅读理解Directions: In this section there are reading passages followed by multiple-choice questions. Read the passages and then mark your answers on your answer sheet.Passage threeAs a volunteer, John Apollos is losing weight the old- fashioned way by eating less. Apollos has lowered his daily caloric intake 25% over the past eight months. The fat, not surprisingly, has melted away. But that’ s not the real reason Apollos and the other participants in the program are eating only three-quarters of what they used to. The researchers are trying to determine whether restricting food intake can slow the ageing process and extend our life span. “I feel better and lighter and healthier, ” says Apollos. “But if it could help you live longer, that would be pretty amazing. ”The idea is counterintuitive: if we eat to live, how can starving ourselves add years to our lives? Yet decades of calorie-restriction studies involving organisms ranging from microscopic yeast to rats have shown just that. Last July a long-term study led by researchers at the University of Wisconsin, found that calorie restriction seemed to extend the lives of humanlike rhesus monkeys (恒 河猴) as well. The hungry primates fell victim to diabetes, heart and brain disease and cancer much less frequently than their well-fed counterparts did.Scientists have suspected that calorie restriction could extend the life span of animals when they noticed that severely food-restricted lab rats lived twice as long as normal ones and were healthier.One theory is that a state of slight hunger acts as mild but constant stressor that makes an organism stronger and more resistant to the ills of ageing. Taking in fewer calories also slows metabolism (新陈代谢) and some data indicate that humans with a slower metabolism live longer. If researchers could determine the mechanism, they might be able to mimic the effect of calorie restriction. That could be the ultimate benefit of the Calorie Study. “Calorie restriction is pretty much the only thing out there that will not just prevent disease but also extend maximal life span, ” says Dr. Marc Hellerstein, a nutritionist at the University of California.

阅读理解In 2008, Mark Lynas, an environmental activist, was unsparing in his criticism of genetically-modified (GM) food companies, calling their claims that GM crops could feed the world “outlandish” and dismissing arguments that they could better cope with the irnpact of climate change “a new line in emotional blackmail” .In his speech at the Oxford conference on January 3rd, Mr Lynas was no less uncompromising “We will have to feed 9. 5 billion hopefully less poor people by 2050 on about the same land area as we use today, using limited fertilizer, water and pesticides and in the context of a rapidly changing climate. ” The only way of squaring this circle will be through the technology-driven intensification on farming — i.e., GM. Tom Macmillan of the Soil Association, which promotes the practice of organic farming, dismissed his views and said that popular opposition to GM crops is still strong and that GM crops require extra herbicides and dearer seeds while producing more resistant weeds and pests.Mr. Lynas’ s speech spotlights a growing tension within the environmental movement over how far to embrace technologies that have environmental benefits, when they work, but which raise fears of environmental disaster if they don’ t.Mr. Lynas makes the point that greens are happy to accept scientific findings when it comes to climate change, but dismiss them as biased when they attribute benefits to GM. Mr. Lynas’ s speech also added intriguing twists to an old debate. As he pointed out, regulatory delays introduced as a result of anti-GM movements are getting longer. Many GM crops have been waiting a decade or more for approval. And this has a cost. Mr. Lynas quotes figures from CropLife, a Brussels based agricultural-technology association, which shows that it now costs $139m to move from discovering a new crop trait to full commercialisation. That means only big companies can afford to do it, says Mr. Lynas: “anti- tech campaigners complain about GM crops only being marketed by big corporations when this is a situation they have done more than anyone to help bring about. ” Once, criticism of GM crops advanced on all fronts: these things were unnatural, an abuse of science; they would spread rogue genes uncontrollably; they would be bad for human health and so forth. The scientific fears have so far proved groundless and opponents seem to be playing upon them much less--at least to judge by the narrow sample of criticism of Mr. Lynas’ s speech. The main burden of complaint now seems to be that GM technology is a product of large companies which are unresponsive to public concerns. There is obviously much to be said for and against that charge. But for the moment it is worth noting two things. First, how much narrower the complaint is than the anti-GM criticism of only a few years ago. And second, as Mr. Lynas himself points out, how much critics of the technology have themselves contributed to the dominance of large firms, by raising the cost of developing GM crops so high.

阅读理解Directions: There are 7 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C, and D. You should decide on the best choice.Passage 2Intel chairman Andy Grove has decided to cut the Gordian knot of controversy surrounding stem cell research by simply writing a check.The check, which he pledged last week, could be for as much as 55 million, depending on how many donors make gifts of between 550, 000 and 5, 500, 000, which he has promised to match. It will be made out to the University of California-San Francisco (UCSF) .Thanks in part to such private donations, university research into uses for human stem cells—the cells at the earliest stages of development that can form any body part —will continue in California. With private financial support, the state will be less likely to lose talented scientists who would be tempted to leave the field or even leave the country as research dependent on federal money slows to glacial pace.Hindered by limits President Bush placed on stem cell research a year age, scientists are turning to laboratories that can carry out work without using federal money. This is awkward for universities, which must spend extra money building separate labs and keeping rigor cost records proving no federal funds were involved. Grove’ s donation, a first step toward a $20 million target at UCSF, will ease the burden.The president’ s decision a year ago to allow research on already existing stem cell lines was portrayed as a reasonable compromise between scientists’ needs for cells to work with, and concerns that this kind of research could lead to wholesale creation and destruction of human embryos, cloned infants and a general contempt for human life.But Bush’ s effort to please both sides ended up pleasing neither. And it certainly didn’ t provide the basis for cutting edge research. Of the 78 existing stem cell lines which Bush said are all that science would ever need, only one is in this country (at the University of Wisconsin) and only five are ready for distribution to researchers. All were grown in conjunction with mouse cells, making future therapeutic uses unlikely.The Bush administration seems bent on satisfying the small but vocal group of Americans who oppose stem cell research under any conditions. Fortunately, Grove and others are more interested in advancing scientific research that could benefit the large number of Americans who suffer from Parkinson’ s disease, nerve injuries, heart diseases and many other problems.

