单选题A.Theyarebigger.B.Theyhavemoreservices.C.Theyalwayshaveflatroofs.D.Eachflathasitsowncarpark.
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单选题The reaction of meteorite researchers to the claims reported last August can be best described as ______.
单选题For most of us, work is the central, dominating fact of life. We spend more than half our conscious hours at work, preparing for work, traveling to and from work. What we do there largely determines out standard of living and to a considerable extent the status we are accorded by out fellow citizens as well. It is sometimes said that because leisure has become more important the indignities and injustices of work can be pushed into a comer; that because work is pretty intolerable, the people who do it should compensate for its boredom, frustrations and humiliations by concentrating their hopes on the other parts of their lives. I reject that as a counsel of despair. For the foreseeable future the material and psychological rewards which work can provide, and the conditions in which work is done, will continue to play a vital part in determining the satisfaction that life can offer. Yet only a small minority can control the pace at which they work or the conditions in which their work is done; only for a small minority does work offer scope for creativity, imagination, or initiative.
Inequality at work and in work is still one of the cruelest and most glaring forms of inequality in our society. We cannot hope to solve the more obvious problems of industrial life, many of which arise directly or indirectly from the frustrations created by inequality at work, unless we tackle it head-on. Still less can we hope to create a decent and humane society.
The most glaring inequality is that between managers and the rest. For most managers, work is an opportunity and a challenge. Their jobs engage their interest and allow them to develop their abilities. They are constantly learning, they are able to exercise responsibility, they have a considerable degree of control over their own—and others—working lives. Most important of all, they gave the opportunity to initiate. By contrast, for most manual workers, and for growing numbers of white-collar workers, work is a boring, monotonous, even painful exercise. They spend all their working lives in conditions which would be regarded as intolerable—for themselves—by those who take the decisions which let such conditions continue. The majority have little control over their work; it provides them with no opportunity for personal development. Often production is so designed that workers are simply part of the technology. In offices, many jobs are so routine that workers justifiably feel themselves to be mere cogs in the bureaucratic machine. As a direct consequence of their worker experience, many workers feel alienated from their work and their firm, whether it is in public or in private ownership.
Rising education standards feel rising expectations, yet the mount of control which the worker has over his own work situations does not rise accordingly. In many cases his control has been reduced. Symptoms of protest increase—rising sickness and absenteeism, high turnover of employees, restrictions on output, and strikes, both unofficial and official. There is not much escape out and upwards. As management becomes more professional—in itself a good thing—the opportunity for promotion from the shop floor become less. The only escape is to another equally frustrating manual job; the only compensation is found not in the job but outside it, if there is a rising standard of living.
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单选题Directions: In this section, you will read several
passages. Each passage is followed by several questions based on its content.
You are to choose ONE best answer, (A), (B), (C) or (D), to
each question. Answer all the questions following each passage on the basis of
what is stated or implied in that passage and write the letter of the answer you
have chosen in the corresponding space in your ANSWER
BOOKLET. Questions
1-5 How could faith beget such evil? After hundreds of
members of a Ugandan cult, the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten
Commandments of God, died in what first appeared to be a suicidal fire in the
village of Kanungu two weeks ago, police found 153 bodies buried in a compound
used by the cult in Buhunga, 25 miles away. When investigators searched the
house of a cult leader in yet another village, they discovered 155 bodies, many
buried tinder the concrete floor of the house. Then scores more were dug up at a
cult member's home. Some had been poisoned; others, often- young children,
strangled. By week's end, Ugandan police had counted 924 victims including
at least 530 who burned to death inside the sealed church--exceeding the 1978
Jonestown mass suicide and killings by followers of American cult leader Jim
Jones that claimed 913 lives. Authorities believe two of the
cult's leaders, Joseph Kibwetere, a 68-year-old former Roman Catholic catechism
teacher who started the cult in 1987, and his "prophetess, " Credonia Mwerinde,
by some accounts a former prostitute who claimed to speak for the Virgin Mary,
may still be alive and on the run. The pair had predicted the world would end on
Dec. 31, 1999. When that didn't happen, followers who demanded the return of
their possessions, which they had to surrender on joining the cult, may have
been systematically killed. The Ugandan carnage focuses
attention on the proliferation of religious cults in East Africa's impoverished
rural areas and city slums. According to the institute for the study of
American religion, which researches cults and sects, there are now more than
5,000 indigenous churches in Africa, some with apocalyptic or revolutionary
leanings. One such group is the Jerusalem Church of Christ in Nairobi's
Kawangwara slums, led by Mary Snaida-Akatsa, or "mommy" as she is known to her
thousands of followers. She prophesies about the end of the world and accuses
some members of being witches. One day they brought a "special visitor" to
church, an Indian Sikh man she claimed was Jesus, and told her followers to
"repent or pay the consequences. " Most experts say Africa's
hardships push people to seek hope in religious cults. "These groups thrive
because of poverty," says Charles Onyango Obbo, editor of the Monitor, an
independent newspaper in Uganda, and a close observer of cults. "People
have no support, and they're susceptible to anyone who is able to tap into their
insecurity. " Additionally, they say, AIDS, which has ravaged East Africa, may
also breed a fatalism that helps apocalyptic notions take root.
