题目内容
Directions: In this section, you are going to read a passage with 10 statements attached to it. Each statement contains information given in one of the paragraphs. Identify the paragraph from which the information is derived. You may choose a paragraph more than once. Each paragraph is marked with a letter. Answer the questions by marking the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2.Surviving the Recession A. America’s recession began quietly at the end of 2007. Since then it has evolved into a global crisis. Reasonable people may disagree about whom to blame. Financiers who were not as clever as they thought they were Regulators falling asleep at work Consumers who borrowed too much Politicians who thoughtlessly promoted home-ownership for those who could not afford it All are guilty; and what a mess they have created. B. Since 2007 America has shed 5 million jobs. More than 15% of the workforce are jobless or underemployed—roughly 25 million workers. The only industries swelling their payrolls are health care, utilities and the federal government. The value of listed shares in American firms collapsed by 57% from its peak in October 2007 to a low in March this year, though it has since bounced back somewhat. Industrial production fell by 12.8% in the year to March, the worst slide since the Second World War. Mark Zandi, an economist at Moody’s Economy.com, predicts that the recession will shrink America’s economy by 3.5% in total. For most executives, this is the worst business environment they’ve ever seen. C. Times are so tough that even bosses are taking pay cuts. Median (中位数的) pay for chief executives of S&P 500 companies fell 6.8% in 2008. The overthrown business giants of Wall Street took the biggest knock, with average pay cuts of 38% and median bonuses of zero. But there was some pain for everyone: median pay for chief executives of non-financial firms in the S&P 500 fell by 2.7%. D. Nearly every business has a sad tale to tell. For example, Arne Sorenson, the president of Marriott hotels, likens the crisis to the downturn that hit his business after September 11th, 2001. When the twin towers fell, Americans stopped travelling. Marriott had its worst quarter ever, with revenues per room falling by 25%. This year, without a terrorist attack, the hotel industry is "putting the same numbers on the board," says Mr. Sorenson. E. The hotel bust (不景气), like most busts, was preceded by a breathtaking boom. Although many other big firms resisted the temptation to over-borrow, developers borrowed heavily and built bigger and fancier hotels as if the whole world were planning a holiday in Las Vegas. When the bubble burst, demand collapsed. Hotel owners found themselves with a huge number of empty rooms even as a lot of unnecessary new hotels were ready to open. F. Other industries have suffered even more. Large numbers of builders, property firms and retailers have gone bankrupt. And a disaster has hit Detroit. Last year the American car industry had the capacity to make 17 million vehicles. Sales in 2009 could be barely haft of that. The Big Three American carmakers—General Motors, Ford and Chrysler—accumulated ruinous costs over the post-war years, such as gold-plated health plans and pensions for workers who retired as young as 48. All three are desperately restructuring. Only Ford may survive in its current form. G. Hard times breed hard feelings. Few Americans understand what caused the recession. Some are seeking scapegoats (替罪羊). Politicians are happy to take advantage. Bosses have been summoned to Washington to be scolded on live television. The president condemns their greed. Extravagance (奢侈) Is Out H. Business folk are bending over backwards to avoid seeming extravagant. Meetings at resorts are suddenly unacceptable. Goldman Sachs, an investment bank, cancelled a conference in Las Vegas at the last minute and rebooked it in San Francisco, which cost more but sounded less fun. I. Anyway, the pain will eventually end. American business will regain its shine. Many firms will die, but the survivors will emerge leaner and stronger than before. The financial sector’s share of the economy will shrink, and stay shrunk for years to come. The importance of non-financial firms will accordingly rise, along with their ability to attract the best talent. America will remain the best place on earth to do business, so long as Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress resist the temptation to interfere too much, and so long as organised labour does not overplay its hand. J. The crisis will prove hugely disruptive (破坏性的), however. Bad management techniques will be exposed. Necessity will force the swift adoption of more efficient ones. At the same time, technological innovation (创新) will barely pause for breath, and two big political changes seem likely. K. Mr. Obama’s plan to curb carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions (排放), though necessary, will be far from cost-free, whatever his sunny speeches on the subject might suggest. The shift to a low-carbon economy will help some firms, hurt others and require every organisation that uses much energy to rethink how it operates. It is harder to predict how Mr. Obama’s proposed reforms to the failing health-care system will turn out. If he succeeds in curbing costs—a big if—it would be a huge gain for America. Some businesses will benefit but the vast bulk of the savings will be captured by workers, not their employers. L. In the next couple of years the businesses that thrive will be those that are tight with costs, careful of debt, cautious with cash flow and extremely attentive to what customers want. They will include plenty of names no one has yet heard of. M. Times change, and corporations change with them. In 1955 Time’s Man of the Year was Harlow Curtice, the boss of GM. His firm was leading America towards "a new economic order," the magazine wrote. Thanks to men like Curtice, "the bonds of scarcity" had been broken and America was rolling "to an all-time high of prosperity." Soon, Americans would need to spend "comparatively little time earning a living." N. Half a century later GM is a typical example of poor management. In March its chief executive was fired by Time’s current Man of the Year, Mr. Obama. The government now backs up the domestic car industry, lending it money and overseeing its turnaround plans. With luck, this will be short-lived. But there is a danger that Washington will end up micromanaging not only Detroit but also other parts of the economy. And clever as Mr. Obama’s advisers are, history suggests they will be bad at this. In March, General Motors’ chief executive lost the Time’s Man of the Year to Mr. Obama for poor management.
