单选题[此试题无题干]
单选题I have just come home after viewing some astonishing works of art that were recently discovered in Church Hole cave in Nottinghamshire. They are not drawings, as one would expect, but etchings, and they depict a huge range of wild animals. The artists who created them lived around 13,000 years ago, and the images are remarkable on a variety of counts. First of all, their sheer number is staggering, there are ninety all told. Moreover, fifty-eight of them are on the ceiling. This is extremely rare in cave art, according to a leading expert, Dr Wilbur Samson of Central Midlands University. Wall pictures are the norm, he says, "But more importantly, the Church Hole etchings are an incredible artistic achievement. They can hold their own in comparison with the best found in continental Europe." I am not a student of the subject, so I have to take his word for it. However, you do not have to be an expert to appreciate their beauty.
In fact, it is the wider significance of the etchings that is likely to attract most attention in academic circles, since they radically alter our view of life in Britain during this epoch. It had previously been thought that ice-age hunters in this country were isolated from people in more central areas of Europe, but the Church Hole images prove that ancient Britons were part of a culture that had spread right across the continent. And they were at least as sophisticated culturally as their counterparts on the mainland.
An initial survey of the site last year failed to reveal the presence of the etchings. The reason lies in the expectations of the researchers. They had been looking for the usual type of cave drawing or painting, which shows up best under direct light. Consequently, they used powerful torches, shining them straight onto the rock face. However, the Church Hole images are modifications of the rock itself, and show up best when seen from a certain angle in the natural light of early morning. Having been fortunate to see them at this hour, I can only say that I was deeply—and unexpectedly—moved. While most cave art often seems to have been created in a shadowy past very remote from us, these somehow convey the impression that they were made yesterday.
Dr Samson feels that the lighting factor provides important information about the likely function of these works of art. "I think the artists knew very well that the etchings would hardly be visible except early in the morning. We can therefore deduce that the chamber was used for rituals involving animal worship, and that they were conducted just after dawn as a preliminary to the day"s hunting."
To which I can only add that I felt deeply privileged to have been able to view Church Hole. It is a site of tremendous importance culturally and is part of the heritage, not only of this country, but the world as a whole.
单选题Questions 11-14
单选题Graham Mansfield is head of downstream operations at the UK oil company Apos Oil. The downstream end of the business, which includes the refining of petroleum products and their subsequent sale to retail customers, operates within a relatively short-term timescale. In contrast, the upstream end of the business, which is concerned with the exploration and extraction of oil, takes a long view of technology and the environment that may stretch over several decades.
Mansfield says of his side of the business. "At the refining and retail end we are constantly struggling to make a profit. Margins are tight and competition is fierce. Having said that, aspects of this business do demand a range of management expertise. Knowing what rivals are charging for fuel at petrol stations, which oil products investment funds are buying and how sales respond to the weather are all a vital part of the job. Of course we don"t work on such a long timescale as the extraction side of operations, so there"s a lot less forward planning."
But there may be tougher times ahead. "Ten years ago, Apos" target return on capital for the refining and retail end of the business was about 15%, and it was difficult to reach that figure then," says Mansfield. "Today, we"re only seeing larger returns because we invested in some oil refineries at a low point in the market and we"ve been enjoying the margins from that increased production." However, because the refinery business generally has become so profitable, it is set to attract new investment, and the global capacity for refining oil is expected to rise enormously. The result, according to analysts, is that the refining margins currently enjoyed by oil companies could become a thing of the past.
One strategy that cannot save the industry during an economic downswing is getting further into general retailing. Mansfield says, "Ten years ago, the downstream industry thought it could save itself by selling more food at its petrol stations. It was generally profitable, depending on which locations you looked at. But selling fuel was really the area we knew something about. Differentiating our existing products, and constantly changing what was on offer—that was the key."