Some Africans turn to cults after rejecting mainstream Christian churches as
"Western" or "non-African. " Agnes Masitsa, 30, who used to attend a Catholic
church before she joined the Jerusalem Church of Christ, says of Catholicism:
"It's dull. " Catholic icons. Yet, the Ugandan doomsday cult,
like many of the sects, drew on features of Roman Catholicism, a strong force in
the region. Catholic icons were prominent in its buildings, and some of its
leaders were defrocked priests, such as Dominic Kataribabo, 32, who reportedly
studied theology in the Los Angeles area in the mid-1980s. He had told neighbors
he was digging a pit in his house to install a refrigerator; police have now
recovered 81 bodies from under the floor and 74 from a field nearby. Police are
unsure whether Kataribabo died in the church fire. Still, there
is the question: How could so many killings have been carried out without
drawing attention? Villagers were aware of Kibwetere's sect, whose followers
communicated mainly through sign language and apparently were apprehensive about
violating any of the cult's commandments. There were suspicions. Ugandan
president Yoweri Mseveni told the BBC that intelligence reports about the
dangerous nature of the group had been suppressed by some government officials.
On Thursday, police arrested an assistant district commissioner, the Rev. Amooti
Mutazindwa, for allegedly holding back a report suggesting the cult posed a
security threat. Now, there are calls for African governments
to monitor cults more closely. Says Gilbert Ogutu, a professor of
religious studies at the University of Nairobi: "When cult leaders lose support,
they become dangerous. "
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单选题-How did you pay,the workers? -As a rule,they were paid by ______. [A] the hour [B] an hour [C] hour [D] hours
单选题Which of the following is NOT mentioned as one reason why energy problems cannot be easily solved ?
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Much new knowledge is admittedly remote
from the immediate interests of the ordinary man in the street. He is not
intrigued or impressed by the fact that a noble gas like xenon can form
compounds—something that until recently most chemists swore was impossible.
While even this knowledge may have an impact on him when it is embodied in new
technology, until then, he can afford to ignore it. A good bit of new knowledge,
on the other hand, is directly related to his immediate concerns, his job, his
politics, his family life, even his sexual behavior. A poignant
is the dilemma that parents find themselves in today as a consequence of
successive radical changes in the image of the child in society and in our
theories of childrearing. At the turn of the century in the
United States, for example, the dominant theory reflected the prevailing
scientific belief in the importance of heredity in determining behavior. Mothers
who had never heard of Darwin or Spencer raised their babies in ways consistent
with the world views of these thinkers. Vulgarized and simplified, passed from
person to person, these world views were reflected in the conviction of millions
of ordinary people that "bad children are a result of bad stock", that "crime is
hereditary", etc. In the early decades of the century, these
attitudes fell back before the advance of environmentalism. The belief that
environment shapes personality, and that the early years are the most important,
created a new image of the child. The work of Watson and Pavlov began to creep
into the public ken. Mothers reflected the new behaviorism, refusing to feed
infants on demand, refusing to pick them up when they cried, weaning early to
avoid prolonged dependency. A study by Martha Wolfenstein has
compared the advice offered parents in seven successive editions of INFANT CARE,
a handbook issued by the United Stats Children's Bureau between 1914 and 1951.
She found distinct shifts in the preferred methods for dealing with weaning and
thumb-sucking. It is clear from this study that by the late thirties still
another image of the child had gained ascendancy. Freudian concepts swept in
like a wave and revolutionized childrearing practices. Suddenly, mothers began
to hear about "the rights of infants" and the need for "oral gratification".
Permissiveness became the order of the day.
单选题Questions 19—22
单选题A.Alanreadsonebookaweeknow.B.Alanreadsfourbooksaweeknow.C.Alanreadseightbooksaweeknow.D.Alanneverreadsnow.
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单选题Questions 1 to 5 are based on the following conversation.
