试题库在线考试题库-历年真题模拟试题及答案-全国英语等级考试第五级（PETS-5）在线试题测试中心-希赛网

题库

首页 > 题库 > 全国英语等级考试第五级（PETS-5）

查找

You have read an article in a magazine which states, “The Internet has now become an important learning tool for children, exposing them to a whole new world, which can contribute greatly to their education and development.”Write an article for the same magazine to clarify your own points of view towards this issue. You should use your own ideas, knowledge or experience to generate support for your argument and include an example.You should write no less than 250 words. Write your article on ANSWER SHEET 2.

查看试题

Directions: In the following article, some paragraphs have been removed. For Questions 66 to 70, choose the most suitable paragraph from the list A-F to fit into each of the numbered gaps. There is one paragraph which does not fit in any of the gaps. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1.The Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station made headlines in April when the doctor for that remote science facility was taken seriously ill in the middle of the dark, frigid Antarctic winter. Thankfully, Canadian pilots successfully evacuated the stricken physician—but he was not all that was ailing at the bottom of the world. The station itself has been deteriorating for years, prompting the National Science Foundation to begin this past year a $153 million modernization, which should be completed by early 2006.66. But construction at this remote site is no small task. All materials have to be carried in by air from McMurdo Station on the coast using special ski-equipped transport planes. And workers have to contend with temperatures that average around 32 degrees Celsius over the summer months.67. The South Pole also provides astrophysicists with a remarkable laboratory to study high-energy neutrinos: AMANDA (Antarctic Muon and Neutrino Detector Array) uses deeply buried sensors at the South Pole to register the rare interactions between these particles and the ice itself.Such rationale for a base at the South Pole do not, however, hold up very well under scrutiny. AMANDA could, for example, be installed at any Antarctic site where the glacial ice is thick and free of dust.68. Indeed, these problems make the South Pole appropriate for only a limited number of astronomical observations, primarily those in the sub-millimeter to millimeter regime. Shorter wavelengths (infrared and optical) can be better studied in places like Mauna Kea in Hawaii, which lacks a troublesome inversion layer. And longer wavelengths (centimeter and longer-wave radio frequencies) are so little bothered by atmospheric absorption that siting the receiving antennas at the ends of the earth is not necessary.69. So some astronomers are quite keen to set up their instruments in Antarctica to take advantage of the thin, cold air. Still, the South Pole is probably not the best place to conduct these operations from a purely scientific perspective, because higher elevations on the Antarctic Plateau offer even thinner and colder air.70. Peter Timbie, a physicist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who plans to study the microwave background radiation from Antarctica, says that although Dome C might be a slightly better place to deploy his instrument, he plans to use South Pole Station because he is reluctant to ask the NSF for money to do astronomy at a French-Italian base: “My guess is that they would not be really excited about that.” Timbie notes that there is really very little difference between the two sites for his research, but he points out that the turbulent inversion layer may be absent at Concordia, making it superior to the Pole for optical and infrared astronomy.

查看试题

The pages of the Harvard Business Review are not usually populated by novelists. But Joseph Finder is just such a rarity. Recently, the HBR posted a fictitious case study by Mr. Finder on its website. Readers will now have a chance to comment; the most interesting contributions, as well as the remarks of several corporate grandees, will appear alongside the story in the printed version of the magazine in October.In the case study, Mr. Finder describes a dilemma facing Cheryl Tobin, the newly installed chief executive of a big aerospace firm. She starts to suspect that her colleagues have engaged in massive corruption to win contracts. Ms. Tobin is also a central character in Mr. Finder’s new book, Power Play, which was released earlier this week. In the novel, her main concern is not corruption but an executive retreat on a remote island that goes horribly wrong.A graduate of both Yale and Harvard, Mr. Finder took up novel-writing after flirting with a career at the CIA and taking a stab at journalism. He had written a non-fiction book about links between American businesses and the Soviet Union but had been unable to use some of the most fascinating material he had picked up, since his sources wanted it to remain off the record. So Mr. Finder wove those titbits into a political thriller instead. After three more novels on political themes, he decided to set his next book in the world of business.There are many novels set in offices and boardrooms. The appeal of Mr. Finder’s lies not in the majesty of the prose—they are airport novels, not Pulitzer candidates—but in the plausibility of their plots and the accuracy of their depiction of corporate life. “I’ve not seen anything that couldn’t happen,” says Skip Brandon, co-founder of Smith Brandon International, a corporate-intelligence company. “The business community is pretty interesting, with all sorts of characters which he brings to life with a level of realism people can relate to,” says Bill Teuber, of EMC, a data-storage company.Business journalism may provide plenty of facts and figures, Mr. Finder argues, but it seldom gives readers much of a feel for corporate life. Fiction, in his view, can provide a more accurate picture than anything found in newspapers or management literature. At any rate, Mr. Finder is convinced that corporate insiders talk more candidly to him than they do to reporters.He has found big companies remarkably willing to provide background material. For his book, Paranoia, he talked with high-ups at Apple, Cisco and Hewlett-Packard—a computer-maker whose subsequent involvement in a real-life case of corporate espionage may not have come as a surprise to Mr. Finder’s readers. For Killer Instinct, the company NEC helped him to understand what it was like to be an American working for a big Japanese electronics firm.61. What is special about this online edition of Harvard Business Review?62. What made Mr. Finder start writing political thrillers?63. What is the main feature of Mr. Finder’s novels?64. Which of the following statements is true?65. What is the best title of this passage?