阅读理解Directions: There are 7 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C, and D. You should decide on the best choice.Passage 2The most precious fluid on earth is not oil, but water. Water is basic to life and health. A person can survive several days or even weeks without food, but only a short time without water. Over 1 billion people worldwide have no access to safe drinking water. There are few challenges as important as conserving the world’ s usable water and supplying clean drinking water and water for irrigation to those who need it. Yet this work is not getting done. Humans are depleting the earth’ s store of usable water at a rate that will soon threaten our food supply. Poor water management already kills millions of people a year and condemns hundreds of millions to hunger.The technology exists to solve these problems. Providing slums with drinking water and sanitation, for example, is easy to do and a cost-effective way to prevent deaths and disease. But because those who suffer are poor, their access to water is rarely a political priority. There is now an opportunity for progress. More than 100 water ministers from around the world, along with thousands of water experts from villagers to scientists, have gathered in the Netherlands. The conference will be useful if it can persuade governments and international banks to pay more attention to conservation and fair distribution of water.In 1980, the U. N. set a goal of safe drinking water for all by 1990. Because of international prodding, about two billion new people received clean drinking water over the subsequent 14 years. A new commitment is urgently needed to spread these health gains, help poor farmers and conserve the world’ s precious supply of usable water.

阅读理解Directions: There are 7 passages in this section. Eachpassage is followed by some questions orunfinishedstatements. For each of them there are four choices markedA, B, C, and D. You should decideon the best choice.Passage 7If you intend using humor in your talk to make peoplesmile, you must know how to identify shared experiencesand problems. Your humor must be relevant to the audienceand should help to show them that you are one of them orthat you understand their situation and are in sympathywith their point of view. Depending on whom you areaddressing, the problems will be different. If you aretalking to a group of managers, you may refer to thedisorganized methods of their secretaries; alternativelyif you are addressing secretaries, you may want to commenton their disorganized bosses.Here is an example, which I heard at a nurses’convention, of a story which works well because theaudience all shared the same view of doctors. A manarrives in heaven and is being shown around by St. Peter.He sees wonderful accommodations, beautiful gardens, sunnyweather, and so on. Everyone is very peaceful, polite andfriendly until, waiting in a line for lunch, the newarrival is suddenly pushed aside by a man in a white coat,who rushes to the head of the line, grabs his food andstomps over to a table by himself. Who is that? the newarrival asked St. Peter. Oh, that’ s God. came thereply, but sometimes he thinks he’ s a doctor. If you are part of the group which you are addressing, youwill be in a position to know the experiences and problemswhich are common to all of you and it’ ll be appropriatefor you to make a passing remark about the inediblecanteen food or the chairman’ s notorious bad taste inties. With other audiences you mustn’ t attempt to cut inwith humor as they will resent an outsider makingdisparaging remarks about their canteen or their chairman.You will be on safer ground if you stick to scapegoatslike the Post Office or the telephone system.If you feel awkward being humorous, you must practice sothat it becomes more natural. Include a few casual andapparently off-the-cuffre marks which you can deliver in arelaxed and unforced manner. Often it’ s the deliverywhich causes the audience to smile, so speak slowly andremember that a raised eyebrow or an unbelieving look mayhelp to show that you are making a light-hearted remark.Look for the humor. It often comes from the unexpected. Atwist on a familiar quote If at first you don’ t succeed,give up or a play on words or on a situation. Search forexaggeration and understatements. Look at your talk andpick out a few words or sentences which you can turn aboutand inject with humor.

阅读理解Directions: In this section there are reading passages followed by multiple-choice questions. Read the passages and then mark your answers on your answer sheet.Passage one.What makes Americans spend nearly half their food dollars on meals away from home？ The answers lie in the way Americans live today. During the first few decades of the twentieth century, canned and other convenience foods freed the family cook from full-time duty at the kitchen range. Then, in the 1940s, work in the wartime defense plants took more women out of the home than ever before, setting the pattern of the working wife and mother. Unless family members pitch in with food preparation, women are not fully liberated from that chore.It’ s easier to pick up a bucket of fried chicken on the way home from work or take the family out for pizzas or burgers than to start opening cans or heating up frozen dinners after a long, hard day. Also nowadays, the rising divorce rate means that there are more single working parents with children to feed. And many young adults and elderly people, as well as unmarried and divorced mature people, live alone rather than as a part of a family unit and don’ t want to bother cooking for one. Fast food is appealing because it is fast, it doesn’ t require tiny dressing up, it offers a “fun” break in the daily routine, and the outlay of money seems small. It can be eaten in the car — sometimes picked up at a drive-in window without even getting out — or on the run. Even if it is brought home to eat, there will never be any dirty dishes to wash because of the handy disposable wrappings. Children, especially, love fast food because it’ s finger food, no struggling with knives and forks, no annoying instructions from adults about table manners.