单选题The majority of the country's top universities have introduced schemes to give preferential treatment to pupils from poorly performing comprehensives. They range from lower A-level offers to reserving places for them. Supporters of "handicapping" argue that it gives recognition to bright pupils who have been inadequately taught and promotes social mobility. Opponents, however, believe some schemes crudely discriminate against private and grammar school pupils because of political pressure. Out of the 39 institutions that are members of the Russell Group and 1994 Group of research universities, at least 30 have introduced schemes that give some form of extra recognition to whole categories of applicants from comprehensives or from deprived areas. Gillian Low, head of the Lady Eleanor Holles School in Hampton, west London, and president of the Girls' Schools association, said: "We are absolutely in favour of social mobility. The issue is how that is achieved, how talented people from disadvantaged backgrounds are identified. Our objection is to anything that is generic by type of school as it does not address the individual pupil, it potentially discriminates against them. " Low added: "It doesn't, for example, take account of the person at the low-performing school who is having private tuition--or the fact that many of our pupils are on full bursary support. It's too crude a tool. " Programmes include one at Manchester introduced for 2011 entry that gives priority consideration to applicants from underachieving schools and deprived areas. Durham is using a similar system. Bristol, Exeter, Nottingham and some departments at Edinburgh advise admissions tutors to consider lowering the standard offer for a course if a successful applicant is from an underperforming school. Research at Bristol released earlier this year justified this approach on the grounds that students who had attended poor schools outperformed those with the same grades who had been better educated. This autumn, a group of 12 universities led by Newcastle and including Birmingham, Essex, Leeds and York will pilot a scheme for about 300 promising candidates nominated by their comprehensives. They will be given coaching and in most cases will be entitled to offers up to two grades lower than applicants going to university through standard routes. Cambridge gives extra points to candidates from schools with poor average GCSE grades when short listing candidates, while Oxford gives priority to similar applicants when deciding who to interview. Neither university lowers its grade offers for places on this basis, however. Pressure on universities to increase their numbers of state school pupils was expected to ease with the election of the Conservative-led coalition Instead, however, the government, under pressure from the Liberal Democrats, has pursued a similar approach. This weekend, David Willetts, the universities minister, said: "These are the kinds of initiatives, transparent, based on robust evidence, looking at applicants' potential, which are a good way of promoting social mobility. " Steve Smith, vice-chancellor of Exeter and president of Universities UK, said: "Universities make strenuous efforts to seek out potential by looking at a number of factors when selecting students, but they cannot admit people who are not applying. "This is why schemes that provide varied offers and seek out potential, as well as supporting applicants in preparing for higher education, can be so important. " Only a handful of universities, including the London School of Economics, University College London, Warwick and Queen Mary, London, have held out against favoring whole categories of applicants although all four give extra individual recognition to candidates who have succeeded against the odds. Birmingham, Southampton and the medical school at King's College London, set aside places for students at comprehensives in their regions. The Access to Birmingham scheme, which this year will admit 193 students--4% of the intake--gives candidate lower offers on condition they complete courses to prepare them for higher education.
单选题Questions 19-22
单选题Questions 15~18
单选题
Questions
11-15 The central idea of cell phones is that you
should be connected to almost everyone and everything at all times. The trouble
is that cell phones assault your peace of mind no matter what you do. If you
turn them off, why have one? You just irritate anyone who might call. If you're
on and no one calls, you're irrelevant, unloved or both. If everyone calls,
you're a basket case. As with other triumphs of the mass market,
cell phones reached a point when people forget what it was like before they
existed. No one remembers life before cars, TVs, air conditioners, jets, credit
cards, microwave ovens and ATM cards. So, too, now with cell phones.
Anyone without one will soon be classified as an eccentric or member of
the (deep) underclass. Look at the numbers, In 1985 there were
340,213 cell-phone users. By year-end 2003 there were 159 million. I had once
assumed that age or hearing loss would immunize most of the over-60 population
against cell phones. Wrong. Among those 60 to 69, cell phone ownership (60
percent) is almost as high as among 18- to 24-year-olds (66 percent), though
lower than among 30- to 49-years- olds (76 percent), according to a recent
survey from the Pew Research Center. Even among those 80 and older, ownership is
32 percent. Of course, cell phones have productive uses. For
those constantly on the road, they're a bonus. The same is true for critical
workers needed at a moment's notice. Otherwise, benefits seem gloomy.
They make driving more dangerous, though how much so is unclear. Then,
there's sheer nuisance. Private conversations have gone public. We've all been
subjected to someone else's sales meeting, dinner reservation, family argument
and dating problem. In 2003 cell phone conversations totaled 830 billion
minutes, reckons CTIA. That's about 75 times greater than in 1991 and almost 50
hours for every man, woman and children in America. How valuable is all this
chitchat? The average conversation lasts two- and-a-half to three minutes.
Surely many could be postponed or forgotten. Cell phones and,
indeed, all wireless devices constitute another chapter in the
ongoing breakdown between work and everything else. They pretend to increase
your freedom while actually stealing it. All this is the wave of
the future or, more precisely, the present. According to another survey, two
thirds of Americans 16 to 29 would choose a ceil phone over a traditional land
line. Cell phones, an irresistible force, will soon pull ahead. But I vow to
resist just as I've resisted ATM cards, laptops and digital cameras. I
agree increasingly with the late poet Ogden Nash, who wrote: "Progress might
have been all right once, but it's gone on too long.
"
单选题 {{B}}Questions 27-30{{/B}}
单选题Questions 16 to 20 are based on the following talk.