查看试题

The two books, Final Exam: A Surgeon’s Reflections on Mortality by Pauline Chen, and Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance by Atul Gawande, are remarkably honest and human accounts, both describing professional moments of fear, guilt, embarrassment and humor. The two authors, both Harvard-educated surgeons, admit to cases of personal failure and call on their fellow medics to reflect continuously on how they can improve the way their profession is practiced.Pauline Chen’s project is a discussion of appropriate end-of-life care. She probes into the question of why surgeons can seem unfeeling and slowly teases apart the answer that it is brought about by a doctor’s training. In her view, medical students should learn to trivialize death enough to cope but humanize it enough to help, and their formal education caters disproportionately to the former.Atul Gawande is more interested in behavioral tendencies than emotional ones. His is wider in scope and richer in fascinating detail. A staff writer for the New Yorker as well as a 2006 MacArthur “genius” grant recipient for his research, Dr. Gawande reports on the experience of other doctors as well as recounting his own. He has talked to medical men who have participated in executions and to others who have become prosecuting lawyers in malpractice suits.Dr. Gawande encourages his colleagues to observe their performance in a quantitative way. A simple example of this is that medics, including himself, wash their hands about a third as often as they should. By contrast, doctors at the World Health Organization monitor polio with such diligence that a single case in southern India leads to the rapid mobilization of a massive vaccination program.Army surgeons in Afghanistan and Iraq are, he believes, masters at working out ways to improve their performance. For example, their exhaustive spreadsheets reveal that when surgeons are faced with wounded men off the battlefield, the death count is reduced if, instead of continuing the necessary emergency treatment, they ship the anaesthetized soldiers off to other, perhaps better-equipped facilities, their wounds often still open and packed with gauze.Both authors recall professionals they respect telling them that the best doctors are those who can put themselves in their patients’ shoes. This allows them to approach openly the question of when to give up on aggressive treatment and let the patient’s failing health progress peacefully. Deaths can often be made easier than they would have been if too much medical ambition had been involved.Where these books disappoint, if only slightly, is in the very occasional use of a specialized term when an everyday phrase would have done. A pity, but a small one. In general, both books succeed in being as engaging to the layman as to the practicing or studying doctor. They should be required reading for the latter.56. According to Dr. Chen, medical students are trained to .57. In his book, Dr. Gawande .58. What is Dr. Gawande’s attitude towards the army surgeons’ conduct in Afghanistan and Iraq?59. What do the two surgeons say about treatment to those fatally ill?60. What is the article’s criticism of the two books?

查看试题

The trams that glide through Croydon by day are evocative of continental Europe. The loud and sometimes violent drunkenness among the young people who roam this south London suburb on a Saturday night is all too British, however.That Britons tend to drink too much is nothing new. But the debate about how to curb youthful drunkenness is gaining focus, in part because of recent reminders that the violence it produces can go beyond clumsy late-night fights. On August 17th, three youths in Gateshead were convicted of beating a man into a month-long coma for refusing to buy alcohol for their underage friends. Peter Fathy, the chief constable of Cheshire, where a father of three was murdered on August 10th by youths, has suggested, among other things, raising the legal drinking age from 18 to 21 and banning alcohol consumption in public places. These proposals sound plausible but they have drawbacks. It would put Britain out of line with international practice: the buying age is 18 in most of Europe, and as low as 16 in countries without much of a drink problem, such as Italy. In any case, binge-drinkers in their mid-twenties are also part of the problem.As for banning drinking in public places, local authorities in Britain can already do this. Two particularly enthusiastic councils are Westminster in London and Brighton and Hove on the south coast, both of which have raucous night-time economies. Other councils apply the ban more selectively. An alternative to restrictive measures is to teach Britons more sensible drinking habits. After all, government campaigns and public health advertisements played some role in the decline in smoking. But Ben Baumberg, a researcher at the Institute for Alcohol Studies, cautions against pinning too many hopes on this approach. By itself, he says, it will not revolutionise Britain’s binge-drinking culture.A surer solution is to raise the cost of alcohol by increasing taxes. Grant Thornton, an accountancy firm, points out that taxes on alcohol have fallen in real terms over the past decade, although they are still high by European standards. Intense competition between the pubs and bars in town centres has also pushed down prices. Drinkers stumble from one watering hole to the next in search of “happy hours” and other promotions. Supermarkets are also accused of selling alcoholic beverages.The government may be about to change course. Its previous strategy to counter excessive alcohol consumption was criticized for relying too heavily on voluntary action by the drinks industry. But ministers said in June that they would review the pricing and promotion of alcohol. Raising the cost of drinking is the best hope of making a Saturday night in Croydon more peaceful.51. What is implied in the first paragraph?52. The proposal of resetting the drinking age .53. In solving the drinking problem, some local governments .54. What is the best solution to excessive drinking according to the author?55. Which of the following can be the title of this passage?