阅读理解A.In a land swept by typhoons and shaken by earthquakes, how have Japan’ s tallest and seemingly flimsiest old buildings—500 or so wooden pagodas—remained standing for centuries? Records show that only two have collapsed during the past 1400 years. Those that have disappeared were destroyed by fire as a result of lightning or civil war. The disastrous Hanshin earthquake in 1995 killed 6, 400 people, toppled elevated highways, flattened office blocks and devastated the port area of Kobe. Yet it left the magnificent five-storey pagoda at the Toji temple in nearby Kyoto unscathed though it leveled a number of buildings in the neighborhood. B. Japanese scholars have been mystified for ages about why these tall, slender buildings are so stable. It was only thirty years ago that the building industry felt confident enough to erect office blocks of steel and reinforced concrete that had more than a dozen floors. With its special shock absorbers to dampen the effect of sudden sideways movements from an earthquake, the thirty- six-storey Kasumigaseki building in central Tokyo— Japan’ s first skyscraper—was considered a masterpiece of modem engineering when it was built in 1968. C. Yet in 826, with only pegs and wedges to keep his wooden structure upright, the master builder Kobodaishi had no hesitation in sending his majestic Toji pagoda soaring fifty-five metres into the sky—nearly half as high as the Kasumigaseki skyscraper built some eleven centuries later. Clearly, Japanese carpenters of the day knew a few tricks about allowing a building to sway and settle itself rather than fight nature’ s forces. But what sort of tricks? D. The multi-storey pagoda came to Japan from China in the sixth century. As in China, they were first introduced with Buddhism and were attached to important temples. The Chinese built their pagodas in brick or stone, with inner staircases, and used them in later centuries mainly as watchtowers. When the pagoda reached Japan, however, its architecture was freely adapted to local conditions—they were built less high, typically five rather than nine storeys, made mainly of wood and the staircase was dispensed with because the Japanese pagoda did not have any practical use but became more of an art object. Because of the typhoons that batter Japan in the summer, Japanese builders learned to extend the eaves of buildings further beyond the walls. This prevents rainwater gushing down the walls. Pagodas in China and Korea have nothing like the overhang that is found on pagodas in Japan. E. The roof of a Japanese temple building can be made to overhang the sides of the structure by fifty per cent or more of the building’ s overall width. For the same reason, the builders of Japanese pagodas seem to have further increased their weight by choosing to cover these extended eaves not with the porcelain tiles of many Chinese pagodas but with much heavier earthenware tiles. F. But this does not totally explain the great resilience of Japanese pagodas. Is the answer that. like a tall pine tree, the Japanese pagoda—with its massive trunk-like central pillar known as shinbashira—simply flexes and sways during a typhoon or earthquake? For centuries, many thought so. But the answer is not so simple because the startling thing is that the shinbashira actually carries no load at all. In fact, in some pagoda designs, it does not even rest on the ground, but is suspended from the top of the pagoda—hanging loosely down through the middle of the building. The weight of the building is supported entirely by twelve outer and four inner columns. G. And what is the role of the shinbashira, the central pillar? The best way to understand the shinbashira’ s role is to watch a video made by Shuzo Ishida, a structural engineer at Kyoto Institute of Technology. Mr. Ishida, known to his students as ‘ Professor Pagoda’ because of his passion to understand the pagoda, has built a series of models and tested them on a ‘ shake-table’ in his laboratory. In short, the shinbashira was acting like an enormous stationary pendulum. The ancient craftsmen, apparently without the assistance of very advanced mathematics, seemed to grasp the principles that were, more than a thousand years later, applied in the construction of Japan’ s first skyscraper. What those early craftsmen had found by trial and error was that under pressure a pagoda’ s loose stack of floors could be made to slither to and fro independent of one another. Viewed from the side, the pagoda seemed to be doing a snake dance—with each consecutive floor moving in the opposite direction to its neighbors above and below. The shinbashira, running up through a hole in the centre of the building, constrained individual storeys from moving too far because, after moving a certain distance, they banged into it, transmitting energy away along the column. H. Another strange feature of the Japanese pagoda is that, because the building tapers, with each successive floor plan being smaller than the one below, none of the vertical pillars that carry the weight of the building is connected to its corresponding pillar above. In other words, a five- storey pagoda contains not even one pillar that travels right up through the building to carry the structural loads from the top to the bottom. More surprising is the fact that the individual storeys of a Japanese pagoda, unlike their counterparts elsewhere, are not actually connected to each other. They are simply stacked one on top of another like a pile of hats. Interestingly, such a design would not be permitted under current Japanese building regulations. I. And the extra-wide eaves? Think of them as a tightrope walker’ s balancing pole. The bigger the mass at each end of the pole, the easier it is for the tightrope walker to maintain his or her balance. The same holds true for a pagoda. “With the eaves extending out on all sides like balancing poles, ” says Mr. Ishida, “the building responds to even the most powerful jolt of an earthquake with a graceful swaying, never an abrupt shaking. ” Here again, Japanese master builders of a thousand years ago anticipated concepts of modem structural engineering.

