Part Ⅱ Vocabulary
Directions: There are 20 incomplete sentences in this part. For each sentence there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. Choose the best one that completes the sentence and then mark the corresponding letter on the ANSWET SHEET with a single line through the center.
1.
The ______ of the spring water attracts a lot of visitors from other
parts of the country.
- A. clash
- B. clarify
- C. clarity
- D. clatter
2.
Business in this area has been ______ because prices are too high.
- A. prosperous
- B. secretive
- C. slack
- D. shrill
3.
He told a story about his sister who was in a sad ______ when she was
ill and had no money.
- A. plight
- B. polarization
- C. plague
- D. pigment
4.
He added a ______ to his letter by saying that he would arrive before
8pm.
- A. presidency
- B. prestige
- C. postscript
- D. preliminary
5.
Some linguists believe that the ______ age for children learning a
foreign language is 5 to 8.
- A. optimistic
- B. optional
- C. optimal
- D. oppressed
6.
It all started in 1950, when people began to build their houses on the
______ of their cities.
- A. paradises
- B. omissions
- C. orchards
- D. outskirts
7.
The meeting was ______ over by the mayor of the city.
- A. presumed
- B. proposed
- C. presented
- D. presided
8.
The crowd ______ into the hall and some had to stand outside.
- A. outgrew
- B. overthrew
- C. overpassed
- D. overflew
9.
It was clear that the storm ______ his arrival by two hours.
- A. retarded
- B. retired
- C. refrained
- D. retreated
10.
This problem should be discussed first, for it takes ______ over all
the other issues.
- A. precedence
- B. prosperity
- C. presumption
- D. probability
11.
Her sadness was obvious, but she believed that her feeling of
depression was ______.
- A. torrent
- B. transient
- C. tensile
- D. textured
12.
Nobody knew how he came up with this ______ idea about the trip.
- A. weary
- B. twilight
- C. unanimous
- D. weird
13.
The flower under the sun would ______ quickly without any protection.
- A. wink
- B. withhold
- C. wither
- D. widower
14.
The ______ of gifted children into accelerated classes will start next
week according to their academic performance.
- A. segregation
- B. specification
- C. spectrum
- D. subscription
15.
He ______ himself bitterly for his miserable behavior that evening.
- A. repealed
- B. resented
- C. relayed
- D. reproached
16.
Any earthquake that takes place in any area is certainly regarded as a
kind of a ______ event.
- A. cholesterol
- B. charcoal
- C. catastrophic
- D. chronic
17.
He cut the string and held up the two ______ to tie the box.
- A. segments
- B. sediments
- C. seizures
- D. secretes
18.
All the music instruments in the orchestra will be ______ before it
starts.
- A. civilized
- B. chattered
- C. chambered
- D. chorded
19.
When the air in a certain space is squeezed to occupy a smaller space,
the air is said to be ______.
- A. commenced
- B. compressed
- C. compromised
- D. compensated
20.
She made two copies of this poem and posted them ______ to different
publishers.
- A. sensationally
- B. simultaneously
- C. strenuously
- D. simply
Part Ⅲ Reading Comprehension
Each year, millions of people in Bangladesh drink
ground water that has been polluted by naturally high levels of arsenic poison.
Finding safe drinking water in that country can be a problem. However,
International Development Enterprises has a low-cost answer. This
non-governmental organization has developed technology to harvest rainwater.
People around the world have been harvesting rainwater for centuries. It is a
safe, dependable source of drinking water. Unlike ground water, rainwater
contains no minerals or salts and is free of chemical treatments. Best of all,
it is free. The rainwater harvesting system created by International Development
Enterprises uses pipes to collect water from the tops of buildings. The pipes
stretch from the tops of buildings to a two-meter tall storage tank made of
metal. At the top of the tank is a so-called "first-flush" device made of wire
screen. This barrier prevents dirt and leaves in the water from falling inside
the tank. A fitted cover sits over the "first-flush" device. It
protects the water inside the tank from evaporating. The cover also prevents
mosquito insects from laying eggs in the water. Inside the tank is a low coat
plastic bag that collects the water. The bag sits inside another plastic bag
similar to those used to hold grains. The two bags are supported inside the
metal tank. All total, the water storage system can hold up to
three-thousand-five-hundred liters of water. International Development
Enterprises says the inner bags may need to be replaced every two to three
years. However, if the bags are not damaged by sunlight, they could last even
longer. International Development Enterprises says the water harvesting system
should be built on a raised structure to prevent insects from eating into it at
the bottom. The total cost to build this rainwater harvesting system is about
forty dollars. However, International Development Enterprises expects the price
to drop over time. The group says one tank can provide a family of five with
enough rainwater to survive a five-month dry season.