查看试题

With an aging population growing rapidly, China is faced with a prospect of labour shortage. Some people suggest that the government should modify its family-planning policy in order to maintain a sufficient labour force while others argue that the huge population still remains a serious challenge to China, therefore, the government should continue its family-planning policy.Write an article to express your opinion on this issue. You should use your knowledge or experience to generate support for your argument.You should write no less than 250 words. Write your article on ANSWER SHEET 2.

查看试题

Directions: In the following article, some paragraphs have been removed. For Questions 66 to 70, choose the most suitable paragraph from the list A-F to fit into each of the numbered gaps. There is one paragraph which does not fit in any of the gaps. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1.When my mother learned she was pregnant with me, my parents sat down one Sunday morning to review their finances. Turning on the radio for a little light music, they penciled some calculations for the savings they would need to make to pay for my college education. The music paused for an announcement that Japanese airplanes were attacking Pearl Harbor. The notes went into the wastebasket.66. Not so today for all the upheaval of the past half-century, this has been by far the most tranquil period ever. Unlike any of their forebears, a majority of the world’s young adults have good reason to develop plans for their old age. They know they will probably live to see the greenhouse warmed planet of the late 2lst century.67. This is also unprecedented: never in history have people roused themselves against such a distant threat. Millions of people and whole governments are addressing the issue. Even in the US army, senior officers are studying the implications for their organization and looking for ways to reduce emissions. All this suggests that the pessimists who claim humanity is unable to rise to the challenge have got it wrong.Of course, it is no use having a long-term perspective without the means to do something about it. Fortunately, our social and political mechanisms are progressing swiftly.68. The past century has brought social progress as dramatic as that in industry. Economic stability, for example, is no accident: it is engineered by an international network of central banks, steadily expanding their cooperation. Non-governmental organizations provide new services, from the certification of “fair trade” coffee to secret cash transfers. In 1948, the UN formally consulted with 41 NGOs; it now consults with more than 1,600.69. Almost every week we see these powerful tools applied in novel ways. Consider what happened recently when Texas power company TXU revealed plans to build a dozen coal-fired plants that would emit vast amounts of carbon dioxide. An alliance of environmentalist NGOs spotlighted the development on the Internet. Meanwhile, an international financial consortium took an interest. After intense negotiations, the consortium won the environmentalists’ public blessing to buy TXU by promising to sharply reduce the planned emissions. The NGOs held no political office and wielded no investment billions; their power came from the skillful organization of a million mouse clicks.70. These developments are nowhere near enough to guarantee we can meet the challenge of climate change. Time is short and the prospect of even partial success remains uncertain. Yet we can avoid catastrophe by mobilizing our ingenuity and community spirit. Addressing global warming will require less sacrifice than defeating Fascism, but more foresight—and that is exactly what we have been acquiring. If humanity’s track record with long-term problems shows mostly indifference and failure, that need not set precedent for our future.

查看试题

One of the most alarming things about the crisis in the global financial system is that the warning signs have been out there for some time, yet no one heeded them. Exactly 10 years ago, a hedge fund called Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) failed to convince investors that it could repay its debts, thereby bringing the world to the brink of a similar “liquidity crisis” to the one we now see. Disaster was averted then only because regulators managed to put together a multi-billion-dollar bailout package.LTCM’s collapse was particularly notable because its founders had set great store by their use of statistical models designed to keep tabs on the risks inherent in their investments. Its fall should have been a wake-up call to banks and their regulatory supervisors that the models were not working as well as hoped—in particular that they were ignoring the risks of extreme events and the connections that send such events reverberating around the financial system. Instead, they carried on using them.Now that disaster has struck again, some financial risk modelers—the “quants” who have wielded so much influence over modern banking—are saying they know where the gaps in their knowledge are and are promising to fill them. Should we trust them?Their track record does not inspire confidence. Statistical models have proved almost useless at predicting the killer risks for individual banks, and worse than useless when it comes to risks to the financial system as a whole. The models encouraged bankers to think they were playing a high stakes card game, when what they were actually doing was more akin to lining up a row of dominoes.How could so many smart people have gotten it so wrong? One reason is that their faith in their model’s predictive power led them to ignore what was happening in the real world. Finance offers enormous scope for dissembling: almost any failure can be explained away by a judicious choice of language and data. When investors do not behave like the self-interested homo economicus that economists suppose them to be, they are described as being “irrationally exuberant” or blinded by panic. An alternative view—that investors are reacting logically in the face of uncertainty—is rarely considered. Similarly, extreme events are described as happening only “once in a century”—even though there is insufficient data on which to base such an assessment.The quants’ models might successfully predict the movement of markets most of the time, but the bankers who rely on them have failed to realize that the occasions on which the markets deviate from normality are much more important than those when they comply. The events of the past year have driven this home in a spectacular fashion: by some estimates, the banking industry has lost more money in the current crisis than it has made in its entire history.61. What happened a decade ago in the financial world .62. The statistical models used by LTCM .63. What does the author think is the major cause of the current financial crisis?64. What does the word “dissembling” (para.5, line 3) mean according to the context?65. It can be inferred from the passage that risk control of the financial market .