阅读理解When my wife, Meg, suffered a severe stroke that immobilized her left side. I knew we would be facing a grueling odyssey involving several hospitals, dozens of doctors and countless therapy sessions. What I wasn’ t prepared for was the American Way of Managed Health Care, a system that is bureaucratic and often dysfunctional. Yes, medical practitioners in the United States are generally considered among the best in the world, and my wife primarily had first-rate care, but their back-office practice — a business dominated by third-party payers — is badly run at worst and woefully confusing at best.Meg’ s stroke occurred while we were vacationing in the south of France last summer. After being stabilized in the emergency room of a small hospital, she was transferred immediately to a large teaching hospital, where she received excellent treatment in a world-renowned stroke pavilion. When I received the bill for her 2-1/2 week stay at the Pasteur Hospital in Nice, I asked the deputy administrator for an itemized statement. I knew I’d need to show it to our health-insurance company — the one-page invoice for more than 20, 2000 euro wouldn’t do. The administrator was puzzled. There were only two daily rates, he explained, one for soins intensifs — or for intensive care — and another for non-acute care. There were no extra charges; the numerous ambulance transfers, MRI brain scans, X-rays and assorted tests associated with any serious injury or illness were all-inclusive. In fact, the only supplement was 10. 67 euro — about $13 — a day for food which, although not three-star bistro quality, was certainly a bargain, and better than anything you can eat in a U. S. hospital.I’m not arguing that the French health-care system should be a world benchmark, but compared with what we faced when we returned home, it was a model of simplicity and efficiency. Of course, everything in American medical care is a la arte, and the invoices are so dense with codes and abbreviations, it’s a wonder anyone can decipher them. I often wonder, how much does this cost the American public annually?At one New York hospital, we received bills from doctors we’d never heard of, including one who charged for an office visit when Meg couldn’t even get out of bed. The managed care provider’s computer sent him a check without question. Had he not billed us for the co-payment I never would have noticed the error. Over the past few months, I spent hours clearing up these kinds of mistakes. A doctor friend who heads a department in a large hospital admitted that these kinds of complaints are all too common.Meg’ s medical tab has reached nearly $300, 000, which seems monumental, even given the nature of her catastrophic injury. Thankfully, we were covered for most of it. Yet $90, 000 of that figure had little or nothing to do with patient care. Roughly 30 cents of each health-care dollar goes to administration, or the processing of paperwork. If that figure could be reduced by a third, even $30, 000 would go a long way toward extending her rehab treatments. (Meg’ s 2004 benefits have run out. )When Meg was finally discharged after spending 56 days in hospitals, we received co-payment bills for her medical equipment, including an itemized statement for every extra on her wheelchair (no the brake extensions, foot pedal, armrest, anti-tip bars, seat and seat belt are not included) . But the provider billed us two ways, one for leasing the chair and another for purchase. Even now, after numerous phone calls, I still don’ t know whether we own or are renting the wheelchair.The outpatient rehab therapy sessions presented their own set of challenges. The hospital sent a number of bills — printed in alphanumeric codes — for additional thousands of dollars even though we made the proper co-payments at the time of treatment. Billing administrators barely raised an eyebrow when I told them I had spent too much time on hold and would no longer bother calling to dispute the charges. (We have since received automated early- morning phone calls asking us to contact the hospital. )I’ve checked with others who have had protracted negotiations with health-care providers and insurers over complex medical treatment. They echo my frustration. Why is it incumbent on the recipient to spend countless hours rectifying the medical administration’ s mistakes? How much extra does this process add to the nation’ s annual health-care bill?Medicare—our government-subsidized system that cares for the elderly—has a much better record in administrative costs. It spends between three and four cents of every dollar on paperwork and processing. A single-payer system is easier and cheaper to run. We’ ve had a two-tier health-care system in the United States for a while, and only one tier works. Isn’ t it time for managed care to slim down and help its patients get better instead of burdening them with needlessly expensive paperwork?

阅读理解Directions: There are 3 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. You should decide on the best Choice. Write your answers on the answer sheet.Passage TwoLet us suppose that you are in the position of a parent. Would you allow your children to read any book they wanted to without first checking its contents? Would you take your children to see any film without first finding out whether it is suitable for them? If your answer to these questions is “yes” , then you are extremely permissive. If your answer is “no” , then you are exercising your right as a parent to protect your children from what you consider to be undesirable influences. In other words, by acting as a censor yourself, you are admitting that there is a strong ease for censorship.Now, of course, you will say that it is one thing to exercise censorship where children are concerned and quite another to do the same for adults. Children need protection and it is the parents’ responsibility to provide it. But what about adults? Aren’ t they old enough to decide what is good for them? The answer is that many adults are, but don’ t make the mistake of thinking that all adults ate like you. Censorship is for the good of society as a whole. Like the law, censorship contributes to the common good.Some people think that it is disgraceful that a censor should interfere with works of art. Who is this person, they say, to ban this great book or cut that great film? No one can set himself up as a superior being. But we must remember two things. Firstly, where genuine works of art are concerned, modern censors are extremely liberal in their view—Often far more liberal than a large section of the public.Artistic merit is something which censors clearly recognize. And secondly, we must bear in mind that the great proportion of books, plays and films which come before the censor are very far from being “works of art” .When discussing censorship, therefore, we should not confine our attention to great masterpieces, but should consider the vast numbers of publications and films which make up the bulk of the entertainment industry. When censorship laws are relaxed, immoral people are given a license to produce virtually anything in the name of “art” . There is an increasing tendency to equate artistic with “pornographic” . The vast market for pornography would rapidly be exploited.One of the great things that censorship does is to prevent certain people from making fat profits by corrupting the minds of others. To argue in favor of absolute freedom is to argue in favor of anarchy.Society would really be the poorer if it deprived itself of the wise counsel and the restraining influence which a censor provides.

阅读理解There is a short passage in this part with five

阅读理解Directions: There are 7 passages in this section. Eachpassage is followed by some questions or unfinishedstatements. For each of them there are four choices markedA, B, C, and D. You should decide on the best choice.Passage 5The fridge is considered a necessity. It has been so sincethe 1960s when packaged food firstappeared with the label: store in the refrigerator.In my fridgeless Fifties childhood, I was fed well andhealthily. The milkman came daily, the grocer, thebutcher, the baker, and the ice-cream man delivered two orthree times a week. The Sunday meat would last untilWednesday and surplus bread and milk became all kinds ofcakes. Nothing was wasted, and we were never troubled byrotten food. Thirty years on, food deliveries have ceased,fresh vegetables are almost unobtainable in the country.The invention of the fridge contributed comparativelylittle to the art of food preservation. A vast way ofwell-tried techniques already existed—natural cooling,drying, smoking, salting, sugaring, bottling….What refrigeration did promote was marketing—marketinghardware and electricity, marketing soft drinks, marketingdead bodies of animals around the globe in search of agood price.Consequently, most of the world’ s fridges are to befound, not in the tropics where they might prove useful,but in the wealthy countries with mild temperatures wherethey are climatically almost unnecessary. Every winter,millions of fridges hum away continuously, and at vastexpense, busily maintaining an artificially-cooled spaceinside an artificially-heated house—while outside, natureprovides the desired temperature free of charge. Thefridge’ s effect upon the environment has been evident,while its contribution to human happiness has beeninsignificant. If you don’ t believe me, try it yourself,invest in a food cabinet and turn off your fridge nextwinter. You may miss the hamburgers, but at least you’ llget rid of that terrible hum.