However, the possibility of global overproduction of oil has made Apos think carefully about further expansion plans. "National oil companies are on the move," says Mansfield. "They"re currently announcing additional capacity. Our economics are very different from those of the national oil companies, so we won"t grow as aggressively as they do. We"ve identified a country where we"d like to have oil refining capacity, though, so we"ll work hard on establishing that. The USA is also building refineries, which we"ve been part of, and we"ll be doubling our capacity at one of our existing refineries there. We can do that without a huge financial outlay."
单选题Questions 11-15 I am afraid to sleep. I have been afraid to sleep for the last few weeks. I am so tired that, finally, I do sleep, but only for a few minutes. It is not a bad dream that wakes me; it is the reality I took with me into sleep. I try to think of something else. Immediately the woman in the marketplace comes into my mind. I was on my way to dinner last night when I saw her. She was selling skirts. She moved with the same ease and loveliness I often saw in the women of Laos. Her long black hair was as shiny as the black silk of the skirts she was selling. In her hair, she wore three silk ribbons, blue, green, and white. They reminded me of my childhood and how my girlfriends and I used to spend hours braiding ribbons into our hair. I don't know the word for "ribbons", so I put my hand to my own hair and , with three fingers against my head , I looked at her ribbons and said "Beautiful. " She lowered her eyes and said nothing. I wasn't sure if she understood me (I don't speak Laotian very well). I looked back down at the skirts. They had designs on them: squares and triangles and circles of pink and green silk. They were very pretty. I decided to buy one of those skirts, and I began to bargain with her over the price. It is the custom to bargain in Asia. In Laos bargaining is done in soft voices and easy moves with the sort of quiet peacefulness. She smiled, more with her eyes than with her lips. She was pleased by the few words I was able to say in her language, although they were mostly numbers, and she saw that I understood something about the soft playfulness of bargaining. We shook our heads in disagreement over the price; then, immediately, we made another offer and then another shake of the head. She was so pleased that unexpectedly, she accepted the last offer I made. But it was too soon. The price was too low. She was being too generous and wouldn't make enough money. I moved quickly and picked up two more skirts and paid for all three at the price set; that way I was able to pay her three times as much before she had a chance to lower the price for the larger purchase. She smiled openly then, and, for the first time in months, my spirit lifted. I almost felt happy. The feeling stayed with me while she wrapped the skirts in a newspaper and handed them to me. When I left, though, the feeling left, too. It was as though it stayed behind in marketplace. I left tears in my throat. I wanted to cry. I didn't, of course. I have learned to defend myself against what is hard; without knowing it, I have also learned to defend myself against what is soft and what should be easy. I get up, light a candle and want to look at the skirts. They are still in the newspaper that the woman wrapped them in. I remove the paper, and raise the skirts up to look at them again before I pack them. Something falls to the floor. I reach down and feel something cool in my hand. I move close to the candlelight to see what I have. There are five long silk ribbons in my hand, all different colors. The woman in the marketplace! She has given these ribbons to me! There is no defense against a generous spirit, and this time I cry, and very hard, as if I could make up for all the months that I didn't cry.
单选题
Is language, like food, a basic human
need without which a child at a critical period of life can be starved and
damaged? Judging from the drastic experiment of Frederick Ⅱ in the thirteenth
century, it may be. Hoping to discover what language a child would speak if he
heard no mother tongue, he told the nurses to keep silent. All
the infants died before the first year. But clearly there was more than lack of
language here. What was missing was good mothering. Without good mothering, in
the first year of life especially, the capacity to survive is seriously
affected. Today no such severe lack exists as that ordered by
Frederick. Nevertheless, some children are still backward in speaking. Most
often the reason for this is that the mother is insensitive to the signals of
the infant, whose brain is programmed to learn language rapidly. If these
sensitive periods are neglected, the ideal time for acquiring skills passes and
they might never be learned so easily again. A bird learns to sing and to fly
rapidly at the right time, but the process is slow and hard once the critical
stage has passed. Experts suggest that speech stages are reached
in a fixed sequence and at a constant age, but there are cases where speech has
started late in a child who eventually turns out to be of high IQ. At twelve
weeks a baby smiles and makes vowel-like sounds; at twelve months he can speak
simple words and understand simple commands; at eighteen months he has a
vocabulary of three to fifty words. At three he knows about 1,000 words which he
can put into sentences, and at four his language differs from that of his
parents in style rather than grammar. Recent evidence suggests
that an infant is born with the capacity to speak. What is special about man's
brain, compared with that of the monkey, is the complex system which enables a
child to connect the sight and feel of, say, a toy-bear with the sound pattern
"toy-bear". And even more incredible is the young brain's ability to pick out an
order in language from the mixture of sound around him, to analyze, to combine
and recombine the parts of a language in new ways. But speech
has to be induced, and this depends on interaction between the mother and the
child, where the mother recognizes the signals in the child's babbling, grasping
and smiling, and responds to them. Insensitivity of the mother to these signals
dulls the interaction because the child gets discouraged and sends out only the
obvious signals. Sensitivity to the child's non-verbal signals is essential to
the growth and development of language.