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I am afraid to sleep. I have been afraid to sleep for the last few weeks. I am so tired that, finally, I do sleep, but only for a few minutes. It is not a bad dream that wakes me; it is the reality I took with me into sleep. I try to think of something else. Immediately the woman in the marketplace comes into my mind. I was on my way to dinner last night when I saw her. She was selling skirts. She moved with the same ease and loveliness I often saw in the women of Laos. Her long black hair was as shiny as the black silk of the skirts she was selling. In her hair, she wore three silk ribbons, blue, green, and white. They reminded me of my childhood and how my girlfriends and I used to spend hours braiding ribbons into our hair. I don’t know the word for "ribbons," so I put my hand to my own hair and, with three fingers against my head, I looked at her ribbons and said "beautiful." She lowered her eyes and said nothing. I wasn’t sure if she understood me (I don’t speak Laotian very well). I looked back down at the skirts. They had designs on them: squares and triangles and circles of pink and green silk. They were very pretty. I decided to buy one of those skirts, and I began to bargain with her over the price. It is the custom to bargain in Asia. In Laos bargaining is done in soft voices and easy moves with the sort of quiet peacefulness. She smiled, more with her eyes than with her lips. She was pleased by the few words I was able to say in her language. Although they were mostly numbers, and she saw that I understood something about the soft playfulness of bargaining. We shook our heads in disagreement over the price; then, immediately, we made another offer and then another shake of the head. She was so pleased that unexpectedly, she accepted the last offer I made. But it was too soon. The price was too low. She was being too generous and wouldn’t make enough money. I moved quickly and picked up two more skirts and paid for all three at the price set; that way I was able to pay her three times as much before she had a chance to lower the price for the larger purchase. She smiled openly then, and, for the first time in months, my spirit lifted. I almost felt happy. The feeling stayed with me while she wrapped the skirts in a newspaper and handed them to me. When I left, though, the feeling left, too. It was as though it stayed behind in marketplace. I left tears in my throat. I wanted to cry. I didn’t, of course. I have learned to defend myself against what is hard; without knowing it, I have also learned to defend myself against what is soft and what should be easy. I get up, light a candle and want to look at the skirts. They are still in the newspaper that the woman wrapped them in. I remove the paper, and raise the skirts up to look at them again before I pack them. Something falls to the floor. I reach down and feel something cool in my hand. I move close to the candlelight to see what I have. There are five long silk ribbons in my hand, all different colors. The woman in the marketplace! She has given these ribbons to me! There is no defense against a generous spirit, and this time I cry, and very hard, as if I could make up for all the months that I didn’t cry. When the writer left the marketplace, she wanted to cry, but did not because ______.