阅读理解Directions: There are 3 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A. , B. , C. and D. You should decide on the best choice. Write your answers on the answer sheet.Passage ThreeThere was one shop in the town of Mufulira, which was notorious for its color bar. It was a drugstore. While Europeans were served at the counter, a long line of African queued at the window and often not only were kept waiting but, when their turn came to be served, were rudely treated by the shop assistants. One day I was determined to make a public protest against this kind of thing, and many of the schoolboys in my class followed me to the store and waited outside to see what would happen when I went in.I simply went into the shop and asked the manager politely for some medicine. As soon as he saw me standing in the place where only European customers were allowed to stand he shouted at me in a bastard language that is only used by an employer when speaking to his servants. I stood at the counter and politely requested in English that I should be served. The manager became exasperated and said to me in English, “If you stand there till Christmas I will never serve you. ”I went to the District Commissioner’ s office. Fortunately the District Commissioner was out, for he was one of the old school; however, I saw a young District Officer who was a friend of mine. He was very concerned to hear my story and told me that if ever I wanted anything more from the drugstore all I had to do was come to him personally and he would buy my medicine for me. I protested that that was not good enough. I asked him to accompany me back to the store and to make a protest to the manager. This he did, and I well remember him saying to the manager, “Here is Mr. Kaunda who is a respectable member of the Urban Advisory Council, and you treat him like a common servant. ” The manager of the drugstore apologized and said, “ If only he had introduced himself and explained who he was, then, of course I should have given him proper service. ”I had to explain once again that he had missed my point. Why should I have to introduce myself every time I went into a store. . . any more than I should have to buy my medicine by going to a European friend? I want to prove that any man of any color, whatever his position, should have the right to go into any shop and buy what he wanted.

阅读理解College costs vary quite a bit, depending upon the type of school attended. For example, at many of the more expensive private schools, annual costs (including tuition, room, board, books, travel to and from home, and other expenses) may exceed $ 20, 000. of course, public universities are much cheaper. At these schools, tuition is significantly higher for out-of-state students than it is for those whose permanent residence is within that state. Tuition at community colleges averages about half the in-state cost of public, four-year colleges and universities.For those that cannot afford the cost of a college education, financial aid is the answer. Students in the U. S. A. receive about $20 billion per year in financial aid. In recent years, nearly 75% of students in postsecondary programs have been receiving some form of financial aid. There are three main types of financial aid: (a) scholarships (grants) , which are gifts that students do not repay; (b) loans to students and/or their parents; and (c) student employment (work/study) , a part- time job which the school gives the student for the academic year. Most financial aid is need-based; that is, only students who need the money receive it. Financial assistance to outstanding students who do not need the money (commonly called merit-based aid) is limited.The funds for all of this aid come from three main sources —the federal government, state governments, and private contributions. Every American college and university has a financial aid office to help students find out what kind of aid they might be qualified to get and to assist them in completing the complicated application forms. Aliens who are permanent residents in the U. S. A. are qualified to receive government assistance, but foreign students (I-20 visa students) are not.Questions 16-17Look at the statements below (Questions 16-17) and decide whether they are “True” or “False” or the related information is “Not Given” . You should write

