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Part Ⅵ Reading Comprehension [30 min]
Section A Reading Comprehension [25 min]
In this Section there are four passages followed by questions or unfinished statements, each with four suggested answers marked A, B, C and D. choose the one that you think is the best answer.
Mark your answers on your answer sheet.
Text A
Many of the home electric goods which are advertised as liberating the modern woman tend to have the opposite effect, because they simply change the nature of work instead of eliminating it. Machines have a certain novelty value, like toys for adults. It is certainly less tiring to put clothes in a washing machine, but the time saved does not really amount to much: the machine has to be watched, the clothes have to be carefully sorted out first, stains removed by hand, buttons pushed and water changed, clothes taken out, aired and ironed. It would be more liberating to pack it all off to a laundry and not necessarily more expensive, since no capital investment is required. Similarly, if you really want to save time you do not make cakes with an electric mixer, you buy one in a shop. If one compares the image of the woman in the women’s magazine with the goods advertised by those periodicals, one realizes how useful a projected image cab be commercially. A careful balance has to be struck: if you show a labor-saving device, follow it up with a complicated recipe on the next page; on no account hint at the notion that a woman could get herself a job, but instead foster her sense of her own usefulness, emphasizing the creative aspect of her function as a housewife. So we get cake mixes where the cook simply adds an egg herself, to produce “ that lovely home-baked flavor the family love”, and knitting patterns that can be made by hand, or worse still, on knitting machines, which became tremendously fashionable when they were first introduced. Automatic cookers are advertised by pictures of pretty young mothers taking their children to the park, not by professional women presetting the dinner before leaving home for work.
66. According to the passage, many of the home electric goods which are supposed to liberate women_________
A. remove unpleasant aspects of housework.
B. Save the housewife very little time.
C. Save the housewife’s time but not her money.
D. Have absolutely no value for the housewife.
67. According to the context, capital investment refers to money _____
A. spent on a washing machine. B. borrowed from the bank.
C. saved in the bank. D. lent to other people.
68. The goods advertised in women’s magazines are really meant to ________
A. free housewives from housework.
B. Encourage housewives to go out to work.
C. Turn housewives into excellent cooks.
D. Give them a false sense of fulfillment.
Text B
The “ standard of living” of any country means the average persons share of the goods
and services which the country produces. A country's standard of living, therefore, depends
first and foremost on its capacity to produce wealth. "Wealth" in this sense is not money, for
we do not live on money but on things that money can buy.- "goods" such as food and cloth-
ing, and "services" such as transport and entertainment.
A country's capacity to produce wealth depends upon many factors, most of which have
an effect on one another. Wealth depends to a great extent upon a country' s natural re-
sources, such as coal, gold, and other minerals, water supply and so on. Some regions of
the world are well supplied with coal and minerals, and have a fertile soil and a favorable
climate; other regions possess none of them.
Next to natural resources comes the ability to turn them to use. Some countries are per-
haps well off in natural resources, but suffered for many years from civil and external wars,
and for this and other reasons have been unable to develop their resources. 'Sound and stable
political conditions, and freedom from foreign invasion, enable a country to develop its natu-
ral resources peacefully and steadily, and to produce more wealth than another country
equally well served by nature but less well ordered. Another important factor is the technical
efficiency of a country's people. Industrialized countries that have trained numerous skilled
workers and technicians are better placed to produce wealth than countries whose workers
are largely unskilled.
A country's standard of living does not only depend upon the wealth that is produced
and consumed within its own borders, but also upon what is indirectly produced through
international trade. For example, Britain's wealth in foodstuffs' and other agricultural
products would be much less if she had to depend only on those grown at home. Trade makes
it possible for her surplus manufactured goods to be traded abroad for the agricultural
products that would otherwise be lacking. A country's wealth is, therefore, much influenced by
its manufacturing capacity, provided that other countries can be found ready to accept its
manufactures.
69. The standard of living in a country is determined by___________
A. its goods and service.
B. the type of wealth produced.
C. how well it can create wealth.
D. what an ordinary person can share.
70. A country's capacity to produce wealth depends on all the factors EXCEPT________
A. peoples share of its goods.
B. political and social stability.
C. qualities of its workers.
D. use of natural resources.
71. According to the passage,________ play an equally important role in determining a
country's standard of living.
A. farm products
B. industrial goods
C. foodstuffs
D. export import
Text C
How we look and how we appear to others probably worries us more when we are in our
teens or early twenties than at any other time in our life. Few of us are content to accept our-
selves as we are, and few are brave enough to ignore the trends of fashion.