A Mess on the Ladder of Success A. Throughout American history there has almost always been at least one central economic narrative that gave the ambitious or unsatisfied reason to pack up and seek their fortune elsewhere. For the first 300 or so years of European settlement, the story was about moving outward: getting immigrants to the continent and then to the frontier to clear the prairies (大草原), drain the wetlands and build new cities. B. By the end of the 19th century, as the frontier vanished, the US had a mild panic attack. What would this energetic, enterprising country be without new lands to conquer Some people, such as Teddy Roosevelt, decided to keep on conquering (Cuba, the Philippines, etc.), but eventually, in industrialization, the US found a new narrative of economic mobility at home. From the 1890s to the 1960s, people moved from farm to city, first in the North and then in the South. In fact, by the 1950s, there was enough prosperity and white-collar work that many began to move to the suburbs. As the population aged, there was also a shift from the cold Rust Belt to the comforts of the Sun Belt. We think of this as an old person’s migration, but it created many jobs for the young in construction and health care, not to mention tourism, retail and restaurants. C. For the last 20 years—from the end of the cold war through two burst bubbles in a single decade—the US has been casting about for its next economic narrative. And now it is experiencing another period of panic, which is bad news for much of the workforce but particularly for its youngest members. D. The US has always been a remarkably mobile country, but new data from the Census Bureau indicate that mobility has reached its lowest level in recorded history. Sure, some people are stuck in homes valued at less than their mortgages (抵押贷款), but many young people—who don’t own homes and don’t yet have families—are staying put, too. This suggests, among other things, that people aren’t packing up for new economic opportunities the way they used to. Rather than dividing the country into the 1 percentres versus (与……相对) everyone else, the split in our economy is really between two other classes: the mobile and immobile. E. Part of the problem is that the country’s largest industries are in decline. In the past, it was perfectly clear where young people should go for work (Chicago in the 1870s, Detroit in the 1910s, Houston in the 1970s) and, more or less, what they’d be doing when they got there (killing cattle, building cars, selling oil). And these industries were large enough to offer jobs to each class of worker, from unskilled laborer to manager or engineer. Today, the few bright spots in our economy are relatively small (though some promise future growth) and decentralized. There are great jobs in Silicon Valley, in the biotech research capitals of Boston and Raleigh-Durham and in advanced manufacturing plants along the southern I-85 corridor. These companies recruit all over the country and the globe for workers with specific abilities. (You don’t need to be the next Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, to get a job in one of the microhubs (微中心), by the way. But you will almost certainly need at least a B.A. in computer science or a year or two at a technical school.) This newer, select job market is national, and it offers members of the mobile class competitive salaries and higher bargaining power. F. Many members of the immobile class, on the other hand, live in the America of the gloomy headlines. If you have no specialized skills, there’s little reason to uproot to another state and be the last in line for a low-paying job at a new auto plant or a green-energy startup. The surprise in the census (普查) data, however, is that the immobile workforce is not limited to unskilled workers. In fact, many have a college degree. G. Until now, a B.A. in any subject was a near-guarantee of at least middle-class wages. But today, a quarter of college graduates make less than the typical worker without a bachelor’s degree. David Autor, a prominent labor economist at M.I.T., recently told me that a college degree alone is no longer a guarantor of a good job. While graduates from top universities are still likely to get a good job no matter what their major is, he said, graduates from less-famous schools are going to be judged on what they know. To compete for jobs on a national level, they should be armed with the skills that emerging industries need whether technical or not. H. Those without such specialized skills—like poetry, or even history, majors—are already competing with their neighbours for the same sorts of second-rate, poorer-paying local jobs like low-level management or big-box retail sales. And with the low-skilled labor market atomized into thousands of microeconomies, immobile workers are less able to demand better wages or conditions or to acquire valuable skills. I. So what, exactly, should the ambitious young worker of today be learning Unfortunately, it’s hard to say, since the US doesn’t have one clear national project. There are plenty of emerging, smaller industries, but which ones are the most promising (Nanotechnology’s (纳米技术) moment of remarkable growth seems to have been 5 years into the future for something like 20 years now.) It’s not clear exactly what skills are most needed or if they will even be valuable in a decade. J. What is clear is that all sorts of government issues—education, health-insurance portability, worker retraining—are no longer just bonuses to already prosperous lives but existential requirements. It’s in all of our interests to make sure that as many people as possible are able to move toward opportunity, and America’s ability to invest people and money in exciting new ideas is still greater than that of most other wealthy countries. (As recently as five years ago, US migration was twice the rate of European Union states.) That, at least, is some comfort at a time when our national economy seems to be searching for its next story line. America is better at innovation than most other rich nations.
