1998C 议论文

One argument used to support the idea that employment will continue to be the dominant form of work, and that employment will eventually become available for all who want it, is that working time will continue to fall. People in jobs will work fewer hours in the day, fewer days in the week, fewer weeks in the year, and fewer years in a lifetime, than they do now. This will mean that more jobs will be available for more people. This, it is said, is the way we should set about restoring full employment. (One argument: with the fall of working time, full employment will become possible.)

There is no doubt that something of this kind will happen. The shorter working week, longer holidays, earlier retirement, job-sharing—these and other ways of reducing the amount of time people spend on their jobs—are certainly likely to spread. A mix of part-time paid work and part-time unpaid work is likely to become a much more common work pattern than today, and a flexi-life pattern of work—involving paid employment at certain stages of life, but not at others—will become widespread. But it is surely unrealistic to assume that this will make it possible to restore full employment as the dominant form of work.^3C (The author’s argument: Though the fall of working time is likely to happen, it may still be impossible to restore full employment as the major form of work.)

In the first place, so long as employment remains the overwhelmingly important form of work and source of income for most people that it is today, it is very difficult to see how reductions in employees’ working time can take place on a scale sufficiently large and at a pace sufficiently fast to make it impossible to share out the available paid employment to everyone who wants it^1B. Such negotiations as there have recently been, for example in Britain and Germany, about the possibility of introducing a 35-hour working week, have highlighted some of the difficulties. But, secondly, if changes of this kind were to take place at a pace and on a scale sufficient to make it possible to share employment among all who wanted it, the resulting situation—in which most people would not be working in their jobs for more than two or three short days a week—could hardly continue to be one in which employment was still regarded as the only truly valid form of work^2B. There would be so many people spending so much of their time on other activities, including other forms of useful work^2CD, that the primacy of employment would be bound to be called into question^2A, at least to some extent. (1. The current situation rules out the possibility of sharing employment to everyone. 2. Even it is possible to share employment, it is difficult to retain the primacy of employment.)

1.      The author uses the negotiations in Britain and Germany as an example to_____.

A.    support reductions in employees’ working time

B.     indicate employees are unwilling to share jobs

C.     prove the possibility of sharing paid employment

D.    show that employment will lose its dominance

2.      At the end of the passage the author seems to imply that as a result of shorter working time______.

A.    employment may not retain its usual importance

B.     employment may not be regarded as (the only truly) valid work

C.     people can be engaged in far less unpaid work

D.    people can be engaged in far more unpaid work

3.      The author’s attitude towards future full employment is generally______.

A.    supportive

B.     wavering

C.     skeptical

D.    unclear

 2001C说明文

Main Idea: the history, reasons and effects of human migration

Human migration: the term is vague. What people usually think of is the permanent movement of people from one home to another. More broadly, though, migration means all the ways——from the seasonal drift of agricultural workers within a country to the relocation of refugees from one country to another.
    Migration is big, dangerous, compelling. It is 60 million Europeans leaving home from the 16th to the 20th centuries. It is some 15 million Hindus, Skihs, and Muslims swept up in a tumultuous shuffle of citizens between India and Pakistan after the partition of the subcontinent in 1947.
    Migration is the dynamic undertow of population change^23A: everyone’s solution, everyone’s conflict^23D. As the century turns, migration, with its inevitable economic and political turmoil^23C, has been called “one of the greatest challenges of the coming century”.                           
    But it is much more than that. It is, as has always been, the great adventure of human life. Migration helped create humans, drove us to conquer the planet, shaped our societies, and promises to reshape them again ^23B.
    “You have a history book written in your genes,” said Spencer Wells. The book he’s trying to read goes back to long before even the first word was written , and it is a story of migration.
    Wells, a tall, blond geneticist at Stanford University, spent the summer of  1998 exploring remote parts of Transcaucasia and Central Asia with three colleagues in a Land Rover, looking for drops of blood. In the blood, donated by the people he met, he will search for the story that genetic markers can tell of the long paths human life has taken across the Earth.

Genetic studies are the latest technique in a long effort of modern humans to find out where they have come from. But however the paths are traced, the basic story is simple: people have been moving since they were people. If early humans hadn’t moved and intermingled as much as they did, they probably would have continued to evolve into different species. From beginnings in Africa, most researchers agree, groups of hunter-gatherers spread out, driven to the ends of the Earth.
    To demographer Kingsley Davis, two things made migration happen. First, human beings, with their tools and language, could adapt to different conditions^24A without having to wait for evolution to make them suitable for a new niche. Second, as populations grew, cultures began to differ^24C, and inequalities developed between groups^24D. The first factor gave us the keys to the door of any room on the planet; the other gave us reasons to use them. (1. Human being’s adaptability makes it possible to venture into any room on earth. 2. Inequalities between different cultures push people to migrate, usually to the more civilized cultures.)
    Over the centuries, as agriculture spread across the planet, people moved toward places where metal was found and worked and to centres of commerce that then became cities. Those places were, in turn, invaded and overrun by people later generations called barbarians.
    In between these storm surges were steadier but similarly profound fides in which people moved out to colonize^25D or were captured and brought in as slaves. For a while the population of Athens, that city of legendary enlightenment was as much as 35 percent slaves.
    “What strikes me is how important migration is as a cause and effect in the great world events.” Mark Miller, co-author of The Age of Migration and a professor of political science at the University of Delaware, told me recently.
    It is difficult to think of any great events that did not involve migration.²⁶ Religions spawned pilgrims or settlers^25C; wars drove refugees before them and made new land available for the conquerors^25D; political upheavals displaced thousands or millions; economic innovations drew workers^25B and entrepreneurs like magnets; environmental disasters like famine or disease pushed their bedraggled survivor s anywhere they could replant hope.

