Section II  Close Test

Directions:

For each numbered blank in the following passage, there are four choices marked [A], [B], [C] and [D]. Choose the best one and mark your answer on ANSWER SHEET 1 by blackening the corresponding letter in the brackets with a pencil. (10 points)

Vitamins are organic compounds necessary in small amounts in the diet for the normal growth and maintenance of life of animals, including man.

They do not provide energy, __41__ do they construct or build any part of the body. They are needed for __42__ foods into energy and body maintenance. There are thirteen or more of them, and if __43__ is missing a deficiency disease becomes __44__.

Vitamins are similar because they are made of the same elements -- usually carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and __45__ nitrogen. They are different __46__ their elements are arranged differently, and each vitamin __47__ one or more specific functions in the body.

__48__ enough vitamins is essential to life, although the body has no nutritional use for __49__ vitamins. Many people, __50__, believe in being on the “safe side” and thus take extra vitamins. However, a well-balanced diet will usually meet all the body’s vitamin needs.

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Section III  Reading Comprehension

Directions:

Each of the passages below is followed by some questions. For each question there are four answers marked [A], [B], [C] and [D]. Read the passages carefully and choose the best answer to each of the questions. Then mark your answer on ANSWER SHEET 1 by blackening the corresponding letter in the brackets with a pencil. (40 points)

Text 1

Tight-lipped elders used to say, “It’s not what you want in this world, but what you get.”

Psychology teaches that you do get what you want if you know what you want and want the right things.

You can make a mental blueprint of a desire as you would make a blueprint of a house, and each of us is continually making these blueprints in the general routine of everyday living. If we intend to have friends to dinner, we plan the menu, make a shopping list, decide which food to cook first, and such planning is an essential for any type of meal to be served.

Likewise, if you want to find a job, take a sheet of paper, and write a brief account of yourself. In making a blueprint for a job, begin with yourself, for when you know exactly what you have to offer, you can intelligently plan where to sell your services.

This account of yourself is actually a sketch of your working life and should include education, experience and references. Such an account is valuable. It can be referred to in filling out standard application blanks and is extremely helpful in personal interviews. While talking to you, you could-be employer is deciding whether your education, your experience, and other qualifications, will pay him to employ you and your “wares” and abilities must be displayed in an orderly and reasonably connected manner.

When you have carefully prepared a blueprint of your abilities and desires, you have something tangible to sell. Then you are ready to hunt for a job. Get all the possible information about your could-be job. Make inquiries as to the details regarding the job and the firm. Keep your eyes and ears open, and use your own judgment. Spend a certain amount of time each day seeking the employment you wish for, and keep in mind: Securing a job is your job now.

51.What do the elders mean when they say, “It’s not what you want in this world, but what you get.”?

52.A blueprint made before inviting a friend to dinner is used in this passage as ________.

53.According to the passage, one must write an account of himself before starting to find a job because ________.

54.When you have carefully prepared a blueprint of your abilities and desires, you have something ________.

Text 2

With the start of BBC World Service Television, millions of viewers in Asia and America can now watch the Corporation’s news coverage, as well as listen to it.

And of course in Britain listeners and viewers can tune in to two BBC television channels, five BBC national radio services and dozens of local radio stations. They are brought sport, comedy, drama, music, news and current affairs, education, religion, parliamentary coverage, children’s programmes and films for an annual license fee of 83 pounds per household.

It is a remarkable record, stretching back over 70 years -- yet the BBC’s future is now in doubt. The Corporation will survive as a publicly-funded broadcasting organization, at least for the time being, but its role, its size and its programmes are now the subject of a nation-wide debate in Britain.

The debate was launched by the Government, which invited anyone with an opinion of the BBC -- including ordinary listeners and viewers -- to say what was good or bad about the Corporation, and even whether they thought it was worth keeping. The reason for its inquiry is that the BBC’s royal charter runs out in 1996 and it must decide whether to keep the organization as it is, or to make changes.

Defenders of the Corporation -- of whom there are many -- are fond of quoting the American slogan “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” The BBC “ain’t broke,” they say, by which they mean it is not broken (as distinct from the word ‘broke’, meaning having no money), so why bother to change it?

Yet the BBC will have to change, because the broadcasting world around it is changing. The commercial TV channels - ITV and Channel 4 -- were required by the Thatcher Government’s Broadcasting Act to become more commercial, competing with each other for advertisers, and cutting costs and jobs. But it is the arrival of new satellite channels -- funded partly by advertising and partly by viewers’ subscriptions -- which will bring about the biggest changes in the long term.