A Mess on the Ladder of Success A. Throughout American history there has almost always been at least one central economic narrative that gave the ambitious or unsatisfied reason to pack up and seek their fortune elsewhere. For the first 300 or so years of European settlement, the story was about moving outward: getting immigrants to the continent and then to the frontier to clear the prairies (大草原), drain the wetlands and build new cities. B. By the end of the 19th century, as the frontier vanished, the US had a mild panic attack. What would this energetic, enterprising country be without new lands to conquer Some people, such as Teddy Roosevelt, decided to keep on conquering (Cuba, the Philippines, etc.), but eventually, in industrialization, the US found a new narrative of economic mobility at home. From the 1890s to the 1960s, people moved from farm to city, first in the North and then in the South. In fact, by the 1950s, there was enough prosperity and white-collar work that many began to move to the suburbs. As the population aged, there was also a shift from the cold Rust Belt to the comforts of the Sun Belt. We think of this as an old person’s migration, but it created many jobs for the young in construction and health care, not to mention tourism, retail and restaurants. C. For the last 20 years—from the end of the cold war through two burst bubbles in a single decade—the US has been casting about for its next economic narrative. And now it is experiencing another period of panic, which is bad news for much of the workforce but particularly for its youngest members. D. The US has always been a remarkably mobile country, but new data from the Census Bureau indicate that mobility has reached its lowest level in recorded history. Sure, some people are stuck in homes valued at less than their mortgages (抵押贷款), but many young people—who don’t own homes and don’t yet have families—are staying put, too. This suggests, among other things, that people aren’t packing up for new economic opportunities the way they used to. Rather than dividing the country into the 1 percentres versus (与……相对) everyone else, the split in our economy is really between two other classes: the mobile and immobile. E. Part of the problem is that the country’s largest industries are in decline. In the past, it was perfectly clear where young people should go for work (Chicago in the 1870s, Detroit in the 1910s, Houston in the 1970s) and, more or less, what they’d be doing when they got there (killing cattle, building cars, selling oil). And these industries were large enough to offer jobs to each class of worker, from unskilled laborer to manager or engineer. Today, the few bright spots in our economy are relatively small (though some promise future growth) and decentralized. There are great jobs in Silicon Valley, in the biotech research capitals of Boston and Raleigh-Durham and in advanced manufacturing plants along the southern I-85 corridor. These companies recruit all over the country and the globe for workers with specific abilities. (You don’t need to be the next Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, to get a job in one of the microhubs (微中心), by the way. But you will almost certainly need at least a B.A. in computer science or a year or two at a technical school.) This newer, select job market is national, and it offers members of the mobile class competitive salaries and higher bargaining power. F. Many members of the immobile class, on the other hand, live in the America of the gloomy headlines. If you have no specialized skills, there’s little reason to uproot to another state and be the last in line for a low-paying job at a new auto plant or a green-energy startup. The surprise in the census (普查) data, however, is that the immobile workforce is not limited to unskilled workers. In fact, many have a college degree. G. Until now, a B.A. in any subject was a near-guarantee of at least middle-class wages. But today, a quarter of college graduates make less than the typical worker without a bachelor’s degree. David Autor, a prominent labor economist at M.I.T., recently told me that a college degree alone is no longer a guarantor of a good job. While graduates from top universities are still likely to get a good job no matter what their major is, he said, graduates from less-famous schools are going to be judged on what they know. To compete for jobs on a national level, they should be armed with the skills that emerging industries need whether technical or not. H. Those without such specialized skills—like poetry, or even history, majors—are already competing with their neighbours for the same sorts of second-rate, poorer-paying local jobs like low-level management or big-box retail sales. And with the low-skilled labor market atomized into thousands of microeconomies, immobile workers are less able to demand better wages or conditions or to acquire valuable skills. I. So what, exactly, should the ambitious young worker of today be learning Unfortunately, it’s hard to say, since the US doesn’t have one clear national project. There are plenty of emerging, smaller industries, but which ones are the most promising (Nanotechnology’s (纳米技术) moment of remarkable growth seems to have been 5 years into the future for something like 20 years now.) It’s not clear exactly what skills are most needed or if they will even be valuable in a decade. J. What is clear is that all sorts of government issues—education, health-insurance portability, worker retraining—are no longer just bonuses to already prosperous lives but existential requirements. It’s in all of our interests to make sure that as many people as possible are able to move toward opportunity, and America’s ability to invest people and money in exciting new ideas is still greater than that of most other wealthy countries. (As recently as five years ago, US migration was twice the rate of European Union states.) That, at least, is some comfort at a time when our national economy seems to be searching for its next story line. Computer or other technical skills are needed to get a well-paying job in high-tech or advanced manufacturing.