阅读理解Reading Passage 1Questionsare based on the following readingpassage.A.From the beginning of the 20th century, people abroadhave been uncomfortable with the global impact of Americanculture. More recently, globalization has been the mainenemy for academics, journalists, and political activistswho loathe what they see as the trend toward culturaluniformity. Still, they usually regard global culture andAmerican culture as synonymous. And they continue toinsist that Hollywood, McDonald’ s and Disneyland areeradicating regional and local eccentricities.B. Despite those allegations, the cultural relationshipbetween the United States, and the rest of the world overthe past l00 years has never been one-sided. On thecontrary, the United States was, and continues to be, asmuch a consumer of foreign intellectual and artisticinfluences as it has been a shaper of the world’ sentertainment and tastes.Section AC. In fact, as a nation of immigrants from the 19th to21st century, the United States has been a recipient asmuch as an exporter of global culture. Indeed, theinfluence of immigrants on the United States explains whyits culture has been so popular for so long in so manyplaces. American culture has spread throughout the worldbecause it has incorporated foreign styles and ideas. WhatAmericans have done more brilliantly than theircompetitors overseas is repackage the cultural products wereceive from abroad and then retransmit them to the restof the planet. That is why a global mass culture has cometo be identified, however simplistically, with the UnitedStates.D. Americans, after all, did not invent fast food,amusement parks, or the movies. Before the Big Mac, therewere fish and chips. Before Disneyland, there wasCopenhagen’ s Tivoli Gardens (which Walt Disney used as aprototype for his first theme park in Anaheim, Californiaa model later re-exported to Tokyo and Paris) . And in thefirst two decades of the 20th century the two largestexporters of movies around the world were France andItaly.Section BE. So, the origins of today’ s international entertainmentcannot be traced only to P. T. Barnum’ s circuses orBuffalo Bill’ s Wild West Show. The roots of the newglobal culture lie as well in the European modernistassault, in the early 20th century, on 19th-centuryliterature, music, painting, and architecture—particularly in the modernist refusal to honor thetraditional boundaries between high and low culture.Modernism in the arts was improvisational, eclectic, andirreverent. Those traits have also been characteristic ofAmerican popular culture.F. The artists of the early 20th century also challengedthe notion that culture was a means of intellectual ormoral improvement. They did so by emphasizing style andcraftsmanship at the expense of philosophy, religion, orideology. They deliberately called attention to languagein their novels, to optics in their paintings, to thematerials in and function of their architecture, to thestructure of music instead of its melodies.G. Although modernism was mainly a European affair, itinadvertently accelerated the growth of mass culture inthe U. S. Surrealism, with its dreamlike associations,easily lent itself to the wordplay and psychologicalsymbolism of advertising, cartoons, and theme parks.Dadaism ridiculed the snobbery of elite culturalinstitutions and reinforced an already-existing appetite(especially among the immigrant audiences in the UnitedStates) for “low-class, ” disreputable nickelodeons andvaudeville shows. Stravinsky’ s experiments withunorthodox, atonal music validated the rhythmicinnovations of American jazz. Modernism provided thefoundations for a genuinely new culture. But the newculture turned out to be neither modernist nor European.Instead, American artists transformed an avant-gardeProject into a global phenomenon.Section CH. It is in popular culture that the reciprocalrelationship between America and the rest of the world canbest be seen. There are many reasons for the ascendancy ofAmerican mass culture. Certainly, the ability of American-based media conglomerates to control the production anddistribution of their products has been a major stimulusfor the worldwide spread of American entertainment. Butthe power of American capitalism is not the only, or eventhe most important, explanation for the global popularityof America’ s movies and television shows.I. The effectiveness of English as a language of masscommunications has been essential to the acceptance ofAmerican culture: Unlike German, Russian, or Chinese, thesimpler structure and grammar of English, along with itstendency to use shorter, less abstract words and moreconcise sentences, are all advantageous for the composersof song lyrics, ad slogans, cartoon captions, newspaperheadlines, and movie and TV dialogue. English is thus alanguage exceptionally well suited to the demands andspread of American mass culture.J. Another factor is the international complexion of theAmerican audience. The heterogeneity of America’ spopulation—its regional, ethnic, religious, and racialdiversity—forced the media, from the early years of the20th century, to experiment with messages, images, andstory lines that had a broad multicultural appeal. TheHollywood studios, mass-circulation magazines, and thetelevision networks have had to learn how to speak to avariety of groups and classes at home. This has given themthe techniques to appeal to an equally diverse audienceabroad.K. One important way that the American media havesucceeded in transcending internal social divisions,national borders, and language barriers is by mixing upcultural styles. American musicians and composers havefollowed the example of modernist artists like Picasso andBraque in drawing on elements from high and low culture.Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, and Leonard Bernsteinincorporated folk melodies, religious hymns, blues andgospel songs, and jazz into their symphonies, concertos,operas, and ballets. Indeed, an art form asquintessentially American as jazz evolved during the 20thcentury into an amalgam of African, Caribbean, LatinAmerican, and modernist European music. This blending offorms in America’ s mass culture has enhanced its appealto multiethnic domestic and international audiences bycapturing their different experiences and tastes.Section DL. Finally, American culture has imitated not only themodernists’ visual flamboyance, but also their tendencyto be apolitical and anti-ideological. The refusal tobrowbeat an audience with a social message has accounted,more than any other factor, for the worldwide popularityof American entertainment. American movies, in particular,have customarily focused on human relationships andPrivate feelings, not on the problems of a particular timeand place. They tell tales about romance, intrigue,success, failure, moral conflicts, and survival. The mostmemorable movies of the l930s (with the exception of TheGrapes of Wrath) were comedies and musicals aboutmismatched people falling in love, not socially consciousfilms dealing with issues of poverty and unemployment.Similarly, the finest movies about World War II (likeCasablanca) or the Vietnam War (like The Deer Hunter)linger in the mind long after those conflicts have endedbecause they explore their character’ s most intimateemotions rather than dwelling on headline events.M. Such intensely personal dilemmas are what peopleeverywhere wrestle with. So Europeans, Asians, and LatinAmericans flocked to Titanic, as they once did to GoneWith the Wind, not because those films celebrated Americanvalues, but because people all over the world could seesome part of their own lives reflected in the stories oflove and loss.N. America’ s mass culture has often been crude andintrusive, as its critics have always complained. But,American culture has never felt all that foreign toforeigners. And, at its best, it has transformed what itreceived from others into a culture everyone, everywhere,could embrace —a culture that is both emotionally and, onoccasion, artistically compelling for millions of peoplethroughout the world.O. So, despite the current resurgence of anti-Americanism-not only in the Middle East but in Europe and LatinAmerica-it is important to recognize that America’ s movietelevision shows, and theme parks have been less“imperialistic” than cosmopolitan. In the end, Americanmass culture has not transformed the world into a replicaof the United States. Instead, America’ s dependence onforeign cultures has made the United States a replica ofthe worldQuestionsDo the following statements agree with the claims of thewriter in Reading Passage 1?

