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Passage ThreeIn recent years, railroads have been combining with each other, merging into super systems, causing heightened concerns about monopoly. As recently as 1995, the top four railroads accounted for under 70 per cent of the total ton-miles moved by rails. Next year, after a series of mergers is completed, just four rail roads will control well over 90 percent of all the freight moved by major rail carriers.Supporters of the new super systems argue that these mergers will allow for substantial cost reductions and better coordinated service. Any threat of monopoly, they argue, is removed by fierce competition from trucks. But many shippers complain that for heavy bulk commodities traveling long distances, such as coal, chemicals, and grain, trucking is too costly and the railroads therefore have them by the throat.The vast consolidation within the rail industry means that most shippers are served by only one rail company. Railroads typically charge such "captive" shippers 20 to 30 percent more than they do when another railroad is competing for the business. Shippers who feel they are being overcharged have the right to appeal to the federal government’s Surface Transportation Board for rate relief, but the process is expensive, time consuming, and will work only in truly extreme cases.Railroads justify rate discrimination against captive shippers on the grounds that in the long nm it reduces everyone’s cost. If railroads charged all customers the same average rate, they argue, shippers who have the option of switching to trucks or other forms of transportation would do so, leaving remaining customers to shoulder the cost of keeping up the line. It% theory to which many economists subscribe, but in practice it often leaves railroads in the position of determining which companies will flourish and which will fail. "Do we really want railroads to be the arbiters of who wins and who loses in the marketplace" asks Mar- tin Bercovici, a Washington lawyer who frequently represents shipper.Many captive shippers also worry they will soon be his with a round of huge rate increases. The railroad industry as a whole, despite its brightening fortuning fortunes, still does not earn enough to cover the cost of the capital it must invest to keep up with its surging traffic. Yet railroads continue to borrow billions to ac- quire one another, with Wall Street cheering them on. Consider the $10. 2 billion bid by Norfolk Southern and CSX to acquire Conrail this year. Conrail’s net railway operating income in 1996 was just $ 427 million, less than half of the carrying costs of the transaction. Who% going to pay for the rest of the bill Many captive shippers fear that they will, as Norfolk Southern and CSX increase their grip on the market. According to the text, the cost increase in the rail industry is mainly caused by （）.
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Directions:For each blank in the following passage, choose the best answer from the choices given below. Mark your answer on the Answer Sheet by drawing with a pencil a short bar across the corresponding letter in the brackets.Recruiting(招募) the right candidate to fill a vacancy can be a difficult and costly task. (31) the wrong person could be an expensive mistake which could cause personal problems for the whole department. And, as every HR(Human Resource) manager knows, it is much more difficult to get rid of someone than it is to (32) them. The HR manager’s first decision is (33) to recruit internal applicants or advertise the vacancy outside the company. (34) applicants are easy to recruit by memo, e-mail, or newsletter. Furthermore, they are easy to assess and know the company well. (35) , they rarely bring fresh ideas to a position. More- over, a rejected internal candidate might become unhappy and leave the company.Recruiting outside the company means either advertising the vacancy directly or (36) an employment agency. If the company decides to advertise the vacancy directly, it has to decide where to place the (37) . Traditionally this has meant newspapers and professional journals but now the Intemet is also very popular. The decision normally depends on the vacancy. Companies advertise blue-collar or clerical jobs in local news- papers and senior management (38) in national papers or professional journals, (39) the Intemet is one of the best ways of advertising IT vacancies or recruiting abroad. However, with the Internet is a risk (40) receiving unsuitable applications from all over the world. 37（）
Directions:For each blank in the following passage, choose the best answer from the choices given below. Mark your answer on the Answer Sheet by drawing with a pencil a short bar across the corresponding letter in the brackets.Recruiting(招募) the right candidate to fill a vacancy can be a difficult and costly task. (31) the wrong person could be an expensive mistake which could cause personal problems for the whole department. And, as every HR(Human Resource) manager knows, it is much more difficult to get rid of someone than it is to (32) them. The HR manager’s first decision is (33) to recruit internal applicants or advertise the vacancy outside the company. (34) applicants are easy to recruit by memo, e-mail, or newsletter. Furthermore, they are easy to assess and know the company well. (35) , they rarely bring fresh ideas to a position. More- over, a rejected internal candidate might become unhappy and leave the company.Recruiting outside the company means either advertising the vacancy directly or (36) an employment agency. If the company decides to advertise the vacancy directly, it has to decide where to place the (37) . Traditionally this has meant newspapers and professional journals but now the Intemet is also very popular. The decision normally depends on the vacancy. Companies advertise blue-collar or clerical jobs in local news- papers and senior management (38) in national papers or professional journals, (39) the Intemet is one of the best ways of advertising IT vacancies or recruiting abroad. However, with the Internet is a risk (40) receiving unsuitable applications from all over the world. 40（）