查看试题

The threat of diseases such as influenza or tuberculosis re-emerging in virulent form has been a common theme in recent years. That threat is not limited to human diseases. Our food plants get sick too, and just as human diseases evolve to evade antibiotics, so the diseases that strike our crops evolve to sidestep the resistance genes we have bred into them. For the vast majority of the calories the world eats, the key crop is grain.A ruinous wheat disease we have not had to worry about since the 1950s is making a comeback, and unless we are very lucky, we will not have sufficient defences to protect crops everywhere in the world against it in time. That stem rust would evolve and return to plague us was inevitable, but our lack of preparation to ward it off was not.Research into stem rust was bound to tail off once the disease seemed beaten, but the world let down its guard too far, for ideological reasons. In the 1980s governments of industrialized countries, especially the UK and US, started to lose patience with the “multilateral” agencies that engineered much of the global progress in agriculture after the Second World War. Each government wanted the agencies to dance only to its tune. This included the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research, the global network of labs that created the “Green Revolution”. The CGIAR remains the leading, sometimes only source of agricultural research devoted to global good rather than private profit.“Multilateral” funding meant these labs received income from rich donors with no strings attached. Researchers at the labs were able to spend the money the way they thought best—including the unglamorous task of making sure that crops’ disease resistance kept pace with the diseases. However, for more than two decades, donors have been cutting this funding in favour of only financing projects allied to their own interests. As wheat stem rust re-emerged in 1999, the main CGIAR wheat lab was entering a major funding crisis, and ended up sacking a quarter of its scientists. It has taken until now to beg enough money to fight the disease.There are now signs that donors may be moving back to more open-ended funding, which is to be encouraged. They should also increase their derisory funding for this vital research: stem rust is poised to teach us the dangers of complacency.The world population is predicted to rise by another 3 billion by 2050, yet increases in food production have stagnated, technological fixes are spent, and global warming—and the return of diseases like stem rust—look likely to take back many of the gains we have made. Food security affects political security, and one of the first regions to suffer from stem rust will be the volatile Middle East, including Iraq. Agricultural research for the public good is the only way to provide that security. It is certainly cheaper than building armies.56. The human and crop diseases once under control have come back again because .57. In the battle against the re-emergence of stem rust, the author .58. Multilateral research institutions have not functioned properly since the 1980s .59. According to the author, the research labs have failed to fight stem rust because .60. Which of the following is the best title for the article?

查看试题

On the heels of its recent decision to criminalize consumers who rip songs from albums they have purchased to their computers (or iPods), the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has now gone one step further and declared that “remembering songs” using your brain is criminal copyright infringement. “The brain is a recording device,” explained RIAA president Cary Sherman. “The act of listening is an unauthorized act of copying music to that recording device, and the act of recalling or remembering a song is unauthorized playback.”The RIAA also said it would begin sending letters to tens of millions of consumers thought to be illegally remembering songs, threatening them with lawsuits if they do not settle with the RIAA by paying monetary damages.In order to avoid engaging in unauthorized copyright infringement, consumers will now be required to immediately forget everything they have just heard——a skill already mastered by the former US President George Bush. To aid in these memory wiping efforts, the RIAA is teaming up with Big Pharma to include free psychotropic prescription drugs with the purchase of new music albums. Consumers are advised to swallow the pills before listening to the music. The pills block normal cognitive function, allowing consumers to enjoy the music in a more detached state without the risk of accidentally remembering any songs (and thereby violating copyright law).Consumers caught humming their favorite songs will be charged with a more serious crime: The public performance of a copyrighted song, for which the fines can reach over $250,000 per incident. “Humming, singing and whistling songs will not be tolerated,” said Sherman.Consumers attempting to circumvent the RIAA’s new memory-wiping technology by actually remembering songs will be charged with felony crimes under provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The Act, passed in 1998, makes it a felony crime to circumvent copyright protection technologies. The RIAA’s position is that consumers who actually use their brains while listening to music are violating the DMCA.With this decision, the RIAA now considers approximately 72% of the adult U.S. population to be criminals. Putting them all in prison for copyright infringement would cost US taxpayers an estimated $683 billion per year—an amount that would have to be shouldered by the remaining 28% who are not imprisoned. The RIAA believes it could cover the $683 billion tab through royalties on music sales. The problem with that—the 28% remaining adults not in prison do not buy music albums. That means album sales would plummet to nearly zero, and the US government (which is already deep in debt) would have to borrow money to pay for all the prisons.When asked whether he really wants 72% of the US population to be imprisoned for ripping music CDs to their own brains, Sherman shot back, “You don’t support criminal behavior, do you? Every person who illegally remembers a song is a criminal. We can’t have criminals running free on the streets of America. It’s an issue of national security.”51. What does the phrase “copying music to that recording device” (para.1, line 6) mean?52. Which of the following best summarizes Paragraph 3?53. The following will be criminal acts EXCEPT ________.54. What will the RIAA’s decision lead to?55. What category does this essay fall into?

查看试题

Directions: You have read an article in a magazine which states, “With the ever-increasing house prices in big metropolises, it is better for college graduates to work and live in small or medium-sized cities.”Write an article for the same magazine to clarify your own points of view towards this issue. You should use your own ideas, knowledge or experience to generate support for your argument and include an example. You should write no less than 250 words. Write your article on ANSWER SHEET 2.