阅读理解In this section you will read 2 passages. Each one is followed by several questions about it. You are to choose one best answer to each question. Passage 1Before Opening Night 1 “We’ re going into rehearsal tomorrow” , an actor may say, his face showing a mixture of a certain apprehension and an anticipation close to elation. The explanation for the duality of his reaction lies in his knowledge that on the one hand, rehearsal is the crucible of creation for everyone concerned in play production, and that on the other hand, for all the blood, sweat, and tears that will be expended, the play he is in may fail or he may fail in it. 2 When you read the script of a play, all you have are words suggesting what may happen on the stage. In terms of color, sound, movement, people, and a specific environment, all is shadowy. The function of rehearsals is to transmute words into a world. 3 Many dramatists do not even trouble to write stage directions. But a stage setting has to be built out of real materials. So that people can move on it and certain actions can be conveniently performed on it; the audience, moreover, must be able to sense in looking at it what sort of theme and mood they are to dwell in and enjoy for the duration of the performance. . 4 The physical aspect of production, though most immediately striking, is not the most important. When rehearsals begin, the settings and props have already been designed and ordered, though they will not appear till the last four days of rehearsal usually out of town. What is crucial to the production is the integration of the company of actors in their individual interpretations. It is this that the director must effect so that all the elements the visual and human form a coherent and pleasurable meaning. 5The director is, to a considerable degree, the “author” of the stage play. He should always be in charge， but he may not always be in control. It is often said that the director “molds” the actors, interpretations; this is largely true and most flattering to the director but accomplished actors may themselves be creators. 6 The wise director knows and hopes for this: he tries to understand his actors and what each has to offer and can be induced to reveal. Hence the most complex and fascinating aspect of rehearsal is the give-and-take between actors and director as well as the relations between the actors themselves. 7 Some directors have the company sit and read the play together for three or four days. Other directors desire no more than a single joint reading of the play; some though very few even insist that actors know their lines before rehearsals have begun. 8 After the play is read, the company gets “on its feet” ; the process of staging commonly called “blocking” begins. This involves the placement of actors, the timing and manner of their movements on the stage in short, the setting of the mechanical or visible patterns of the production. 9 Sooner or later, the director will in some way indicate not only where the actor is to move cross, sit, rise, turn but why and how. These questions imply others. Is the play to be given a comic or a sober interpretation? What style suits the material? Is a certain character to be regarded as sympathetic or not? Does it help or harm if particular line or bit of business provokes a laugh? 10 The actor may contest interpretations or even refuse to carry out bits of action on the grounds that they are false or he does not happen to be able to enact them convincingly. Such arguments generally end by one or the other yielding a point, depending either on the authority and persuasiveness of the director of the humility, receptiveness, or status of the actor. 11 A compromise may be arrived at that will enrich the issue. It is never good counsel to make these occasions a contest of wills. The director who by force of will beats the actor at this game wins a fruitless victory. 12 Some directors prefer to communicate with their actors rather privately in odd comers of the stage or in dressing rooms. Others always pronounce themselves within the hearing of the entire company. The director may act a bit himself by way of illustration rather dangerous if his demonstration fails to be clear, and sometimes discouraging if he should be too brilliant an actor. 13 Out in front in the theater auditorium where, after the first days of blocking， the director usually sits, all is darkness; on the stage, a rather evil illumination is projected from a wan work lamp. The production’s eventual furniture is suggested by broken-down chairs, uncouth couches, dirty steps, and insecure card tables, and crockery by paper plates, cups, knives and forks. 14 The playwright and producer attend all the first rehearsals. They visit less frequently after the first five-day trial period when cast changes may be most conveniently effected and do not make their presence seriously felt until the run-throughs when the play in its entirety is given without interruption. 15 There are generally three to five run-throughs at which the director feels his company is ready to be criticized by “outsiders” . A large or small audience of friends may be invited to the last two of the run-throughs. They serve to diminish the actors’ tension before the out-of-town tryout. They may also instruct the actors where laughs may be expected or warn the company of undesirable audience reactions. 16 Still, these run-throughs are not without their pitfalls; the threat stems from the expert as well as inexpert advice of relative strangers. The chief emphasis in the talk one hears after these run-throughs is on guessing the play’ s probable success or failure an utterly futile practice. 17 A play on the stage is the most elusive of phenomena. After more than thirty years of professional experience, the writer is quite frank to admit never to have been certain of the success or failure of a play in production. Any professional who claims even a 50 percent degree of infallibility is deluding either himself or others. The script may seem unpromising. The preview audiences may seem unpromising, the preview audiences may react coldly, yet the play may turn out to be a solid hit.18 A play on the stage is not only different in nature from its point of origin in the script, but it is never exactly the same from one rehearsal or performance to another. Most plays at the tenth day of rehearsal are miserably dull. A set that look “great” may be causing a short circuit in the proceedings a fact that only the most trained observer may notice. 19 A fine actor who later will give a brilliant performance sometimes develops rather haltingly at rehearsal (or vice versa) . The theater building itself (when too large or small) may modify the impact of a play. A nervous seizure (or “freeze” ) on the part: of a star on opening night may mortally influence the quality of a production particularly a comedy thoroughly enjoyed out of town. 20 The final rehearsals with settings, lights, costumes, makeup, sound effects occupy four days before the out-of- town opening. They are often tumultuous and frightening, for the addition of any new element to a rehearsal (even a change of locale) always upsets it somewhat. Though actors have seen models and sketches of the sets at rehearsals, and have tried on their various costumes in the costumer’ s workshop, it takes several days (at least) to adjust to them on the stage. 21 Rehearsals for four hours a day continue out of town. They are especially useful for the revision of text and the necessary work attendant upon theat. This time is also valuable for bringing characterizations to maturity and for polishing scenes which may still be rough in execution or shallow in content. 22 The out-of-town tryout period is a weird island of time. The world at large has ceased to exist for everyone connected with the production. The atmosphere is intoxicating in both the happy and the forbidding sense of the word. If there is to be trouble scandalous disagreements, rancorous episodes here is where it is most likely to occur. Everyone acts as if it were zero hour, not alone for the play, but for survival. 23 Yet there is joy in creation even as there must be pain. If rehearsals are conducted as many are with love and mutual regard on all sides, a wonderful sense of community grows in a theater troupe that is hard to match in any other collective enterprise elsewhere.QuestionDecide which meaning fits the word as it is used in theparagraph. All the five words are underlined in the text.apprehension (1)A. arrest; captureB. mental grasp; perceptionC. foreboding; dreadanticipation (1)A. expectationB. preventionC. preparationshadowy (2)A. fleeting; transitoryB. dim; indistinctC. dark; gloomystriking (4)A. apparentB. attackingC. refusing to workillumination (13)A. lightingB. clarificationC. decoration

