一、七选五或填空式阅读

Passage1

English has become the world’s number one language in the 20th century. In every country where is not the native language, especially in the Third World, people must strive to learn it to the best of their abilities, if they want to participate fully in the development of their countries.41)__________.

42) __________.Nonetheless, a world full of different language will disappear if the present trend in many countries to use English to replace the national or official languages in education, trade and even politics continues.43) __________ .

The Third World countries that are now using English as a medium of instruction are depriving 75 per cent of their future leaders of a proper education. According to many studies, only around 20 to 25 per cent of students in these countries can manage to learn the language of instruction as well as basic subjects at the same time. Many leaders of these Third World countries are obsessed with English and for them English is everything. They seem to believe that if the students speak English, they are already knowledgeable.44) __________ .

All the greatest countries of the world are great because they constantly use their own languages in all national development activities, including education. From a psychological point of view, those who are taught in their own language from the start will develop better self-confidence and self-reliance. From a linguistic point of view, the best brains can only be produced if students are educated in their own language from the start.45) __________.

There is nothing wrong, however, in learning a foreign language at advanced levels of education. But the best thing to do is to have a good education in one’s native language first, then go abroad to have a university in a foreign language.

A) If this situation continues, the native or official languages of these countries will certainly die within two or three generations. This phenomenon has been called linguistic genocide. A language dies if it is not fully used in most activities, particularly as a medium of instruction in schools.

B) Those who are taught in a foreign language form the start will tend to be imitators and lack self-confidence. They will tend to rely on foreign consultants.

C) Suppose you work in a big firm and find and find English very important for your job because you often deal with foreign businessmen. Now you are looking a place where you can improve your English, especially your spoken English.

D) But many people are concerned that English’s dominance will destroy native languages.

E) These leaders speak and write English much better than their national languages. If these leaders deliver speeches anywhere in the world they use English and they feel more at home with it and proud of their ability as well. The citizens of their countries do not understand their leader’s speeches because they are made in a foreign language.

F) Here are some advertisements about English language training from newspapers. You may find the information you need.

G) A close examination reveals a great number of languages have fallen casualty to English. For example, it has wiped out Hawaiian, Welsh, Scotch Gaelic, Irish, native American languages, and many others. Luckily, some of these languages are now being revived, such as Hawaiian and Welsh, and these languages will live again, hopefully, if dedicated people continue their work of reviving them.

Passage 2

In 1959 the average American family paid $ 989 for a year’s supply of food. In 1972 the family paid $1,311. That was a price increase of nearly one –third. Every family has had this sort of experience. Everyone agrees that the cost of feeding a family has risen sharply. But there is less agreement when reasons for the rise are being discussed. Who is really responsible?

Many blame the farmers who produce the vegetables, fruit, meat, eggs, and cheese that stores offer for sale. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the farmer’s share of the $1,311 spent by the family in 1972 was $521. This was 31 percent more than the farmer had received in 1959.

But farmers claim that this increase was very small compared to the increase in their cost of living. Farmers tend to blame others for the sharp rise in food prices. They particularly blame those who process the farm products after the products leave the farm. These include truck drivers, meat packers, manufacturers of packages and other food containers, and the owners of stores where food is sold. 41) __________.

Of the $1,311 family food bill in 1972, middlement received $ 790, which was 33 percent more than they had received in 1959. It appears that the middlemen’s profit has increased more than farmer’s. But some economists claim that the middleman’s actual profit was very law. According to economists at the First National City Bank, the profit for meat packers and food stores amounted to less than one per cent. During the same period all other manufacturers were making a profit of more than 5 per cent.42) __________ .

43) __________ .

Vegetables and chicken cost more when they have been cut into pieces by someone other than the one who buys it. A family should expect to pay more when several “TV dinners” are taken home from the store. These are fully cooked meals, consisting of meat, vegetables, and sometimes desert, all arranged on a metal dish. The dish is put into the over and heated while the housewife is doing something else. Such a convenience costs money. 44) __________.

Economists remind us many modern housewives have jobs outside the home. They earn money that helps to pay the family food bills. The housewife naturally has less time and energy for cooking after a day’s work. She wants to buy many kinds of food that can be put on her family’s table easily and quickly. 45) __________ .

It appears that the answer to the question for rising prices is not a simple one. Producers, consumers, and middlemen all share the responsibility for the sharp rise in food costs.

A) Thus, as economists point out:” Some of the basic reasons for widening food price spreads are easily traceable to the increasing use of convenience foods, which transfer much of the time and work of meal preparation from the kitchen to the food processor’s plant.”

