The American economic system is organized around a basically private-enterprise, market-oriented economy in which consumers largely determine what shall be produced by spending their money in the marketplace for those goods and services that they want most. Private businessmen, striving to make profits, produce these goods and services in competition with other businessmen; and the profit motive, operating under competitive pressures, largely determines how these goods and services are produced. Thus, in the American economic system it is the demand of individual consumers,coupled with the desire of businessmen to maximize profits and the desire of individuals to maximize their incomes, that together determine what shall be produced and how resources are used to produce it.
     An important factor in a market-oriented economy is the mechanism by which consumer demands can be expressed and responded to by producers. In the American economy, this mechanism is provided by a price system, a process in which prices rise and fall in response to relative demands of consumers and supplies offered by seller-producers. If the product is in short supply relative to the demand, the price will be bid up and some consumers will be eliminated from the market. If, on the other hand, producing more of a commodity results in reducing its cost, this will tend to increase the supply offered by seller-producers, which in turn will lower the price and permit more consumers to buy the product. Thus, price is the regulating mechanism in the America economic system.
     The important factor in a private-enterprise economy is that individual are allowed to own productive resources (private property), and they are permitted to hire labor, gain control over natural resources, and produce goods and services for sale at a profit. In the American economy, the concept of private property embraces not only the ownership of productive resources but also certain rights, including the right to determine the price of a product or to make a free contract with another private individual.


1.In Para. 1,“ the desire of individuals to maximize their incomes” means ___.
A.Americans never feel satisfied with their incomes.
B.Americans tend to overstate the amount of their incomes.
C.Americans want to have their incomes increased.
D.Americans want to increase the purchasing power of their incomes.

2.The first two sentences in the second paragraph clarity the idea to us that ___.
A.producers can satisfy the consumers by mechanized production.
B.consumers can express their demands through producers.
C.producers decide the prices of products.
D.supply and demand regulate prices.

3.The word “embraces” in Para. 3 probably parallels ___.
A.enfold
B.hug
C.comprehend
D.support

4.According to the passage, a private-enterprise economy is characterized by ___.
A.private property and rights concerned.
B.manpower and natural resources control.
C.ownership of productive resources
D.free contracts and prices.