“It’s part of our nature, this movement,” Miller said, “It’s just a fact of the human condition.”

23. Which of the following statements is INCORRECT?
A. Migration exerts a great impact on population change.
B. Migration contributes to Mankind’s progress.
C. Migration brings about desirable and undesirable effects.
D. Migration may not be accompanied by human conflicts.
24. According to Kingsley Davis, migration occurs as a result of the following reasons EXCEPF ___.
A. human adaptability             B. human evolution (effect, not reason)

C. cultural differences            D. inter-group inequalities
25. Which of the following groups is NOT mentioned as migrants in the passage?
A. Farmers.      B. Workers.  C. Settlers.      D. Colonizers.
26. There seems to be a(n) ___ relationship between great events an d migration.
A. loose        B. indefinite      C. causal        D. remote

2004C叙述文

The fox really exasperated them both^23D. As soon as they had let the fowls out, in the early summer mornings, they had to take their guns and keep guard; and then again as soon as evening began to mellow, they must go once more. And he was so sly^23A. He slid along in the deep grass; he was difficult as a serpent to see. And he seemed to circumvent the girls deliberately. Once or twice March had caught sight of the white tip of his brush, or the ruddy shadow of him in the deep grass, and she had let fire at him. But he made no account of this^23C.

The trees on the wood edge were a darkish, brownish green in the full light—for it was the end of August. Beyond, the naked, copper like shafts and limbs of the pine trees shone in the air. Nearer the rough grass, with its long, brownish stalks all agleam, was full of light. The fowls were round about—the ducks were still swimming on the pond under the pine trees. March looked at it all, saw it all, and did not see it. She heard Banford speaking to the fowls in the distance—and she did not hear. What was she thinking about? Heaven knows. Her consciousness was, as it were, held back.

She lowered her eyes, and suddenly saw the fox. He was looking up at her. His chin was pressed down, and his eyes were looking up. They met her eyes. And he knew her. She was spellbound—she knew he knew her^24D. So he looked into her eyes, and her soul failed her. He knew her, he has not daunted.

She struggled, confusedly she came to herself, and saw him making off, with slow leaps over some fallen boughs, slow, impudent jumps. Then he glanced over his shoulder, and ran smoothly away. She saw his brush held smooth like a feather, she saw his white buttocks twinkle. And he was gone, softly, soft as the wind.

She put her gun to her shoulder, but even then pursed her mouth, knowing it was nonsense to pretend to fire. So she began to walk slowly after him, in the direction he had gone, slowly, pertinaciously. She expected to find him. In her heart she was determined to find him. What she would do when she saw him again she did not consider. But she was determined to find him. So she walked abstractedly about on the edge of the wood, with wide, vivid dark eyes, and a faint flush in her cheeks. She did not think. In strange mindlessness she walked hither and thither...^25A

As soon as supper was over, she rose again to go out, without saying why.

She took her gun again and went to look for the fox. For he had lifted his eyes upon her and his knowing look seemed to have entered her brain. She did not so much think of him: she was possessed by him. She saw his dark, shrewd, unabashed eye looking into her, knowing her. She felt him invisibly master her spirit. She knew the way he lowered his chin as he looked up, she knew his muzzle, the golden brown, and the greyish white. ^26C And again she saw him glance over his shoulder at her, half inviting, half contemptuous and cunning. So she went, with her great startled eyes glowing, her gun under her arm, along the wood edge. Meanwhile the night fell, and a great moon rose above the pine trees.

23. At the beginning of the story, the fox seems to the all EXCEPT ____.

A. cunning     B. fierce     C. defiant     D. annoying

24. As the story proceeds, March begins to feel under the spell of ____.

A. the light     B. the trees   C. the night    D. the fox

25. Gradually March seems to be in a state of ____.

A. blankness    B. imagination   C. sadness      D. excitement

26. At the end of the story, there seems to be a sense of ____ between March and the fox.

A. detachment   B. anger        C. intimacy     D. conflict

27. The passage creates an overall impression of ____.

A. mystery      B. horror       C. liveliness     D. contempt