Directions: In this section, you are going to read a passage with 10 statements attached to it. Each statement contains information given in one of the paragraphs. Identify the paragraph from which the information is derived. You may choose a paragraph more than once. Each paragraph is marked with a letter. Answer the questions by marking the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2.Surviving the Recession A. America’s recession began quietly at the end of 2007. Since then it has evolved into a global crisis. Reasonable people may disagree about whom to blame. Financiers who were not as clever as they thought they were Regulators falling asleep at work Consumers who borrowed too much Politicians who thoughtlessly promoted home-ownership for those who could not afford it All are guilty; and what a mess they have created. B. Since 2007 America has shed 5 million jobs. More than 15% of the workforce are jobless or underemployed—roughly 25 million workers. The only industries swelling their payrolls are health care, utilities and the federal government. The value of listed shares in American firms collapsed by 57% from its peak in October 2007 to a low in March this year, though it has since bounced back somewhat. Industrial production fell by 12.8% in the year to March, the worst slide since the Second World War. Mark Zandi, an economist at Moody’s Economy.com, predicts that the recession will shrink America’s economy by 3.5% in total. For most executives, this is the worst business environment they’ve ever seen. C. Times are so tough that even bosses are taking pay cuts. Median (中位数的) pay for chief executives of S&P 500 companies fell 6.8% in 2008. The overthrown business giants of Wall Street took the biggest knock, with average pay cuts of 38% and median bonuses of zero. But there was some pain for everyone: median pay for chief executives of non-financial firms in the S&P 500 fell by 2.7%. D. Nearly every business has a sad tale to tell. For example, Arne Sorenson, the president of Marriott hotels, likens the crisis to the downturn that hit his business after September 11th, 2001. When the twin towers fell, Americans stopped travelling. Marriott had its worst quarter ever, with revenues per room falling by 25%. This year, without a terrorist attack, the hotel industry is "putting the same numbers on the board," says Mr. Sorenson. E. The hotel bust (不景气), like most busts, was preceded by a breathtaking boom. Although many other big firms resisted the temptation to over-borrow, developers borrowed heavily and built bigger and fancier hotels as if the whole world were planning a holiday in Las Vegas. When the bubble burst, demand collapsed. Hotel owners found themselves with a huge number of empty rooms even as a lot of unnecessary new hotels were ready to open. F. Other industries have suffered even more. Large numbers of builders, property firms and retailers have gone bankrupt. And a disaster has hit Detroit. Last year the American car industry had the capacity to make 17 million vehicles. Sales in 2009 could be barely haft of that. The Big Three American carmakers—General Motors, Ford and Chrysler—accumulated ruinous costs over the post-war years, such as gold-plated health plans and pensions for workers who retired as young as 48. All three are desperately restructuring. Only Ford may survive in its current form. G. Hard times breed hard feelings. Few Americans understand what caused the recession. Some are seeking scapegoats (替罪羊). Politicians are happy to take advantage. Bosses have been summoned to Washington to be scolded on live television. The president condemns their greed. Extravagance (奢侈) Is Out H. Business folk are bending over backwards to avoid seeming extravagant. Meetings at resorts are suddenly unacceptable. Goldman Sachs, an investment bank, cancelled a conference in Las Vegas at the last minute and rebooked it in San Francisco, which cost more but sounded less fun. I. Anyway, the pain will eventually end. American business will regain its shine. Many firms will die, but the survivors will emerge leaner and stronger than before. The financial sector’s share of the economy will shrink, and stay shrunk for years to come. The importance of non-financial firms will accordingly rise, along with their ability to attract the best talent. America will remain the best place on earth to do business, so long as Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress resist the temptation to interfere too much, and so long as organised labour does not overplay its hand. J. The crisis will prove hugely disruptive (破坏性的), however. Bad management techniques will be exposed. Necessity will force the swift adoption of more efficient ones. At the same time, technological innovation (创新) will barely pause for breath, and two big political changes seem likely. K. Mr. Obama’s plan to curb carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions (排放), though necessary, will be far from cost-free, whatever his sunny speeches on the subject might suggest. The shift to a low-carbon economy will help some firms, hurt others and require every organisation that uses much energy to rethink how it operates. It is harder to predict how Mr. Obama’s proposed reforms to the failing health-care system will turn out. If he succeeds in curbing costs—a big if—it would be a huge gain for America. Some businesses will benefit but the vast bulk of the savings will be captured by workers, not their employers. L. In the next couple of years the businesses that thrive will be those that are tight with costs, careful of debt, cautious with cash flow and extremely attentive to what customers want. They will include plenty of names no one has yet heard of. M. Times change, and corporations change with them. In 1955 Time’s Man of the Year was Harlow Curtice, the boss of GM. His firm was leading America towards "a new economic order," the magazine wrote. Thanks to men like Curtice, "the bonds of scarcity" had been broken and America was rolling "to an all-time high of prosperity." Soon, Americans would need to spend "comparatively little time earning a living." N. Half a century later GM is a typical example of poor management. In March its chief executive was fired by Time’s current Man of the Year, Mr. Obama. The government now backs up the domestic car industry, lending it money and overseeing its turnaround plans. With luck, this will be short-lived. But there is a danger that Washington will end up micromanaging not only Detroit but also other parts of the economy. And clever as Mr. Obama’s advisers are, history suggests they will be bad at this. Obama’s plan to limit carbon dioxide emissions will by no means be inexpensive.
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