5.The passage is mainly talking about ___.
A.how American goods are produced.
B.how American consumers buy their goods.
C.how American economic system works.
D.how American businessman make their profits.
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答案:DDCAC
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      In my opinion, young students are sensitive to fashions and new trends, thus they easily found it impossible to make ends meet and run into debt.When a student’s spending steps beyond the boundaries of daily necessities, it becomes a kind of waste. Furthermore, widespread extravagant spending on campus could have a bad influence on people’s values. But many students see it as a common practice and not a fault. Though everyone has the right to enjoy a comfortable life, campus is a place for study. So just think twice before you sign a bill.
Part ⅡReading Comprehension (Skimming and Scanning)(15 minutes)
Even as the economy improves, a jobless executive may face up to a year or more of unemployment. This is a lot of time, especially for hard-charging high-performers who are not used to having any free time. While some job seekers spend hundreds—even thousands—of hours discovering daytime television, others seem to thrive on activities that boost their professional careers or resolve family issues when they aren’t working.
Having an extended period of free time in the prime of one’s life can in fact be a unique opportunity to focus on volunteer service, professional education or personal growth.
Community Involvement
For Lisa Perez, the wakeup call was burned pork chops. An executive who previously hadn’t been particularly interested in home and health had become obsessed with homemaking during a stint of unemployment.来源:www.examda.com
She realized that cleaning and organizing her home wasn’t helping her job search. Nevertheless, “I made lists of 50 things to do every day,” says Ms. Perez, a political and public-relations consultant in Scottsdale, Ariz. “My house was spotless, just so I’d have something to do.”
One day, her boyfriend didn’t arrive on time for dinner because he had to work late, and her pork chops were ruined. She threw a fit. “I’d never been a person like that,” she says. “So I decided to stop feeling sorry for myself, and go out and do something productive.”
Ms. Perez, 35, resolved to become an active volunteer for the duration of her search. She gave her time to a health-care concern, a housing program and a political campaign.
The work bolstered her self-confidence. “Volunteering takes the focus off of you. One thing you have that’s still valuable is your time. And, of course, you learn that there are thousands of people with a life that’s much worse than yours,” she says.来源:www.examda.com
Volunteer assignments are also great ways to meet powerful and well-connected people. Over a six-month period, her volunteering evolved into working as a paid consultant and then as a full-time employee, a job she still holds today. In all, she was unemployed for eight months.
Before her job loss, she thought she didn’t have time to volunteer while working. “Now, even though I have a demanding job, I still volunteer, because of what I got out of it,” says Ms. Perez.
Continuing Education
Gene Bellavance, a 36-yearold information-technology project manager, took another route during his unemployment. When he was laid off from a steel company near Cleveland, he knew his immediate prospects were bleak. He expected his search to take a year. He faced a decision: take a job that would set back his career or hold out for an offer he really wanted.
Mr. Bellavance, single and virtually debt free, shifted his finances into survival mode. He cashed out his pension, sold his house, unloaded things he didn’t need at garage sales, and rented an apartment with a roommate. Then, he says, “I signed up for every benefit I could find.”
But he wasn’t just waiting out the year. He spent the rest of his search updating his skills, including becoming certified in new database and project-management software. “You have to invest in yourself,” Mr. Bellavance says. “I estimated what technology was going to be the most beneficial and chose applications that were going to be pervasive, that were right for my market, and that were going to ensure top pay.”
In addition to income from the occasional IT-consulting assignment, he relied on a combination of displaced-worker-retraining grants and unemployment benefits. “I went out and found the classes, submitted the paperwork, and dealt with the bureaucracy. You have to stay after them, keeping your benefits moving forward. It’s up to you to make it work with your overall transition plan,” he says.
His job search was one month shy of the full year he’d expected. He looked for work during his training and says he would have finished the certification programs even if he’d been hired before completing them.
“People should not feel guilty” about accepting government aid, he says. “I saw this in a lot of people. They felt they were some kind of loser for taking benefits. My advice is: Get all you can. You’ve been paying for these programs in your entire career, and you may as well start to benefit from them.”
Family Matters
In addition to pursuing training or volunteering, some displaced careerists use their time off work to attend to family matters. Many executives rediscover their children or find time to help their parents.
Stanford Rappaport held three jobs in San Francisco, including high-tech and teaching positions. When he was laid off from the high-tech job last year, he knew it might be a long slog before he could get another post like it in the Bay Area. “I was able to do the math,” says Mr. Rappaport, 46. “The number of people laid off: huge; and the number of available jobs: miniscule. At the time, I thought it might be two or three years before the tech industry recovered.”
Mr. Rappaport’s remaining job, a part-time faculty position with City College of San Francisco, didn’t pay enough to support him. After a couple of months of searching with no results, he decided to escape the Northern California jobs meltdown. “My plan,” he says, “was to get out of an expensive living situation, and either seek work in another section of the U.S. or overseas, for those two years.” Mr. Rappaport, who speaks five languages, had worked overseas before.
Before he found an assignment, his Arkansas-based mother was diagnosed with a serious chronic illness, and he was called into duty as a son. Mr. Rappaport was able to help his mother get her affairs in order not to interrupt his search by using a San Francisco mail drop and cellphone. “I continued to look for work in California while I was in Fayetteville, Ark., helping my mother through this crisis.”来源:考试大
He took his mother to medical appointments, made repairs on her house, bought her a better car, and straightened out her legal and financial affairs. “I even got to go through my father’s effects, which in the five years since he had died were simply piled in boxes in his office,” he says.
Mr. Rappaport’s stay in Arkansas lasted six months. “It’s amazing that at this stage I had the opportunity to spend a significant amount of time with my mother and improve her life and get a lot of things done for her. Most people never have that opportunity. I’m very thankful that I had the chance. It was absolutely worth it,” he says.
One of the unexpected benefits was the huge boost in confidence he gained from his role as caregiver. He’d been feeling depressed and defeated when he left California, but after returning, he felt renewed. He landed a job with a former employer after returning to San Francisco and remains a part-time faculty member.
Discovery and Exploration
Instead of spending time off lamenting your unemployed status, ask yourself: “Is there something I’ve always wanted to do but haven’t because of the demands of my job?”
Felice Fisk, a 29yearold in Seattle, recently left an account-manager position at a contract-furniture company. During seven months of unemployment, she took an interest in fine-art painting and completed 18 pieces before returning to work. “I found the art work, or some kind of creative outlet, to be really beneficial,” she says. She’s now an interior designer for an interior-design firm.来源:考试大
Michael Ross, 42, a former IT administrator in El Cerrito, Calif., recently spent his 10 months of unemployment playing guitar and exploring his lifelong interest in scriptwriting and the movie business. “After 18 years at my former employer and how hard I had worked, I knew I had to recover, to get restored,” he says. “I looked at this as an opportunity, rather than a penalty. This was very much about clearing space for me.”
At the executive level, even a very efficient and successful job search may be quite lengthy. It makes sense to spend that time in an enriching and productive manner. These job seekers pursued service, continuing education and shoring up family bonds. How you’ll look back on a period of unemployment depends on what you do with it.