查看试题

Directions: In the following article, some paragraphs have been removed. For Questions 66 to 70, choose the most suitable paragraph from the list A-F to fit into each of the numbered gaps. There is one paragraph which does not fit in any of the gaps. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1.Over the past few years, flying in coach has become an increasingly miserable experience. Legroom is practically nonexistent. Passengers are more tightly packed together. Hot meals have been eliminated. Ditto pillows and blankets. And the next time that guy in front of you leans his seat back directly into your face, few of your fellow passengers are likely to blame you if you feel a brief, murderous urge to strike back.66. Doug Fesler, an executive at a medical research group in Washington, wasn’t expecting much in the way of amenities on his American Airlines flight to Honolulu in September. In fact, knowing the airline no longer served free meals, he had packed his own lunch for the second leg of his flight from Dallas to Honolulu. But he said he was shocked at the lack of basic services and the overall condition of the cabin.67. His return flight was just as disappointing. This time the audio for the movie worked—but only in Spanish—and his seat refused to stay in the upright position. “I was just appalled,” Mr. Fesler said. “You pay $500 or $600 for a seat, and you expect it to be functional.” He said he has considered refusing to fly airlines with such poor service, but added that, “if you did that with every airline that made you mad, you’d never get anywhere in this country.”68. The fact is that airlines, flying so close to full capacity today, have realized that they really don’t have to cater to economy passengers—most of whom are booking on price alone, and who increasingly have no real airline loyalty—because the cost of doing so would never be worth it in pure bottom-line terms.69. While Mr. Baldanza may regret the manner in which his e-mail statement was delivered, his position hasn’t changed. “The point that I was making in that e-mail, maybe not as politically correctly as I should have, is let’s not over-obsess or spend a lot of money dealing with customers with completely unrealistic expectations,” he said, pointing out that the delay was due to weather and that the passenger was offered a $200 voucher toward future flights even though he had paid only $73 for two round-trip tickets. “When the fare’s this cheap, we’re going to get another customer,” he said.70. __It’s all simple economics. In January, United removed half-ounce pretzel snack mixes from the economy section of flights that are less than two hours long—about 29 percent of its flights—to save what it says is about $650,000 a year. Meanwhile, America has estimated that it would save $30 million a year by eliminating free meal service in coach. Overall, the amount of money the nine largest passenger carriers in the United States spend on food per passenger has been slashed to about $3.40 from $5.92 in 1992, according to the Department of Transportation.

查看试题

Employees of the Taff Vale Railway Company in South Wales greased the tracks and cut telegraph wires during a bitter strike in 1900. The next year the House of Lords ruled that their union could be sued for damaging the company. The shock to the union movement inspired the Labour Party and a 1906 Trade Disputes Act, aimed at protecting strikers from such punishment through the courts.On May 18th in 2010, leaders of Unite, a trade union, invoked the spirit of Taff Vale after a court injunction stopped a threatened 20-day series of strikes by British Airways’ cabin crew, 90 percent of whom are Unite members. The judgment, which Unite called an “absolute disgrace”, hung on a technicality: that the results of the strike ballot had not been relayed correctly to BA staff. The union immediately appealed, and on May 20th had the judgment overturned. So for BA the strike had only been slightly delayed.The court saga illustrates the unyielding antipathy in the dispute between Willie Walsh, BA’s punchy chief executive, and indignant cabin crew backed by a union that faces falling membership. It was triggered last year by BA’s plans to reduce crew numbers on long-haul flights from London’s Heathrow airport, but it is now mainly a war over the airline’s threats to deny discretionary free flights and other perks to those who strike. Most of the planned operational changes have been agreed upon, along with compromises. But the animosity is doing added damage to an airline already beset by negatives—from volcanic ash, to dwindling long-haul travel and looming tax increases.Meanwhile, the low-cost airlines Ryanair and easyJet are snapping at its heels. The recession, and the way passenger taxes are graded by distance and standard of travel, have favoured their short-haul, no-frills model.More worrying for BA, however, is the trend away from conventional route networks based on big hubs to the ad-hoc linking of airports by the low-cost airlines. Landing slots at prime airports are expensive. New airline taxes being considered by Britain’s new government may be applied per plane rather than per passenger, favouring the fuller planes of the low-cost companies. In 2012, a European emissions-trading scheme is to replace national taxes: it will penalise longer flights and emptier planes.The future may indeed lie with the low-cost airlines, but they would be foolish to bet on uninterrupted growth. Stelios Haji-Ioannou, the founder of easyJet, resigned from its board on May 14th, criticising its plans to add 59 planes to a fleet of 189 against the twin uncertainties of volcanic ash and the euro crisis. However, with BA apparently floundering, perhaps this is the very time to grab market share.61. The 1906 Trade Disputes Act was meant to ___.62. The court ruled against the strike on grounds that _.63. The hostility between BA and strikers is centered on _.64. BA is currently in a worrying situation due to the following difficulties EXCEPT _.65. It can be inferred from the last paragraph that ____.

