Newcomers to San Francisco who can’t speak English have a hard time finding an apartment, a job, or health care. Institutions that baffle and frustrate native-born Americans, such as the Department of Motor Vehicles, are even more intimidating to immigrants. Many immigrants are greeted at the airport by relatives who can ease their transition to life in the U.S. But some arrive without contacts and need immediate help. In San Francisco, this help comes more from local ethnic communities than from the government. Organizations such as the Chinatown Youth Center and Jewish Family and Children’s Services apply for grant money and provide services to immigrants. Many Hispanic immigrants to the city seek help at the Good Samaritan Family Resource Center in the heart of the Mission district. The Good Samaritan center teaches "survival" English to help people get by until they can enroll in a regular language class. The center also teaches newcomers about life in San Francisco, such as how to find health care and schools. The center offers support groups that function as extended families. If a client is afraid to go to the hospital, for example, someone from the support group will go with her. English classes have become a precious commodity in San Francisco, with some people waiting six months to get instruction. In the meantime, they have to survive the best they can, often without a job. Foreign-born Americans who do not speak English well have much higher unemployment rates than those who speak English well, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This rule is not true for female Hispanics, however. Many Hispanic immigrants live in Spanish-speaking communities where they can get by without learning English. Government offices try to help non-English speakers, but their bureaucracy is intimidating to the newcomer who wants a driver’s license or Social Security number. Immigrants "are afraid that no one will understand them," says Joe C. Buenavista, principal of San Francisco’s Newcomer High School. From the passage we can infer that San Francisco is ______ .
A. a place with a diverse population
B. the state economic center
C. a big city with high unemployment
D. a densely populated community
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My writing in my late teens and early adulthood was fashioned after the U.S. short stories and poetry taught in the high schools of the 1940s and 1950s, but by the 1960s, after I had gone to college and dropped out and served in the military, I began to develop topics and themes from my Native American background. The experience in my village of Deetziyamah and Acoma Pueblo was readily accessible. My mother was a potter of the well-known Acoma clayware. My father carved figures from wood and did beadwork. There was always some kind of artistic endeavor that Native American people, set themselves to, although they did not necessarily articulate it as "Art" in the sense of Western civilization. When I turned my attention to my own heritage, I did so because this was my identity, and I wanted to write about what that meant. My desire was to write about the integrity and dignity of a Native American identity, and at the same time I wanted to look at what this was within the context of an America that had too often denied its Native American heritage. To a great extent my writing has a natural political-cultural bent simply because I was nurtured intellectually and emotionally within an atmosphere of Native American resistance. The Acoma Pueblo, despite losing much of their land and surrounded by a foreign civilization, have not lost sight of their native heritage. At times, in the past, it was outright armed struggle; currently, it is often in the legal arena, and it is in the field of literature. In 1981, when I was invited to the White House for an event celebrating American poets and poetry, I did not immediately accept the invitation. I questioned myself about the possibility that I was merely being exploited as an Indian, and I hedged against accepting. But then I recalled the elders going among our people in the poor days of the 1950s, asking for donations in order to finance a trip to the nation’s capital. They were to make another countless appeal on behalf of our people, to demand justice, to reclaim lost land even though there was only spare hope they would be successful. I went to the White House realizing that I was to do no less than they and those who had fought in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, and I read my poems and sang songs that were later described as "guttural" by a Washington, D.C. newspaper. I suppose it is more or less understandable why such a view of Native American literature is held by many, and it is also clear why there should be a political stand taken in my writing and those of my sister and brother Native American writers. The 1960s and afterward have been an invigorating and liberating period for Native American people. It has been only a little more than twenty years since Native American writers began to write and publish extensively, but we are writing and publishing more and more; we can only go forward. We come from an ageless, continuing oral tradition that informs us of our values, concepts, and notions as native people, and it is amazing how much of this tradition is ingrained so deeply in our contemporary writing, considering the brutal efforts of cultural repression that was not long ago outright U.S. policy. In spite of the fact that there is to some extent the same repression today, we persist and insist in living, believing, hoping, loving, speaking, and writing as Native Americans. The effect of the quoted word "guttural" as the author uses it in the third paragraph of the selection is to ______ .
