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Section B
Directions: In this section, you will hear 3 short passages. At the end of each passage, you will hear some questions. Both the passage and the questions will be spoken only once. After you hear a question, you must choose the best answer from the four choices marked A), B), C) and D). Then mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre.
Passage One
I had spent my last day in London visiting friends, taking pictures, and doing some last-minute shopping. Among other things, I had bought some presents: a shirt for my brother, a wool blanket for my sister, and a battery-powered alarm clock for my father.
After traveling in a crowded bus and waiting in the noisy airport building, I was glad to be sitting in the plane at last. In a few minutes, we would be asked to fasten our seat belts and to stop smoking, and then we would soon be up in the sky on our flight to Berlin.
But I had been mistaken. Ten minutes later, instead of enjoying the beauty of the evening sky from high above the clouds, I was sitting in a smoke-filled room with an airline official and a police officer at my side. On the table in front of me was one of my suitcases.
The officials were very polite. They asked me to show them my passport, my ticket, and my baggage check. Then I was requested to open the suitcase and to spread out its contents on the table.
I did as I was told. The moment I placed the alarm clock on the table, the two officials looked at each other and smiled. Hearing the clock ticking away merrily, I suddenly understood. Someone must have heard the ticking noise coming from my suitcase and thought there was a time bomb hidden in it.
Q: What can we learn from the conversation?
Questions 26 to 28 are based on the passage you have just heard.
26.How did the man spend his last day in London?
27.What present did he buy for his father?
28.Why did the man get off the plane ten minutes later?
Passage Two
How many of you drink cola? Nearly everyone. Did you know that cola started out not as a soft drink but as a cure for headaches back in the late 1800s? John S. Pemberton, a druggist from Atlanta, had experimented for many months trying to find a cure for the common headache. He worked in his backyard, mixing and heating different combinations of oils and flavors until he found one that seemed promising. Pemberton bottled the mixture and began selling it in drugstores as concentrated syrup that the customer had to mix with water before drinking.
Cola’s transformation from medicinal syrup to a carbonated soft drink came about quite by accident. One day, a customer came into a drugstore complaining of a headache and asked for a bottle of cola syrup. He wanted to take it right away. So he asked the clerk to mix the medicine while he waited. The clerk, instead of walking to the other end of the counter to get plain water, suggested mixing the syrup with soda water. The customer agreed, and after drinking it, remarked how good it tasted. The clerk continued offering the mix and carbonated cola grew in popularity. Today carbonated cola is sold in most countries around the world. And although they no longer contain the ingredients used to cure headaches, they are still very refreshing.
Questions 29 to 31 are based on the passage you have just heard.
29.What is the passage mainly about?
30.How was cola sold originally?
31.How was cola syrup made into a soft drink?
Passage Three
One of the most popular myths about the United States in the 19th century was that of the free and simple life of the farmer. It was said that farmers worked hard on their own land to produce whatever their families needed. They might sometimes trade with their neighbors, but in general they could get along just fine by relying on themselves, not on commercial ties with others. This is how Thomas Jefferson idealized the farmer at the beginning of the 19th century. And at that time, this may have been close to the truth, especially on the frontier.
But by the mid-century, sweeping changes in agriculture were well underway as farmers began to specialize in the raising of crops such as cotton, corn or wheat. Late in the century, revolutionary advances in farm machinery had vastly increased production of specialized crops and an extensive network of railroads had linked farmers throughout the country to markets in the east and even overseas. By raising and selling specialized crops, farmers could afford more and finer goods and achieve a much higher standard of living---but at a price.
Now farmers were no longer dependent just on the weather and on their own efforts. Their lives were increasingly controlled by banks, which had power to grant or deny loans for new machinery, and by the railroads which set the rates for shipping their crops to market. As businessmen, farmers now had to worry about national economic depressions and the influence of world supply and demand on, for example, the price of wheat in Kansas. And so by the end of the 19th century, the era of Jefferson’s independent farmer had come to a close.
Questions 32 to 35 are based on the passage you have just heard.
32. What is the main topic of the passage?
33. According to the passage, what was the major change in agriculture during the 19th century?
34. What was one result of the increased use of machinery on farms in the United States?
35. According to the passage, why was the world market important for United States agriculture?