查看试题

There was a time in the late 17th century when no respectable monarch would be seen without a guitar. Both Louis XIV and Charles II were dab hands. And the future Queen Anne thought a guitar tutor was worth an annual stipend of £100, which was a small fortune then.The instrument had seen revivals in the early 19th century and the early 20th, when its place in the concert hall was finally secured by Andres Segovia. A further decade in the sun in the 1970s resulted from the maturity of two gifted young guitarists: Julian Bream and John Williams. But in the past three decades, this subtle musical voice has grown quieter and quieter. Until now, Deutsche Gramophon has signed its first classical guitarist in years. Milos Karadaglic’s debut CD of Mediterranean repertoire is out this month and includes pieces by two popular composers.The 27-year-old Montenegrin blames the pop world for his instrument’s demise. “With the invention of the electric guitar, the instrument stopped being intimate and started to reach out into wider audiences,” he explains. “These technological advances resulted in the core classical guitar repertoire fading away. The guitar’s popularity within pop detracted from its popularity within the classical world.”But the electric-guitar did not blow its classical cousin out the water. In the 20th century, interest in the older, more refined instrument waxed and waned. Why? One theory puts it down to economics. The two decades that saw the classical guitar thrive were decades of recession—the 1930s and the 1970s. Now, during another financial crisis, the classical guitar’s intimate strains seem again to be offering a spiritual succor in straitened times.Mr. Karadaglic thinks the reason for the latest upward interest may be simpler: an attempt by man to escape the technological flimflammery of the modern world. “Advanced technologies are taking away our privacy,” he argues, “so another cycle is starting. People are now realizing the beauty in things that are pure and natural.” And no instrument can compete in these stakes better than the guitar, whose every sound is made sensitively and directly by the hands: “The honesty of this way of music-making makes the guitar supreme. It’s so personal and delicate.”The guitar has never been collectivized or corralled into an orchestra like the violin. It is the cat of the musical world: And as such, it has developed many divergent traditions. For the first time its most dangerous rival, the electric guitar, is seeing fashions turn against it. Taste in pop music (heading folkwards) and classical appear to be coming together. So it is the perfect time for the classical guitar to find a new lease of life and a new cycle.56. The first two paragraphs show that ___.57. Karadaglic attributes the declining popularity of the classical guitar to _.58. The author tries to find out _.59. Which of the following statements is NOT true?60. The metaphor “It is the cat of the musical world” in the last paragraph means ___.

查看试题

“Junk science” is how Elliot Morley, Britain’s minister responsible for genetically modified farming, describes studies that claim GM crops would be hazardous to Britain’s wildlife and consumers. This week the government granted permission for a strain of GM maize to be grown commercially as cattle feed. That has incensed environmentalists and organic farmers, who say GM is unpopular (probably correct) and based on bad science (probably not).Three years of field testing have shown the herbicide-resistant maize, Bayer’s Chardon LL, to be safe and even kinder to the environment than non-GM maize. Two other crops on trial—a GM sugar-beet and a GM oilseed rape—will not be grown because they were worse for biodiversity (weeds) than conventional strains.The trials have not made the worries about introducing even a safe GM crop go away, though. Opponents say GM will stealthily take over the country by cross-pollination, will damage wildlife and introduce something nasty into the human food chain. How solid is all this?Evidence from America, which planted 105.7m acres of biotech crops in 2003, suggests concerns are overblown. In practice it is easy to separate crops and prevent them from cross-pollinating. Even oilseed rape, which is particularly promiscuous, can be kept over 99% pure if it is a hundred metres away from another plantation. Cross-pollination probably will happen, but so far it has caused no problems: genetic material in plants changes all the time through sexual reproduction anyway.Damage to wildlife is difficult to measure, but there is evidence that GM has had a positive effect, with birds and insects returning to GM cotton plantations in America. Certainly, GM crops tend to need fewer chemicals to protect them. Monsanto says its sugarbeet, which was on trial along with the Chardon maize, requires 46% less herbicide than a conventional strain. Supposed threats to consumers, whether human or animal, are the most flaky. One recent study appeared to show that Chardon maize could be fatal to cattle, but the heifer in question in fact died from botulism. The British Medical Association now says there is “very little potential for GM foods to cause harmful health effects” in people either. People have been eating the stuff in America for years, with no ill effects so far.The messing around with genetic material that makes some people dislike GM crops has gone on for years in conventional plant breeding, where crops are exposed to radiation and chemicals to encourage them to mutate. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, over 2,000 types of crop have been bombarded with gamma rays to produce mutants, many of which are grown by organic farmers.“All food is frankenfood,” according to Professor Howard Dalton, chief scientific adviser to the Department for Food and Rural Affairs, “but everybody’s got used to it.” Maybe everybody will get used to GM soon, too.51. According to the British government, ___.52. Field testing in America has shown that _.53. The following statements are true EXCEPT _.54. According to the author, conventional crop breeding has ___.55. What is the author’s attitude towards GM crops?

查看试题

Directions: You have read an article in a magazine which states, “By law, cigarette advertisements are strictly prohibited on the media. Some people think there should also be a ban on the advertising of alcohol.”Write an article for the same magazine to clarify your own points of view towards this issue. You should use your own ideas, knowledge or experience to generate support for your argument.You should write no less than 250 words. Write your article on ANSWER SHEET 2.