单选题
单选题Questions 1 to 5 are based on the following conversation.
单选题
单选题Questions 1～5
It was a day that Michael Eisner would undoubtedly like to forget. Sitting in a Los Angeles witness box for four hours last week, the usually unflappable chairman of the Walt Disney Co. struggled to maintain his composure. Eisner"s protēgē turned nemesis. Jeffrey Katzenberg, his former employee, was seeking $ 500 million in his breach-of-contract suit against Disney, and Eisner was trying to defend his, and his company"s integrity. At one point Eisner became flustered when Katzenberg"s attorney, Bertram Fields, asked if he recalled telling his biographer, Tony Schwartz, "I think I hate the little midget." Later Eisner recalled that the same day, he had received a fax from Katzenberg meant for Fields, thanking the lawyer for "managing" a magazine story that praised Katzenberg at Eisner"s expense: "I said to Schwartz, "Screw that. If he is going to play this disingenuous game, I simply was not going to pay him his money.""
Last week"s revelations were the latest twist in a dispute that has entertained Hollywood and tarnished Disney"s corporate image. The dash began five years ago, when Katzenberg quit Disney after a 10-year reign as studio chief, during which he oversaw production of such animated blockbusters as
The Lion King
. Disney"s attorneys said that Katzenberg forfeited his bonus—2 percent of profits in perpetuity from all Disney movies, TV shows and stage productions from 1984 to 1994, as well as their sequels and tie-ins—when he left. The company ultimately paid Katzenberg a partial settlement of nearly $ 117 million, sources say. But talks broke down over how much Disney owed, and the dispute landed in court.
Industry insiders never expected that Disney would push it this far. The last Hollywood accounting dispute that aired in public was Art Buchwalds"s lawsuit against Paramount for profits he claimed to be owed from the 1988 Eddie Murphy hit Coming to America. Paramount chose to fight Buchwald in court—only to wind up paying him $1 million after embarrassing revelations about its business practices. After that, studios made a practice of quietly settling such claims. But Disney under Eisner would rather fight than settle. And he and Katzenberg are both proud, combative types whose business disagreement deepened into personal animus.
So far, Disney"s image—as well as Eisner"s—has taken a beating. In his testimony last week Eisner repeatedly responded to questions by saying "I don"t recall" or "I don"t know". Katzenberg, by contrast, offered a stack of notes and memos that appeared to bolster his claim. (The Disney executive who negotiated Katzenberg"s deal, Frank Wells, died in a helicopter crash five years ago. )
The trial has also offered a devastating glimpse into the Magic Kingdom"s business dealings. Internal documents detail sensitive Disney financial information. One Hollywood lawyer calls a memo sent to Katzenberg from a former Disney top accountant "a road map to riches" for writers, directors and producers eager to press cases against Disney. The company declined requests to comment on the case. The next phase of the trial could be even more embarrassing. As Katzenberg"s profit participation is calculated, Eisner will have to argue that his animated treasures are far less valuable than Katzenberg claims. No matter how the judge rules, Disney will look like a loser.