B) They are among the “middlemen” who stand between the farmer and the people who buy and eat the food. Are middlemen the ones to blame for rising food prices?

C) “If the housewife wants all of these.” The economists say, “that is her privilege, but she must be prepared to pay for the services of the those who make her work easier.”

D) Who then is actually responsible for the size of the bill a housewife must pay before she carries the food home from the store? The economists at First National City Bank have an answer to give housewives, but many people will not like it. These economists blame the housewife herself for the jump in food prices. They say that food costs more now because women don’t want to spend much time in the kitchen. Women prefer to buy food which has already been prepared before it reaches the market.

E) However, some economists believe that controls can have negative effects over a long period of time. In cities with rent control, the city government sets the maximum rent that a landlord can charge for an apartment.

F) Economists do not agree on some of the predictions. They also do not agree on the value of different decisions. Some economists support a particular decision while others criticize it.

G) By comparison with other members of the economic system both farmers and middlemen have profited surprisingly little from the rise in food prices.

Passage3

Growing cooperation among branches of tourism has proved valuable to all concerned. Government bureaus, trade and travel association carriers and properties are all working together to bring about optimum conditions for travelers.

41) __________.They distribute materials to agencies, such as journals, brochures and advertising projects.42) __________ .

Tourist counselors give valuable seminars to acquaint agents with new programs and techniques in selling. 43) __________ .

Properties and agencies work closely together to make the most suitable contracts, considering both the comfort of the clients and their own profitable financial arrangement. 44) __________ .

45) __________.Carriers are dependent upon agencies to supply passengers, and agencies are dependent upon carriers to present them with marketable tours. All services must work together for greater efficiency, fair pricing and contented customers.

A) The same confidence exists between agencies and carriers including car-rental and sight-seeing services.

B) They offer familiarization and workshop tours so that in a short time agents can obtain first-hand knowledge of the tours.

C) Travel operators, specialists in the field of planning, sponsor extensive research programs. They have knowledge of all areas and all carrier services, and they are experts in organizing different types of tours and in preparing effective advertising campaigns.

D) As a result of teamwork, tourism is flouring in all countries.

E) Agencies rely upon the good services of hotels, and , conversely, hotels rely upon

agencies, to fulfill their contracts and to send them clients.

F) In this way agents learn to explain destinations and to suggest different modes and combinations of travel- Planes, ships, trains, motorcoaches, car-rentals, and even car purchases.

G) Consequently, the agencies started to pay more attention to the comfort of travel.

Passage 4

Fields across Europe are contaminated with dangerous levels of the antibiotics given to farm animals. The drugs, which are in manure sprayed onto fields as fertilizers, could be getting into our food and water, helping to create a new generation of antibiotic-resistant “superbugs “ .

The warning comes from a researcher in Switzerland who looked at levels of the drugs in farm slurry.41) __________ .

Some 20,000 tons antibiotics are used in the European Union and the US each year. More than half are given to farm-animals to prevent disease and promote growth. 42) __________.

Most researchers assumed that humans become infected with the resistant strains by eating contaminated meat. But far more of the drugs end up in manure than in meat products, says Stephen Mueller of the Swiss Federal Institute for Environmental Science and Technology in Dubendorf. 43) __________ .

With millions of tons animals manure spread onto fields of cops such as wheat and barley each year, this pathway seems an equally likely route for spreading resistance, he said. The drugs contaminate the crops, which are then eaten. 44) __________ .

Mueller is particularly concerned about a group of antibiotics called sulphonamides. 45) __________ .This concentration is high enough to trigger the development of resistance among bacteria. But vets are not treating the issue seriously.

There is growing concern at the extent to which drugs, including antibiotics, are polluting the environment. Many drugs given to humans are also excreted unchanged and broken down by conventional treatment.

A) They don’t easily degrade or dissolve in water. His analysis found that Swiss farm manure contains a high percentage of sulphonamides; each hectare of field could be contaminated with up to 1 kilogram of the drugs.

B) And manure contains especially high levels of bugs that are resistant to antibiotics, he says.

C) Animal antibiotics is still an area to which insufficient attention has been paid.

D) But recent research has found a direct link between the increased use of these farmyard drugs and the appearance of antibiotic-resistant bugs that infect people.

E) His findings are particularly shocking because Switzerland is one of the few countries to have banned antibiotics as growth promoters in animal feed.

F) They could also be leaching into tap water pumped from rocks beneath fertilized fields.

G) There is no doubt that the food and drink is always important to the health.

Passage 5

The main problem in discussing American popular culture is also one of its main characteristics: it won’t stay American. No matter what it is, whether it is films, food and fashion, music, casual sports or slang, it’s soon at home elsewhere in the world. There are several theories why American popular culture has had this appeal.