A. communicate the newspaper’s lack of understanding and respect for the author’s presentation
B. emphasize the dramatic effect on the White House audience of the author’s reading of his poems and performance of traditional Pueblo songs
C. describe most accurately how the author felt about his White House reading of his poems
D. convey the sound of the Acoma Pueblo language to readers who are unfamiliar with it
Monochronic time (M-time) and polychronic time (P-time) represent two variant solutions to the use of both time and space as organizing frames for activities. Space is included because the two systems (time and space) are functionally interrelated. M-time emphasizes schedules, segmentation, and promptness. P-time systems are characterized by several things happening at once. They stress involvement of people and completion of transactions rather than adherence to preset schedules. P-time is treated as much less tangible than M-time. P-time is apt to be considered a point rather than a ribbon or a road, and that point is sacred. Americans overseas are psychologically stressed in many ways when confronted by P-time systems such as those in Latin America and the Middle East. In the markets and stores of Mediterranean countries, one is surrounded by other customers vying for the attention of a clerk. There is no order as to who is served next, and to the northern European or American, confusion and clamor abound. In a different context, the same patterns apply within the governmental bureaucracies of Mediterranean countries: A cabinet officer, for instance, may have a large reception area outside his private office. There are almost always small groups waiting in this area, and these groups are visited by government officials, who move around the room conferring with each. Much of their business is transacted in public instead of having a series of private meetings in an inner office. Particularly distressing to Americans is the way in which appointments are handled by polychronic people. Appointments just don’t carry the same weight as they do in the United States. Things are constantly shifted around. Nothing seems solid or firm, particularly plans for the future, and there are always changes in the most important plans right up to the very last minute. In contrast, within the Western world, man finds little in life that is exempt from the iron hand of M-time. In fact, his social and business life, even his sex life are apt to be completely time dominated. From the passage, we can most safely conclude that American overseas ______ .
A. can cooperate with Europeans very well
B. emphasize on many things simultaneously
C. often have a kind of tension when working with P-time people
D. often feel excited about living or working with M-time people
Newcomers to San Francisco who can’t speak English have a hard time finding an apartment, a job, or health care. Institutions that baffle and frustrate native-born Americans, such as the Department of Motor Vehicles, are even more intimidating to immigrants. Many immigrants are greeted at the airport by relatives who can ease their transition to life in the U.S. But some arrive without contacts and need immediate help. In San Francisco, this help comes more from local ethnic communities than from the government. Organizations such as the Chinatown Youth Center and Jewish Family and Children’s Services apply for grant money and provide services to immigrants. Many Hispanic immigrants to the city seek help at the Good Samaritan Family Resource Center in the heart of the Mission district. The Good Samaritan center teaches "survival" English to help people get by until they can enroll in a regular language class. The center also teaches newcomers about life in San Francisco, such as how to find health care and schools. The center offers support groups that function as extended families. If a client is afraid to go to the hospital, for example, someone from the support group will go with her. English classes have become a precious commodity in San Francisco, with some people waiting six months to get instruction. In the meantime, they have to survive the best they can, often without a job. Foreign-born Americans who do not speak English well have much higher unemployment rates than those who speak English well, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This rule is not true for female Hispanics, however. Many Hispanic immigrants live in Spanish-speaking communities where they can get by without learning English. Government offices try to help non-English speakers, but their bureaucracy is intimidating to the newcomer who wants a driver’s license or Social Security number. Immigrants "are afraid that no one will understand them," says Joe C. Buenavista, principal of San Francisco’s Newcomer High School. The "survival" English here refers to ______ .
A. the English of old times
B. the standard English
C. the old English still being used today
D. the basic English for everyday life
Much of many managers’ time is taken up with meetings. There are meetings with colleagues to agree a course of action. There are meetings with superiors to report and to discuss future policies. There are meetings with subordinates. Many would say that there are far too many meetings; some would be even less polite. There can, however, be no doubt that meetings are part of every manager’s life. He should therefore know how to cope with them. He should know the techniques of communication in meetings. He should know how to use these techniques to his own advantage. It is sometimes suggested that when a manager can’t think what to do, he holds a meeting. But meetings in themselves are not an end product, no matter what some may think. They are merely one of many means of management communication. It may well be that a problem can be solved by a one-to-one discussion, face-to-face, or even by telephone. If the need can be met without a meeting, so be it. Let us therefore define a meeting, in the management sense, as the gathering together of a group of people for a controlled discussion, with a specific purpose. Each of those attending the meeting has a need to be there and both discussion and its result would not be so well achieved in any other way. It is often advisable to calculate the cost of a meeting. A simple meeting of a few people on middle-executive salaries can soon run into three-figure costs for wages alone. Do not, therefore, have unnecessary people sitting in at meetings and do ensure that all meetings are both efficient and effective. It is implied in the last few instances that ______ .
A. the problem to be discussed at a meeting should be simple and the members of executives should be limited to 3 in number
B. unnecessary people may stand but not sit in at meetings
C. the wages of the middle executives for a simple meeting may range from one to several hundred US dollars
D. it is often advisable to invite only those people to a meeting whose salaries are comparatively low