单选题Any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis: you can never prove in. No matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory. On the other hand, you can disprove a theory by finding even a single observation that disagrees with the predictions of the theory. As philosopher of science Karl Popper has emphasized, a good theory is characterized by the fact that it makes a number of predictions that could in principle be disproved or falsified by observation. Each time new experiments are observed to agree with the predictions the theory survives, and our confidence in it is increased; but if ever a new observation is found to disagree, we have to abandon or modify the theory. At least that is what is supposed to happen, but you can always question the competence of the person who carried out the observation. In practice, what often happens is that a new theory is devised that is really an extension of the previous theory. For example, very accurate observations of the planet Mercury revealed a small difference between its motion and the predictions of Newton's theory of gravity. Einstein's general theory of relativity predicted a slightly different motion from Newton's theory. The fact that Einstein's predictions matched what was seen, while Newton's did not, was one of the crucial confirmations of the new theory. However, we still use Newton's theory for all practical purposes because the difference between its predictions and those of general relativity is very small in the situations that we normally deal with. (Newton's theory also has the great advantage that it is much simpler to work with than Einstein's!)
单选题Questions 11～15
"Museum" is a slippery word. It first meant in Greek anything consecrated to the Muses: a hill, a shrine, a garden, a festival or even a textbook. Both Plato"s Academy and Aristotle"s Lyceum had a mouseion, a muses" shrine. Although the Greeks already collected detached works of art, many temples—notably that of Hera at Olympia (before which the Olympic flame is still lit)—had collections of objects, some of which were works of art by well-known masters, while paintings and sculptures in the Alexandrian Museum were incidental to its main purpose.
The Romans also collected and exhibited art from disbanded temples, as well as mineral specimens, exotic plants, animals; and they plundered sculptures and paintings (mostly Greek) for exhibition. Meanwhile, the Greek word had slipped into Latin by transliteration (though not to signify picture galleries, which were called pinacothecae) and museum still more or less meant "Muses" shrine".
The inspirational collections of precious and semi-precious objects were kept in larger churches and monasteries—which focused on the gold-enshrined, bejeweled relics of saints and martyrs. Princes, and later merchants, had similar collections, which became the deposits of natural curiosities: large lumps of amber or coral, irregular pearls, unicorn horns, ostrich eggs, fossil bones and so on. They also included coins and gems—often antique engraved ones—as well as, increasingly, paintings and sculptures. As they multiplied and expanded, to supplement them, the skill of the fakers grew increasingly refined.
At the same time, visitors could admire the very grandest paintings and sculptures in the churches, palaces and castles; they were not "collected" either, but "site-specific", and were considered an integral part both of the fabric of the buildings and of the way of life which went on inside them—and most of the buildings were public ones. However, during the revival of antiquity in the fifteenth century, fragments of antique sculpture were given higher status than the work of any contemporary, so that displays of antiquities would inspire artists to imitation, or even better, to emulation; and so could be considered Muses" shrines in the former sense. The Medici garden near San Marco in Florence, the Belvedere and the Capitol in Rome were the most famous of such early "inspirational" collections. Soon they multiplied, and, gradually, exemplary "modern" works were also added to such galleries.
In the seventeenth century, scientific and prestige collecting became so widespread that three or four collectors independently published directories to museums all over the known world. But it was the age of revolutions and industry which produced the next sharp shift in the way the institution was perceived: the fury against royal and church monuments prompted antiquarians to shelter them in asylum-galleries, of which the Musée des Monuments Francais was the most famous. Then, in the first half of the nineteenth century, museum funding took off, allied to the rise of new wealth. London acquired the National Gallery and the British Museum, the Louvre was organized, the Museum-Insel was begun in Berlin, and the Munich galleries were built. In Vienna, the huge Kunsthistorisches and Naturhistorisches Museum took over much of the imperial treasure. Meanwhile, the decline of craftsmanship (and of public taste with it) inspired the creation of "improving" collections. The Victoria and Albert Museum in London was the most famous, as well as perhaps the largest of them.