阅读理解For each question below, choose the answer that

阅读理解In this section, you will read a passage. Answer the questions after reading the passage. Write your answer on the answer sheet.This month Singapore passed a bill that would give legal teeth to the moral obligation to support one’s parents. Called the Maintenance of Parents Bill, it received the backing of the Singapore Government.That does not mean it hasn’t generated discussion. Several members of the Parliament opposed the measure as un-Asian. Others who acknowledged the problem of the elderly poor believed it a disproportionate response. Still others believe it will subvert relations within the family: cynics dubbed it the “Sue Your Son” law.Those who say that the bill does not promote filial responsibility, of course, are right. It has nothing to do with filial responsibility. It kicks in where filial responsibility fails. The law cannot legislate filial responsibility any more than it can legislate love. All the law can do is to provide a safety net where this morality proves insufficient. Singapore needs this bill not to replace morality, but to provide incentives to shore it up.Like many other developed nations, Singapore faces the problems of an increasing proportion of people over 60 years of age.Demography is inexorable. In 1980, 7.2% of the population was in this bracket. By the end of the century that figure will grow to 11%. By 2030, the proportion is projected to be 26%. The problem is not old age per se. It is that the ratio of economically active people to economically inactive people that will decline.But no amount of government exhortation or paternalism will completely eliminate the problem of old people who have insufficient means to make ends meet. Some people will fall through the holes in any safety net.Traditionally, a person’s insurance against poverty in his old age was his family, lifts is not a revolutionary concept. Nor is it uniquely Asian. Care and support for one’s parents is a universal value shared by all civilized societies.The problem in Singapore is that the moral obligation to look after one’s parents is unenforceable. A father can be compelled by law to maintain his children. A husband can be forced to support his wife. But, until now, a son or daughter had no legal obligation to support his or her parents.In 1989, an Advisory Council was set up to look into the problems of the aged. Its report stated with a tinge of complacency that 95% of those who did not have their own income were receiving cash contributions from relations. But what about the 5% who aren’t getting relatives’ support? They have several options: (a) get a job and work until they die; (b) apply for public assistance (you have to be destitute to apply); or(c) starve quietly. None of these options is socially acceptable. And what if this 5% figure grows, as it is likely to do, as society ages?The Maintenance of Parents Bill was put forth to encourage the traditional virtues that have so far kept Asian nations from some of the breakdowns encountered in other affluent societies. This legislation will allow a person to apply to the court for maintenance from any or all of his children. The court would have the discretion to refuse to make an order if it is unjust. Those who deride the proposal for opening up the courts to family lawsuits miss the point. Only in extreme cases would any parent take his child to court. If it does indeed become law, the bill’s effect would be far more subtle.First, it will reaffirm the notion that it is each individual’s—not society’s—responsibility to look after his parents. Singapore is still conservative enough that most people will not object to this idea. It reinforces the traditional values and it doesn’t hurt a society now and then to remind itself of its core values.Second, and more important, it will make those who are inclined to shirk their responsibilities think twice. Until now, if a person asked family elders, clergymen or the Ministry of Community Development to help get financial support from his children, the most they could do was to mediate. But mediators have no teeth, and a child could simply ignore their pleas.But to be sued by one’s parents would be a massive loss of face. It would be a public disgrace. Few people would be so thick-skinned as to say, “Sue and be damned”. The hand of the conciliator would be immeasurably strengthened. It is far more likely that some sort of amicable settlement would be reached if the recalcitrant son or daughter knows that the alternative is a public trial.It would be nice to think Singapore doesn’t need this kind of law. But that belief ignores the clear demographic trends and the effect of affluence itself on traditional bends. Those of us who pushed for the bill will consider ourselves most successful if it acts as an incentive not to have it invoked in the first place.

阅读理解Directions: There are 7 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C, and D. You should decide on the best choice.Passage 7Academic thieves beware. While the Internet has placed awealth of research papers at the fingertips of students, anew Web site could help professors catch plagiarizers red-handed. Some students actually research and write theirterm-papers the old-fashioned way. Others, however, justcopy fake ones off the Internet and turn them in as theirwork.To prevent collegiate copycats, two graduate students atthe University of California at Berkeley have devised aprogram that compares a student’ s submission with everyother term- paper on the Web.We essentially search a hundred million Web pages on theInternet, interfacing with the top 20 search engines, said John Barrie, of www. plagiarism. org. We also comparethat with our local data base of term papers. Teachers who sign up can send their students’ papers tothe Web site. The originality of the work, or lackthereof, becomes painfully clear within 24 hours.We code every sentence that was a word-for-word matchwith another sentence, either contained on the Internet orwithin our database, Barrie said.David Presti, a U. C. Berkeley professor who teachesneurobiology, told his class he would use the program.Undaunted, numerous students plagiarized anyway.We ran all 300 papers through the program and found 45 ofthem, or 15 percent of students, had cut and pastedsignificant amounts of material from various World WideWeb sites without citations, Presti said.Students falsely accused can have the opportunity todefend themselves. They can show the instructors thatindeed they haven’ t got their material from the Internetor some other source, Barrie said.Competition is tough at prestigious universities like U. C.Berkeley. Some students welcome the Internet researchwatchdog, considering it a way to level the academicplaying field.I think it’ s justified academically. Plagiarizing iswrong, one said.