Directions:In this part there are 4 passages followed by questions or unfinished statements, each with four suggested answers. Choose the one you think is the best answer. Mark your choice on the Answer Sheet by drawing with a pencil a short bar across the corresponding letter in the brackets.Passage OneChildren live in a world in which science has tremendous importance. During their lifetimes it will affect them more and more. In time, many of them will work at jobs that depend heavily on science—for example, concerning energy sources, pollution control, highway safety, wilderness conservation, and population growth, and population growth. As taxpayers they will pay for scientific research and exploration. And, as consumers, they will Be bombarded(受到轰击) by advertising, much of which is said to be based on science.Therefore, it is important that children, the citizens of the future, become functionally acquainted with science-with the process and spirit of science, as well as with its facts and principles. Fortunately, science has a natural appeal for youngsters. They can relate it to so many things that they encounter—flashlights, tools, echoes, and rainbows. Besides, science is an excellent medium for teaching far more than content. It can help pupils learn to think logically, to organize and analyse ideas. It can provide practice in communication skills and mathematics. In fact, there is no area of the curriculum to which science cannot contribute, whether it is geography, history, language arts, music, or art!Above all, good science teaching leads to what might be called a "scientific attitude." Those who possess it seek answers through ohserving, experimenting, and reasoning, rather than blindly accepting the pronouncements of others. They weigh evidence carefully and reach conclusions with caution. While respecting the opinions of others, they expect honesty, accuracy, and objectivity and are on guard against hasty judgments and sweeping generalizations. All children should be developing this approach to solving problems, butit cannot be expected to appear automatically with the mere acquisition of information. Continual practice, through guided participation, is needed. In the passage the writer seems to （）.
Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1804. Hawthorne’s father was a sea captain. He died of fever when Hawthorne was only four. Hawthorne’s childhood was not particularly abnormal, as many famous authors have claimed to have. Hawthorne attended Bowdoin College and graduated after four years. After graduation, he returned to Salem. Contrary to his family’s expectations, Hawthorne did not begin to read law or enter business, rather he moved into his mother’s house to turn himself into a writer. Hawthorne’s first novel, Fanshawe, was published anonymously in 1828 at his own expense. Because of a lack of sales, Hawthorne recalled every copy he could find of the book and destroyed them. When a local printer delayed publishing his Seven Tales of My Native Land, Hawthorne withdrew the manuscript and burned it in a mood half-savage, half-despairing. He had destroyed other stories before publication because he thought they were "morbid." In 1837, at the age of thirty-two, Hawthorne published his first collection, Twice-Told Tales. Longfellow, the most popular poet of the day, gave it a flattering review. New York magazine editors read it and offered him jobs. Two years later, Hawthorne married Sophia. Hawthorne soon realized that supporting a wife was not as easy as he anticipated it to be. He could never manage it by Writing stories, so he decided to leave Salem for a political appointment as measurer of coal and salt in the Boston customhouse. The contrast between his old ways and this new way of life was a shock for Hawthorne. He had hoped to discover what "reality" was like as well as earn a respectable salary, and he gave it a try. After two years, however, he resigned from this "very grievous thralldom." Then Hawthorne moved to Concord, Massachusetts. Hawthorne produced more than twenty tales during three years in Concord, sold them to magazines, and then collected them in Mosses from an Old Manse. His reputation was growing. It took Hawthorne a return to Salem to bring him fame. After three years of dealing with the dullness of the work as a surveyor in the Salem customhouse, he was fired for political reasons. His wife comforted him by saying, "Now you can write your book." In seven months it was finished. In April 1850, The Scarlet Letter was published. Hawthorne called this book "positively a hell-fired story, into which I found it ahnost impossible to throw any cheering light." Some contemporary critics called it "America’s first tragedy". The last fourteen years of Hawthorne’s life were very different from the struggle to be recognized that his entire life had been about. Within a year Hawthorne finished and published another novel named The House of Seven Gables; a story about a Pyncheon family of Salem and Maule’s curse. A year later he published The Blithedale Romance, a satire of Brook Farm. After seven years in Europe, he tried an even more ambitious novel, The Marble Faun. Sadly, none of these novels reached the acclaim that The Scarlet Letter had with critics. The author implies in the passage that Hawthorn’s job at the Boston customhouse made him
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