单选题
Declan Mayes, President of the Music
Buyers Association, is furious at a recent announcement by the recording
industry regarding people downloading MP3 music files from the Internet as
actual criminals. A few parallels may be instructive. If someone
copies an audio music cassette for their own private use, they are, strictly
speaking, breaking the law. But recording companies have usually turned a blind
eye to this practice because prosecuting the few people involved would be
difficult, and the financial loss to the company itself is not considered
significant. Now the Music Recording Association has announced that it regards
individuals downloading music from the Internet as pirates, claiming that they
damage the industry in just the same way. "The industry is completely
overreaching; it'll be a laughing stock," says Mayes. "They're going to arrest
some teenager downloading files in his bedroom and sue him for thousands of
dollars! This isn't going to frighten anyone into buying CDs".
Mayes may have a point. There is a general consensus that CD pirates
should be subjected to the full wrath of the law, but few would see an
individual downloading music for his or her own pleasure in the same light.
However, downloading music files illegally is not as innocuous as making private
copies of audio cassettes. The scratchy, distorted cassette copy is a poor
version of the original recording, whereas an MP3 file is of high quality and
can be stored on a CD, for example. It is this that makes the practice a
powerful temptation for music fans, given the high cost of CDs.
What does Mayes think about claims that music companies could be forced
out of business by people downloading music illegally? That's nonsense. Music
companies are always whining about high costs, but that doesn't prevent them
from recording hundreds of CDs by completely unknown artists, many of whom are
"packaged" by marketing departments to appeal to young consumers. The companies
are simply hoping that one of these new bands or singers will be a hit, and
although it can be expensive to promote new artists, the cost of manufacturing
the CDs is actually very low. This last point would appear to be
the focus of resentment against music companies, a CD is far cheaper to produce
than its price in the shops would indicate, and profit margins for the music
companies are huge. An adult with a reasonable income may not object to paying
￡15 for a CD of classical music, but a teenager buying a CD by the latest pop
sensation may find that price rather steep — especially since the latest pop
sensation is almost certain to be forgotten within a few months. And while the
recording industry can't be held responsible for the evanescent nature of fame,
given the teenage appetite for anything novel, it could lower the prices it
charges — especially since technology is making CDs even cheaper to
produce. This is what Mayes hopes will happen. If the music
industry stops exploiting the music-buying public, it can survive. Everyone
would rather buy a CD, with an attractive jacket and booklet, than mess around
downloading files, but the price has to be reasonable. The problem isn't going
to vanish if the industry carries on trying to make a quick profit. Technology
has caught up with the music companies, and trying to fight it by taking people
to court will only earn money for the lawyers.
单选题
单选题Questions 6 to 10 are based on the following news.
单选题
单选题The Chinese written language is of conservation type that assigns a single distinctive symbol, or character, to each word of the vocabulary. Knowledge of 3000 to 4000 characters is needed to read newspapers, and a large dictionary contains more than 40,000 characters (arranged according to sound or form). Like other scripts of ancient origin, Chinese is derived from picture writing. It grew into a word-by-word representation of language when it was discovered that words too abstract to be readily pictured could be indicated by their sound rather than their sense. Unlike other scripts, however, Chinese still works pictographically as well as phonetically. Moreover, its sound indications have not been adapted to changes of pronunciation but have remained the key of pronunciation of 3000 years ago. The building blocks of the system are several hundred pictographs for such basic words as man, horse, and axe. In addition, expanded, or compound, pictographs exist. For example, a symbol of this type representing man carrying grain means "harvest," and thus "year"(nian).