One theory is that is has been “advertised” and marketed through American films, popular music, and more recently, television. 41) __________ .They are, after all, in competition with those produced by other countries.

Another theory, probably a more common one, is that American popular culture is internationally associated with something called “ the spirit of America .” 42)_________ .

The final theory is less complex: American popular culture is popular because a lot of people in the world like it.

Regardless of why its spreads, American popular culture is usually quite rapidly adopted and then adapted in many other countries. 43)__________ . Black leather jackets worn by many heroes in American movies could be found, a generation later, on all those young men who wanted to make this manly-look their own.

Two areas where this continuing process is most clearly seen are clothing and music. Some people can still remember a time. When T-shirts, jogging clothes, tennis shoes, denim jackets, and blue jeans were not common daily wear everywhere .Only twenty years ago, it was possible to spot an American in Paris by his or her clothes. No longer so: those bright colors, checkered jackets and trousers, hats and socks which were once made fun in cartoons are back again in Paris as the latest fashion. 44) __________ .

The situation with American popular music is more complex because in the beginning, when it was still clearly American, it was often strongly resisted. Jazz was once thought to be a great danger to youth and their morals, and was actually outlawed in several countries. Today, while still showing its rather American roots, it has become so well established. Rock “n” roll and all its variations, country & western music, all have more or less similar histories. They were first resisted, often on America as well, as being “low-class,” and then as “a danger to our nation’s youth.” 45)__________ . And then the music became accepted and was extended and was extended and developed, and exported back to the U.S.

A) As a result, its American origins and roots are often quickly forgotten. “happy birthday to you,” for instance, is such an everyday song that its source, its American copyright, so to speak, is not remembered.

B) But this theory fails to explain why American films, music, and television, programs are so popular in themselves.

C) American in origin, informal clothing has become the world’s first truly universal style.

D) The BBC, for example, banned rock and roll until 1962.

E) American food has become popular around the world too.

F) This spirit is variously described as being young and free, optimistic and confident, informal and disrespectful.

G) It is hardly surprising that the public concern contributes a lot to the spread of their culture.

Passage 6

Albert Einstein, whose theories on space time and matter helped unravel the secrets of the atom and of the universe, was chosen as “Person of the Century by Time magazine on Sunday.

A man whose very name is synonymous with scientific genius, Einstein has come to represent more than any other person the flowering of 20th century scientific thought that set the stage for the age of technology.

“The world has changed far more in the past 100 years than in any other century in history. The reason is not political or economic, but technological-technologies that flowed directly from advances in basic science,” wrote theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking in a time essay explaining Einstein’s significance. 41) __________ .

Time chose as runner-up President Franklin Roosevelt to represent the triumph of freedom and democracy over fascism, and Mahatma Gandhi as an icon for a century when civil and human rights became crucial factors in global politics.

“What we saw was Franklin Roosevelt embodying the great theme of freedom’s fight against totalitarianism , Gandhi personifying the great theme of individual struggling for their rights, and Einstein being both a great genius and a great symbol of a scientific revolution that brought with it amazing technological advances that helped expand the growth of freedom,” said Time Magazine Editor Walter Isaacson.

Einstein was born in Ulm , Germany in 1879. 42) __________ .He could not stomach organized learning and loathed taking exams.

In 1905, however, he was to publish a theory which stands as one of the most intricate examples of human imagination in history. 43) __________ . Everything else----mass, weight, space, even time itself ----is a variable. And he offered the world his now –famous equation: energy equals mass times the speed of light squared ---E=mc2

44) __________ .

45) __________ . Einstein did not work on the project. Einstein died in Princeton, New Jersey in 1955.

A) “Indirectly, relativity paved the way for a new relativism in morality, art and politics,” Isaacson wrote in an essay explaining Time’s choices.” There was less faith in absolutes, not of time and space but also of truth and morality.” Einstein’s famous equation was also the seed that led to the development of atomic energy and weapons. In 1939, six years after he fled European fascism and settled at Princeton University, Einstein, an avowed pacifist, signed a letter to President Roosevelt urging the United States to develop an atomic bomb before Nazi Germany did.

B) How he thought of the relativity theory influenced the general public’s view about Albert Einstein.

C) “Clearly, no scientist better represents those advances than Albert Einstein.”

D) Roosevelt heeded the advice and formed the “Manhattan Project” that secretly developed the first atomic weapon.

E) In his early years, Einstein did not show the promise of what he was to become. He was slow to learn to learn to speak and did not do well in elementary school.