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快速阅读试题
1. This passage mainly tells that being unemployed is not all bad.
2. Lisa Perez found a new interest in homemaking during the period of unemployment.
3. Lisa Perez was always optimistic during the period of her unemployment.
4. After she got a new job, Lisa Perez regretted that she had not done volunteering work earlier.
5. Unemployment means a lot of time, especially for those hard-charging executives who are not used to having anytime.
6. Being a volunteer is helpful because volunteer assignments can provide you with chances to meet people.
7. Mr. Bellavance cashed out his pension, sold his house and unloaded things he didn’t need at garage after losing his job in order to change his finances intomode.
8. When unemployed, some careerists take the opportunity tofamily matters in addition to pursuing training or volunteering.
9. The role as caregiver brought about a huge boost into Mr. Rappaport. After returning from California, he felt renewed.
10. Michael Ross resigned and spent his unemployment time playing guitar and exploring his lifelong interest in scriptwriting and the movie business for he looked at this as an, rather than a penalty.


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快速阅读答案
1. Y 2. N 3. N 4. NG 5. free 6. powerful and well-connected
7. survival 8. attend to 9. confidence 10. opportunity
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引用
The first way we can approach language is as a phenomenon of the individual person. It is concerned with describing and explaining language as a matter of human behavior. People speak and write; they also evidently read and understand what they hear. They are not born doing so; they have to acquire these skills. Not everybody seems to develop them to the same degree. People may suffer accidents or diseases, which impair their performance. Language is thus seen as part of human psychology, a particular sort of behavior, the behavior, which has as its principal, function that of communication.

The trouble with the term “behavior” is that it is often taken to refer only to more or less overt, and describable, physical movements and acts. Yet part of language behavior-that of understanding spoken or written language, for example-has little or no physically observable signs. It is true we can sometimes infer that understanding has taken place by the changes that take place in the other person’s behavior. When someone has been prohibited from doing something, we may infer that he has understood the prohibition by observing that thereafter he never behaves in that way. We cannot, of course, be absolutely sure that his subsequent behavior is a result of his understanding; it might be due to a loss of interest or inclination. So behavior must be taken to include unobservable activity, often only to be inferred from other observable behavior.

Once we admit that the study of language behavior involves describing and explaining the unobservable, the situation becomes much more complicated, because we have to postulate some set of processes, some internal mechanism, which operates when we speak and understand. We have to postulate something we can call a mind. The study of language from this point of view can then be seen as a study of the specific properties, processes and states of the mind whose outward manifestations are observable behavior; what we have to know in order to perform linguistically.This approach to language, as a phenomenon of the individual, is thus principally concerned with explaining how we acquire language, and its relation to general human cognitive systems, and with the psychological mechanisms underlying the comprehension and production of speech; much less with the problem of what language is for, that is, its function as communication, since this necessarily involves more than a single individual. 



引用
36.What is the best title for this passage?
A) Language as Means of Communication.
B) Language and Psychology.
C) Language and the Individual.
D) Language as a Social Phenomenon. 

37.According to the passage, which of the following statements is NOT true?
A) Language is often regarded as part of human psychology.
B) People develop language skills of different degrees as a result of different personal experiences.
C) Language is a special kind of psychological behavior that is born with an individual.
D) People learn to speak and write through imitation and training. 

38.What does the term “behavior” in the second paragraph especially refer to in this passage?
A) It refers to observable and physical movements and acts.
B) It refers to the part of language behavior that involves understanding or interpretation.
C) It refers to both the overt and the unobservable language behaviors in communicating.
D) It refers to acts of speaking and writing. 

39.What does “internal mechanism”(Line 3, Para. 3) mean?
A) Secret machine. B) Mental processes.C) Overt system. D) Mechanic operation. 

40.What can you infer from the passage?
A) Its individualistic approach to language is meant to study the psychological processes of language acquisition.
B) The individualistic approach to language is mainly concerned with how language functions in society.
C) The study of language is sure to involve more than a single individual.
D) Psychological approach to language is concerned with the comprehension and production of speech.

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引用
A strange thing about humans is their capacity for blind rage. Rage is presumably an emotion resulting from survival instinct, but the surprising thing about it is that we do not deploy it against other animals. If we encounter a dangerous wild animal - a poisonous snake or a wild cat - we do not fly into a temper. If we are unarmed, we show fear and attempt to back away; if we are suitably armed, we attack, but in a rational manner not in a rage. We reserve rage for our own species. It is hard to see any survival value in attacking one’s own, but if we take account of the long competition, which must have existed between our own subspecies and others like Neanderthal man - indeed others still more remote from us than Neanderthal man - human rage becomes more comprehensible. 