查看试题

Directions: In the following article, some paragraphs have been removed. For Questions 66 to 70, choose the most suitable paragraph from the list A-F to fit into each of the numbered gaps. There is one paragraph which does not fit in any of the gaps. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1.There are as many definitions of philosophy as there are philosophers—perhaps there are even more. After three millennia of philosophical activity and disagreement, it is unlikely that we’ll reach consensus, and I certainly don’t want to add more hot air to the volcanic cloud of unknowing. What I’d like to do in the opening column in this new venture is to kick things off by asking a slightly different question. What is a philosopher?66. Socrates tells the story of Thales, who was by some accounts the first philosopher. He was looking so intently at the stars that he fell into a well. Some witty Thracian servant girl is said to have made a joke at Thales’ expense—that in his eagerness to know what went on in the sky he was unaware of the things in front of him and at his feet. (Socrates adds, in Seth Benardete’s translation, “The same-just-suffices for all those who engage in philosophy.”)What is a philosopher, then? The answer is clear—a laughing stock, an absent-minded buffoon, the butt of countless jokes from Aristophanes’ “The Clouds” to Mel Brooks’ “History of the World”. Whenever the philosopher is compelled to talk about the things at his feet, he gives not only the Thracian girl but the rest of the crowd a belly laugh.67. But as always with Plato, things are not necessarily as they first appear, and Socrates is the greatest of ironists. First, we should recall that Thales believed that water was the universal substance out of which all things were composed. Water was Thales’ philosopher’s stone, as it were. Therefore, by falling into a well, he inadvertently presses his basic philosophical claim.But there is a deeper and more troubling layer of irony here that I would like to peel off more slowly. Socrates introduces the “digression” by making a distinction between the philosopher and the lawyer, or what Benardete nicely renders as the “pettifogger”.68. By contrast, we might say, the philosopher is the person who has time or who takes time. Theodorus, Socrates’ interlocutor, introduces the “digression” with the words, “Aren’t we at leisure, Socrates?” The latter’s response is interesting. He says, “It appears we are.” As we know, in philosophy appearances can be deceptive.69. Pushing this a little further, we might say that to philosophize is to take your time even when you have no time, when time is constantly pressing at your back. The busy reading of The New York Times will understand this sentiment.70. Socrates says that those in the constant press of business, like lawyers, policy-makers, mortgage brokers and hedge fund managers, become “bent and stunted” and they are compelled “to do crooked things”. The pettifogger is undoubtedly successful, wealthy and extraordinarily honey-tongued, but, Socrates adds, “small in his soul and shrewd and a shyster.” The philosopher, by contrast, is free by virtue of his or her other-worldliness, by their capacity to fall into wells and appear silly.

查看试题

Daffodils bloom and chocolate eggs melt as the long Easter weekend draws near. Alongside such pleasures is another, equally seasonal: the annual outpouring from the teaching unions’ conferences, whose massed pedagogues can always be relied on to provide a few news stories to delight the headline writers.Guaranteed are lamentations about parents and pupils, both inferior to those of yesteryear in various, not always consistent, ways. Fairly standard attempts to blame the raw materials rather than inadequate workmen, but these moans are given a ready hearing because they confirm the fears of many readers (and not a few editors) that the nation’s moral fibre is in shreds.Also lapped up are the crazy conference motions, such as the proposal in 2007 for a curriculum based on fancy “skills” rather than fusty “knowledge”. Union activists in most walks of life are well to the left of those they represent, and teaching-union loyalists are no exception. But such stories resonate because they fit the widespread stereotype of teachers as sandal-wearing, Guardian-reading lefties. It is one that has little evidence to back it up. The Guardian is indeed the profession’s favourite newspaper, but not by miles. And teachers’ tendency to vote Labour is of recent origin, and may not last.In the run-up to the 1979 election that brought Margaret Thatcher to victory, most teachers told pollsters they intended to vote Conservative. When in 1987 they defected, disillusioned by low spending on schools, they turned first to the Liberal-Social Democratic Party Alliance, the third party, before coming round to the charms of Tony Blair. In 1997, fifty-nine percent intended to vote Labour, nearly four times more than fancied the Tories. But fewer have voted Labour in each subsequent election. In 2008, the Times Education Supplement found overwhelming disapproval among teachers of Labour’s school policies and a shift in voting intentions.Teaching is in some ways a natural job for the conservatively inclined. Like the police, teachers see too much of human nature to remain starry-eyed. And even the dogged idealists privately admit that traditional right-wing policies, such as physical punishment and academic selection, would make their jobs easier.But teachers’ politics are also shaped by those who train them and by the nature of the work. Both are changing. While teachers were voting Tory in 1979, education academics were intoxicated with child-centred education and discovery learning, and were turning out new teachers in the mould. The academics are still pretty left-leaning, but nearly a quarter of new teachers now train in schools rather than universities, up from a handful ten years ago. All are coming to grips with a very different profession: one shaped by a national curriculum with tests and targets.61. The teaching unions’ conferences hold the attention of the media because .62. Which of the following statements is TRUE?63. It can be inferred from Paragraph 4 that .64. The word “starry-eyed” (line 2, para. 5) probably means .65. It can be concluded from the last paragraph that .