Phonetic loans are pictographs of concrete words borrowed to indicate abstract words of the same or similar sound. The principle here is that of the rebus, or visual pun. Thus, the pictograph for dustpan (ji) was borrowed for this, his, her, its (qi or ji). Through the Zhou period (11th century to 3rd century BC) many characters had such a dual use. If at that time the scribes had agreed that only the "dustpan" pictograph would stand for any syllable pronounced ji, they would have discovered the principle of the phonetic syllabary, precursor of the alphabet. Because of the great number of homonyms in Chinese, however, scribes instead retreated to picture writing. The picture of the dustpan came to be used exclusively for his, her, its. In the rarer instances when scribes actually meant to refer to a dustpan, however, they avoided ambiguity by employing a compound symbol in which "dustpan" had added to it the pictograph for "bamboo", representing the material from which dustpans were made. This process for reducing the ambiguity of phonetic loans became in time a process by which any pictograph, borrowed for its sound, could be joined to any other chosen to indicate the meaning, forming a phonetic compound. Thus, "dustpan," with the addition of "earth" instead of "bamboo," indicated ji, " base, foundation. " Today simple and compound pictographs continue to be used for some of the most basic vocabulary — home, mother, child, rice, fare. Perhaps 95 percent of the words in the dictionary are written with phonetic compounds, however.
To express modem concepts, Chinese generally invents equivalents from its native stock of meaningful syllables or renders such terms in phonetic spelling. Thus, chemistry is expressed in Chinese as "study of transformations. "
Shihuangdi (Shih-huang-ti), first emperor of a unified China, suppressed many regional scripts and enforced a simplified, standardized writing called the Small Seal. In the Han Dynasty (206BC-AD220) this developed into the Clerical, Running, Draft, and Standard scripts. Printed Chinese is modeled on the Standard Script, Cursive or rapid writing (the Running and Draft scripts) introduced many abbreviated characters used in artistic calligraphy and in commercial and private correspondence, but it was long banned from official documents. The printing of abbreviated characters is still forbidden in Taiwan but has become the normal practice in the People"s Republic of China.
单选题--Is your new car going OK?--Oh yes, perfectly. It's the first Ford we ______ and I must say I'm very satisfied with it. [A] had had [B] have had [C] have [D] had
单选题{{B}}Statements{{/B}} Directions: In this
part of the test, you will hear several short statements. These statements will
be spoken ONLY ONCE, and you will not find them written on the
paper; so you must listen carefully. When you hear a statement, read the answer
choices and decide which one is closest in meaning to the statement you have
heard. Then write the letter of the answer you have chosen in the
corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET.
单选题It is all very well to blame traffic jams, the cost of petrol and the quick pace of modem life, but manners on the roads are becoming horrible. Everybody knows that the nicest men become monsters behind the wheel. It is ail very well, again, to have a tiger in the tank, but to have one in the driver"s seat is another matter altogether. You might tolerate the odd road-hog, the rude and inconsiderate driver, but nowadays the well-mannered motorist is the exception to the rule. Perhaps the situation calls for a "Be Kind to Other Drivers" campaign, otherwise it may get completely out of hand.
Road politeness is not only good manners, but good sense too, It takes the most coolheaded and good-tempered of drivers to resist the temptation to revenge when subjected to uncivilized behavior. On the other hand, a little politeness goes a long way towards relieving the tensions of motoring. A friendly nod or a wave of acknowledgement in response to an act of politeness helps to create an atmosphere of goodwill and tolerance so necessary in modem traffic conditions. But such acknowledgements of politeness are ail too rare today. Many drivers nowadays don"t even seem able to recognize politeness when they see it.
However, misplaced politeness can also be dangerous. Typical examples are the driver who brakes violently to allow a car to emerge from a side street at some hazard to following traffic, when a few seconds later the road would be clear anyway; or the man who waves a child across a zebra crossing into the path of oncoming vehicles that may be unable to stop in time. The same goes for encouraging old ladies to cross the road wherever and whenever they care to. It always amazes me that the highways are not covered with the dead bodies of these grannies.
A veteran driver, whose manners are faultless, told me it would help if motorists learnt to filter correctly into traffic streams one at a time without causing the total blockages that give rise to bad temper. Unfortunately, modem motorists can"t even learn to drive, let alone master the subtler aspects of roadsmanship. Years ago the experts warned us that the car-ownership explosion would demand a lot more give-and-take from all road users. It is high time for all of us to take this message to heart.