55.The world famous BBC now faces ________.

56.In the passage, which of the following about the BBC is NOT mentioned as the key issue?

57.The BBC’s “royal charter” (Line 4, Paragraph 3) stands for ________.

58.The foremost reason why the BBC has to readjust itself is no other than ________.

Text 3

In the last half of the nineteenth century “capital” and “labour” were enlarging and perfecting their rival organizations on modern lines. Many an old firm was replaced by a limited liability company with a bureaucracy of salaried managers. The change met the technical requirements of the new age by engaging a large professional element and prevented the decline in efficiency that so commonly spoiled the fortunes of family firms in the second and third generation after the energetic founders. It was moreover a step away from individual initiative, towards collectivism and municipal and state-owned business. The railway companies, though still private business managed for the benefit of shareholders, were very unlike old family business. At the same time the great municipalities went into business to supply lighting, trams and other services to the taxpayers.

The growth of the limited liability company and municipal business had important consequences. Such large, impersonal manipulation of capital and industry greatly increased the numbers and importance of shareholders as a class, an element in national life representing irresponsible wealth detached from the land and the duties of the landowners; and almost equally detached from the responsible management of business. All through the nineteenth century, America, Africa, India, Australia and parts of Europe were being developed by British capital, and British shareholders were thus enriched by the world’s movement towards industrialization. Towns like Bournemouth and Eastbourne sprang up to house large “comfortable” classes who had retired on their incomes, and who had no relation to the rest of the community except that of drawing dividends and occasionally attending a shareholders’ meeting to dictate their orders to the management. On the other hand “shareholding” meant leisure and freedom which was used by many of the later Victorians for the highest purpose of a great civilization.

The “shareholders” as such had no knowledge of the lives, thoughts or needs of the workmen employed by the company in which he held shares, and his influence on the relations of capital and labour was not good. The paid manager acting for the company was in more direct relation with the men and their demands, but even he had seldom that familiar personal knowledge of the workmen which the employer had often had under the more patriarchal system of the old family business now passing away. Indeed the mere size of operations and the numbers of workmen involved rendered such personal relations impossible. Fortunately, however, the increasing power and organization of the trade unions, at least in all skilled trades, enabled the workmen to meet on equal terms the managers of the companies who employed them. The cruel discipline of the strike and lockout taught the two parties to respect each other’s strength and understand the value of fair negotiation.

59.It’s true of the old family firms that ________.

60.The growth of limited liability companies resulted in ________.

61.According to the passage, all of the following are true except that ________.

62.The author is most critical of ________.

Text 4

What accounts for the great outburst of major inventions in early America -- breakthroughs such as the telegraph, the steamboat and the weaving machine?

Among the many shaping factors, I would single out the country’s excellent elementary schools: a labor force that welcomed the new technology; the practice of giving premiums to inventors; and above all the American genius for nonverbal, “spatial” thinking about things technological.

Why mention the elementary schools? Because thanks to these schools our early mechanics, especially in the New England and Middle Atlantic states, were generally literate and at home in arithmetic and in some aspects of geometry and trigonometry.

Acute foreign observers related American adaptiveness and inventiveness to this educational-advantage. As a member of a British commission visiting here in 1853 reported, “With a mind prepared by thorough school discipline, the American boy develops rapidly into the skilled workman.”

A further stimulus to invention came from the “premium” system, which preceded our patent system and for years ran parallel with it. This approach, originated abroad, offered inventors medals, cash prizes and other incentives.

In the United States, multitudes of premiums for new devices were awarded at country fairs and at the industrial fairs in major cities. Americans flocked to these fairs to admire the new machines and thus to renew their faith in the beneficence of technological advance.

Given this optimistic approach to technological innovation, the American worker took readily to that special kind of nonverbal thinking required in mechanical technology. As Eugene Ferguson has pointed out, “A technologist thinks about objects that cannot be reduced to unambiguous verbal descriptions: they are dealt with in his mind by a visual, nonverbal process... The designer and the inventor... are able to assemble and manipulate in their minds devices that as yet do not exist.”

This nonverbal “spatial” thinking can be just as creative as painting and writing. Robert Fulton once wrote, “The mechanic should sit down among levers, screws, wedges, wheels, etc., like a poet among the letters of the alphabet, considering them as an exhibition of his thoughts, in which a new arrangement transmits a new idea.”