查看试题

Miserabilists’ fear of change; idealists’ hope for a better world; an all-purpose adult nostalgia for lost youth; all these things ensure a ready hearing for claims that childhood is in crisis. Britons are especially worried. They fear that the young today are sadder than previous generations—stressed, and turned off learning by too much testing. Children may be nastier as well: bullying is an “epidemic” in schools, according to one recent survey. They seem in danger like never before.No wonder a report published on February 2nd by the Children’s Society, entitled “A Good Childhood”, claiming that far too few British children have one, has received widespread notice. Children suffer because adults put their own needs first, the panel concluded, and only a wholesale shift away from competitiveness and individualism can save them. Right-wing commentators agreed with its criticism of single parents and working mothers, left-wing ones with its call for more redistribution of income and less advertising to children. Both overlooked one striking finding: that most children are doing just fine.Amid the statistics on teenage pregnancy rates (higher than elsewhere in Europe, lower than in America), mental illness (a tenth of 5-16-year-olds are sufferers) and drunkenness (a third of 13-15-year-olds have been drunk at least twice, a share three times higher than the European average), came some more heartening figures: 70% of 11-16-year-olds say they are very, or completely, happy, and only 4% say that they are at all unhappy. The report rolls the latter in with the 9% of children who describe themselves as neither happy nor unhappy to claim that 13% are “less than happy”. But clearly, very few children agree with adults that they are in deep trouble.In “Reclaiming Childhood”, Helene Guldberg, a child psychologist at the Open University, examines the same facts and draws different conclusions. Rising rates of mental illness among the young, she argues, reflect readier diagnosis, and bullying has increased because the word is now used to mean the infliction of even the slightest emotional bruise. She thinks many attempts to improve children’s lives, such as anti-bullying campaigns, and the parenting lessons proposed by the Children’s Society, are likely to be counterproductive. “Suggesting that all parents need to be taught how to do their job risks creating a self-fulfilling belief in parents’ incompetence and children’s lack of resilience,” she says.Britain is no Utopia, of course. As in other rich countries, children find it too easy to sit indoors, staring at screens and overeating. They lack the protection afforded by the Nordic belief in the sacredness of outdoor play, or the shared family meals of Mediterranean countries. A large minority ape their elders’ drinking habits and a few, but still too many, become parents while still children themselves.56. Britons are worried about the following EXCEPT that .57. The report published by the Children’s Society .58. According to statistics teenagers in Britain .59. In “Reclaiming Childhood”, the author argues that .60. It can be inferred from the last paragraph that __.

查看试题

Anxiety is a word often found on the tip of politicians and economists at the moment, but it is seldom heard from technologists. And although the idea that “less is more” has many adherents in architecture, design and fashion, the technology industry has historically expanded the opposite view. Products should have as many features as possible, and next year’s version should have even more. As prices fall, what starts off as a fancy new feature quickly becomes commonplace—by buying a phone without a camera, or a car without electric windows—prompting companies to add new features in an effort to outdo their rivals. Never mind if nobody uses most of these new features. In an arms race, more is always more.But now there are signs that technologists are waking up to the benefits of minimalism, thanks to two things: feature fatigue among consumers who simply want things to work, and strong demand from less affluent consumers in the developing world. It is telling that the market value of Apple, the company most closely associated with simple, elegant high-tech products, recently overtook that of Microsoft, the company with the most notorious case of new-features. True, Apple’s products contain lots of features under the hood, but the company has a knack for covering such complexities by using elegant designs. Other companies have also progressed by providing easy-to-use products; think of the Nintendo Wii video-game console or the Flip video camera. Gadgets are no longer just for geeks, and if technology is to appeal to a broad audience, simplicity trumps fancy specifications.Another strand of techno-minimalism can be found in software that keeps things simple in order to reduce distractions and ensure that computer-users remain focused and productive. Many word processors now have special classroom modes, so that all unnecessary and interesting menus, palettes and so on are disabled or hidden; rather than fiddling with font sizes or checking e-mail, you are encouraged to get on with your writing. If the temptation to have a quick look at Facebook proves too much, there are programs that will disable access to particular websites at specific times of day, but if that is not drastic enough, there are even programs that can block Internet access altogether. A computer on which some features are not present, or have been deliberately disabled, may in fact be easier to use if you are trying to get things done. There are no distracting hyperlinks on a typewriter. Then there is the phenomenon of “frugal” innovation. Low-cost laptops were inspired to be produced for children in poor countries, but have since proved popular with consumers around the world.All this offers grounds for hope. If the features-shocked technology industry can change its tune, perhaps there is a chance that governments—which have also tended to be inveterate believers in the idea that more is more—might come to appreciate the merits of minimalism.51. What does “less is more” mean?52. Who used to believe in the concept that “more is more”?53. The importance of minimalism has been realized for the following reasons EXCEPT that ______.54. What type of computers will probably represent the trend?55. What is the most suitable title for the text?

查看试题

暂未登录

成为学员

学员用户尊享特权

老师批改作业做题助教答疑学员专用题库高频考点梳理

上一页 1 2 3 4 下一页

!

咨询在线老师!