In our everyday language and behavior there are many reminders of those early struggles. We are always using the words “us and them”. “Our” side is perpetually trying to do down the “other” side. In games we artificially create other subspecies we can attack. The opposition of “us” and “them” is the touchstone of the two-party system of “democratic” politics. Although there are no very serious consequences to many of these modern psychological representations of the “us and them” emotion, it is as well to remember that the original aim was not to beat the other subspecies in a game but to exterminate it. 

The readiness with which humans allow themselves to be regimented has permitted large armies to be formed, which, taken together with the “us and them” blind rage, has led to destructive clashes within our subspecies itself. The First World War is an example in which Europe divided itself into two imaginary subspecies. And there is a similar extermination battle now in Northern Ireland. The idea that there is a religious basis for this clash is illusory, for not even the Pope has been able to control it. The clash is much more primitive than the Christian religion, much older in its emotional origin. The conflict in Ireland is unlikely to stop until a greater primitive fear is imposed from outside the community, or until the combatants become exhausted.



引用
31.A suitable title for this passage would be____. 
A) Why Human Armies Are Formed
B) Man’s Anger Against Rage
C) The Human Capacity for Rage
D) Early Struggles of Angry Man 

32.According to the author, the surprising aspect of human anger is____. 
A) its lengthy and complex development
B) a conflict such as is now going on in Northern Ireland
C) that we do not fly into a temper more often
D) that we reserve anger for mankind 

33.The passage suggests that____. 
A) historically, we have created an “us” versus “them” society
B) humans have had a natural disinclination toward formal grouping
C) the First World War is an example of how man has always avoided domination
D) the emotional origin of the war in Ireland is lost in time 

34.From the passage we can infer that ____. 
A) the artificial creation of a subspecies unlike us is something that never happens
B) games are psychologically unhealthy
C) any artificially created subspecies would be our enemy
D) the real or imagined existence of an opposing subspecies is inherent in man’s activities 

35.The author believes that a religious explanation for the war in Northern Ireland is____. 
A) founded in historical fact
B) deceptive
C) apparent
D) probably accurate

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No one should be forced to wear a uniform under any circumstance. Uniforms are demanding to the human spirit and totally unnecessary in a democratic society. Uniforms tell the world that the person who wears one has no value as an individual but only lives to function as a part of a whole. The individual in a uniform loses all self-worth. 

There are those who say that wearing a uniform gives a person a sense of identification with a larger, more important concept. What could be more important than the individual himself? If an organization is so weak that it must rely on cloth and buttons to inspire its members, that organization has no right to continue its existence. Others say that the practice of making persons wear uniforms, say in a school, eliminates all envy and competition in the matter of dress, such that a poor person who cannot afford good-quality clothing is not to be belittled by a wealthy person who wears expensive quality clothing. Those persons conveniently ignore such critical concepts as freedom of choice, motivation, and individuality. If all persons were to wear the same clothing, why would anyone strive to be better? It is only a short step from forcing everyone to drive the same car, have the same type of foods. When this happens, all incentive to improve one’s life is removed. Why would parents bother to work hard so that their children could have a better life than they had when they know that their children are going to be forced to have exactly the same life that they had? 

Uniforms also hurt the economy. Right now, billions of dollars are spent on the fashion industry yearly. Thousands of persons are employed in designing, creating and marketing different types of clothing. If everyone were forced to wear uniforms, artistic personnel would be unnecessary. Sales persons would be superfluous as well; why bother to sell the only items that are available? The wearing of uniforms would destroy the fashion industry, which in turn would have a ripple effect on such industries as advertising and promotion. Without advertising, newspapers, magazines, and television would not be able to remain in business. One entire information and entertainment industry would collapse.



引用
26.The author’s primary purpose in writing this passage was to ____. 
A)plead for the abolishment of uniforms
B)show that uniforms are not possible in a democratic society
C)advocate stronger governmental controls on the wearing of uniforms
D)convince the reader that uniforms have more disadvantages than advantages 

27.Why does the author discuss forcing everyone to buy the same car or eat the same food? 
A) To show that freedom of choice is absolute.
B) To show that the government has interfered too much in the lives of individual.
C) To suggest what would happen if uniforms became compulsory.
D) To predict the way the society will be in the next few generations. 

28.Which of the following statements is NOT true according to the author? 
A) The person who wears a uniform has no self-worth.
B) Wearing a uniform gives a person a sense of identification with a larger concept.
C) Uniforms will hurt one entire information and entertainment industry.
D) Envy and competition are incentive to improve one’s life. 

29.The word “superfluous” (Para. 3) most probably means ____. 
A) indispensable B) availableC) surplus D) supplementary 

30.The next paragraph in this passage might discuss____.
A) the positive effects of wearing uniforms
B) more negative effects of wearing uniforms
C) alternative to wearing uniforms
D) the legal rights of those not wishing to wear uniforms

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