When all these shaping forces -- schools, open attitudes, the premium system, a genius for spatial thinking -- interacted with one another on the rich U.S. mainland, they produced that American characteristic, emulation. Today that word implies mere imitation. But in earlier times it meant a friendly but competitive striving for fame and excellence.

63.According to the author, the great outburst of major inventions in early America was in a large part due to ________.

64.It is implied that adaptiveness and inventiveness of the early American mechanics ________.

65.A technologist can be compared to an artist because ________.

66.The best title for this passage might be ________.

Text 5

Rumor has it that more than 20 books on creationism/evolution are in the publisher’s pipelines. A few have already appeared. The goal of all will be to try to explain to a confused and often unenlightened citizenry that there are not two equally valid scientific theories for the origin and evolution of universe and life. Cosmology, geology, and biology have provided a consistent, unified, and constantly improving account of what happened. “Scientific” creationism, which is being pushed by some for “equal time” in the classrooms whenever the scientific accounts of evolution are given, is based on religion, not science. Virtually all scientists and the majority of nonfundamentalist religious leaders have come to regard “scientific” creationism as bad science and bad religion.

The first four chapters of Kitcher’s book give a very brief introduction to evolution. At appropriate places, he introduces the criticisms of the creationists and provides answers. In the last three chapters, he takes off his gloves and gives the creationists a good beating. He describes their programmes and tactics, and, for those unfamiliar with the ways of creationists, the extent of their deception and distortion may come as an unpleasant surprise. When their basic motivation is religious, one might have expected more Christian behavior.

Kitcher is a philosopher, and this may account, in part, for the clarity and effectiveness of his arguments. The non-specialist will be able to obtain at least a notion of the sorts of data and argument that support evolutionary theory. The final chapters on the creationists will be extremely clear to all. On the dust jacket of this fine book, Stephen Jay Gould says: “This book stands for reason itself.” And so it does -- and all would be well were reason the only judge in the creationism/evolution debate.

67.“Creationism” in the passage refers to ________.

68.Kitcher’s book is intended to ________.

69.From the passage we can infer that ________.

70.This passage appears to be a digest of ________.

Section IV  English-Chinese Translation

Directions:

Read the following passage carefully and then translate the underlined sentences into Chinese. Your translation must be written clearly on ANSWER SHEET 2. (15 points)

The differences in relative growth of various areas of scientific research have several causes. 71) Some of these causes are completely reasonable results of social needs. Others are reasonable consequences of particular advances in science being to some extent self-accelerating. Some, however, are less reasonable processes of different growth in which preconception of the form scientific theory ought to take, by persons in authority, act to alter the growth pattern of different areas. This is a new problem probably not yet unavoidable; but it is a frightening trend. 72) This trend began during the Second World War, when several governments came to the conclusion that the specific demands that a government wants to make of its scientific establishment cannot generally be foreseen in detail. It can be predicted, however, that from time to time, questions will arise which will require specific scientific answers. It is therefore generally valuable to treat the scientific establishment as a resource or machine to be kept in functional order. 73) This seems mostly effectively done by supporting a certain amount of research not related to immediate goals but of possible consequence in the future.

This kind of support, like all government support, requires decisions about the appropriate recipients of funds. Decisions based on utility as opposed to lack of utility are straight forward. But decision among projects none of which has immediate utility is more difficult. The goal of the supporting agencies is the praisable one of supporting “good” as opposed to “bad” science, but a valid determination is difficult to make. Generally, the idea of good science tends to become confused with the capacity of the field in question to generate an elegant theory. 74) However, the world is so made that elegant systems are in principle unable to deal with some of the world’s more fascinating and delightful aspects. 75) New forms of thought as well as new subjects for thought must arise in the future as they have in the past, giving rise to new standards of elegance.

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Section V  Writing

76.DIRECTIONS:

[A] Title: GOOD HEALTH

[B] Time limit: 40 minutes

[C] Word limit: 120-150 words (not including the given opening sentence)

[D] Your composition should be based on the OUTLINE below and should start with the given opening sentence: “The desire for good health is universal.”

[E] Your composition should be written neatly on the ANSWER SHEET 2. (15 points)

OUTLINE:

1. Importance of good health

2. Ways to keep fit

3. My own practices