Most fashion magazines or TV advertisements try to persuade us that we should dress in
a certain way or behave in a certain manner. If we do, they tell us, we will be able to meet
new people with confidence and deal with every situation confidently and without embarrassment. Changing fashion, of course, does not apply just to dress. A barber today does not cut
a boy's hair in the same way as he used to, and girls do not make up in the same way as their
mothers and grandmothers did. The advertisers show us the latest fashionable Styles and we
are constantly under pressure to follow the fashion in case our friends think we are odd or
dull.
What causes fashions to change? Sometimes convenience or practical necessity or just
the fancy of an influential person can establish a fashion. Take hats, for example. In cold
climates, early buildings were cold inside, so people wore hats indoors as well as outside. In
recent times, the late President Kennedy caused a depression in the American hat industry by
not wearing hats: more American men followed his example.
There is also a cyclical pattern in fashion. In the 1920s in Europe and America, short
skirts became fashionable. After World War Two, they dropped to ankle length. Then they
got shorter and shorter until the miniskirt was in fashion. After a few more years, skirts
became longer again.
Today, society is much freer and easier than it used to be. It is no longer necessary to
dress like everyone else. Within reason, you can dress as you like or do your hair the way
you like instead of the way you should because it is the fashion. The popularity of jeans and
the "untidy" look seems to be a reaction against the increasingly expensive fashions of the top
fashion houses.
At the same time, appearance is still important in certain circumstances and then we
must choose our clothes carefully. It would be foolish to go to an interview for a job in a law
firm wearing jeans and a sweater; and it would be discourteous to visit some distinguished
scholar looking as if we were going to the beach or a night club. However, you need never
feel depressed if you don't look like the latest fashion photo. Look around you and you’ll see
that no one else does either!
72. The author thinks that people are____________
A. satisfied with their appearance.
B. concerned about appearance in old age.
C. far from neglecting what is in fashion.
D. reluctant to follow the trends in fashion.
73. Fashion magazines and TV advertisement seem to link fashion to _________
A. confidence in life. B. personal dress.
C. individual hair style. D. personal future.
74. Causes of fashions are ____________
A. uniform. B. varied
C. unknown D. inexplicable.
75. Present-day society is much freer and earlier because it emphasizes ________
A. uniformity. B. formality.
C. informality D. individuality.
76. Which is the main idea of the last paragraph?
A. Care about appearance in formal situations.
B. Fashion in formal and informal situations.
C. Ignoring, appearance in informal situations.
D. Ignoring appearance in all situations.
TEXT D
Massive changes in all of the world's deeply cherished sporting habits are underway.
Whether it's one of London's parks full of people playing softball, and Russians taking up
rugby, or the Superbowl rivaling the British Football Cup Final as a televised: spectator event
in Britain, ;he patterns of players and spectators are changing beyond recognition, We are
witnessing a globalization of our sporting culture ........
That annual bicycle race, the Tour de France, much loved by the French is a good case
in point. Just a few years back it was a strictly continental affair with France, Belgium and
Holland, Spain and Italy taking part. But in recent years it has been dominated by Colombian mountain climbers, and American and Irish riders.
The people who really matter welcome the shift toward globalization. Peugeot. Michelin
and Panasonic are multi-national corporations that want worldwide returns for the millions
they invest in teams. So it does them literally a world of good to see this unofficial world
championship become just that.
This is undoubtedly an economic-based revolution we are witnessing here,, one made
possible by. communications technology, but made to happen because of marketing considera-
tions. Sell the game and you can sell Coca Cola or Budweiser as well.
The skilful way in which American football has been sold to Europe is a good example of
how all sports will develop. The aim of course is not really to Spread the sport for its own
sake, but to increase the number of people interested in the major money-making events.
The economics of the Superbowl are already astronomical. With seats at US$125, gate
receipts alone were a staggering $10,000,000. The most important statistic of the day, however, was the $100,000,000 in TV advertising fees. Imagine how much that becomes when the
eyes of the world are watching.
So it came as a terrible shock, but not really as a surprise, to learn that some people are
now suggesting that soccer change from being a game of two 45-minute halves, to one of four
25-minute quarters. The idea is unashamedly to capture more advertising revenue, without
giving any thought for the integrity of a sport which relies for its essence on the flowing
nature of the action.
Moreover, as sports expand into world markets, and as our choice of sports as consumers
also grows, so we will demand to see them played at a higher and higher level. In boxing
we have already seen numerous, dubious world title categories because people will not pay to
see anything less than a " World Title " fight, and this means that the title fights have to be
held in different countries around the world!