Where one stage of child development has been left out, or
not sufficiently experienced, the child may have to go back and capture the
experience of it. A good home makes this possible, for example by providing the
opportunity for the child to play with a clockwork car or toy railway train up
to any age if he still needs to do so. This principle, in fact, underlies all
psychological treatment of children in difficulties with their
development, and is the basis of work in child clinics. The
beginnings of discipline are in the nursery. Even the youngest baby is taught by
gradual stages to wait for food, to sleep and wake at regular intervals and so
on. If the child feels the world around him is a warm and friendly one, he
slowly accepts its rhythm and accustoms himself to conforming to its demands.
Learning to wait for things, particularly for food, is a very important element
in upbringing, and is achieved successfully only if too great demands are not
made before the child can understand them. Every parent watches eagerly the
child's acquisition of each new skill—the first spoken words, the first
independent steps, or the beginning of reading and writing. It is often tempting
to hurry the child beyond his natural learning rate, but this can set up
dangerous feeling of failure and states of anxiety in the child. This might
happen at any stage. A baby might be forced to use a toilet too early, a young
child might be encouraged to learn to read before he knows the meaning of the
words he reads. On the other hand, though, if a child is left alone too much, or
without any learning opportunities, he loses his natural zest for life and his
desire to find out new things for himself. Learning together is a fruit source
of relationship between children and parents. By playing together, parents learn
more about their children and children learn more from their parents. Toys and
games which both parents and children can share are an important means of
achieving this co-operation. Building-block toys, jigsaw puzzles and crossword
are good examples. Parents vary greatly in their degree of strictness or
indulgence towards their children. Some may be especially strict in money
matters, others are severe over times of coming home at night, punctuality for
meals or personal cleanliness. In general, the controls imposed represent the
needs of the parents and the values of the community as much as the child's own
happiness and well-being.
More than half of all Jews married in U.S. since 1990 have
wed people who aren't Jewish. Nearly 480,000 American children under the age of
ten have one Jewish and one non-Jewish parent. And, if a survey compiled by
researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles is any indication,
it's almost certain that most of these children will not identify themselves as
"Jewish" when they get older. That survey asked college freshmen, who are
usually around age 18, about their own and their parents' religious identities.
Ninety-three percent of those with two Jewish parents said they thought of
themselves as Jewish. But when the father wasn't Jewish, the number dropped to
38 percent, and when the mother wasn't Jew, just 15 percent of the students said
they were Jewish, too. "I think what was surprising was just how low the Jewish
identification was in these mixed marriage families." Linda Sax is a professor
of education at UCLA. She directed the survey which was conducted over the
course of more than a decade and wasn't actually about religious identity
specifically. But Professor Sax says the answers to questions about religion
were particularly striking, and deserve a more detailed study. She says it's
obvious that interfaith marriage works against the development of Jewish
identity among children, but says it's not clear at this point why that's the
case. "This new study is necessary to get more in-depth about their feelings
about their religion. That's something that the study that I completed was not
able to do. We didn't have information on how they feel about their religion,
whether they have any concern about their issues of identification, how
comfortable they feel about their lifelong goals. I think the new study's going
to cover some of that," she says. Jay Rubin is executive director of Hilel, a
national organization that works with Jewish college students. Mr. Rubin says
Judaism is more than a religion, it's an experience. And with that in mind,
Hillel has commissioned a study of Jewish attitudes towards Judaism. Researchers
will concentrate primarily on young adults, and those with two Jewish parents,
and those with just one, those who see themselves as Jewish and those who do
not. Jay Rubin says Hillel will then use this study to formulate a strategy for
making Judaism more relevant to the next generation of American Jews.
Governments that want their people to prosper in the
burgeoning world economy should guarantee two basic rights: the right to private
property and the right to enforceable contracts, says Mancur Olson in his
book Power and Prosperity. Olson was an economics professor at the University of
Maryland until his death in 1998. Some have argued that such rights are merely
luxuries that wealthy societies bestow, but Olson turns that argument around and
asserts that such rights are essential to creating wealth. "In comes are low in
most of the countries of the world, in short, because the people in those
countries do not have secure in dividual rights," he says. Certain simple
economic activities, such as food gathering and making handicrafts, rely mostly
on individual labor; property is not necessary. But more advanced activities,
such as the mass production of goods, require machines and factories and
offices. This production is often called capital-intensive, but it is really
property-intensive, Olson observes. "No one would normally engage in
capital-intensive production if he or she did not have rights that kept the
valuable capital from being taken by bandits, whether roving or stationary," he
argues. "There is no private property without government—individuals may have
possessions, the way a dog possesses a bone, but there is private property only
if the society protects and defends a private right to that possession against
other private parties and against the government as well." Would-be
entrepreneurs, no matter how small, also need a government and court system that
will make sure people honor their contracts. In fact, the banking systems relied
on by developed nations are based on just such an enforceable contract system.
"We would not deposit our money in banks...if we could not rely on the bank
having to honor its contract with us, and the bank would not be able to make the
profits it needs to stay in business if it could not enforce its loan contracts
with borrowers," Olson writes. Other economists have argued that the poor
economies of Third World and communist countries are the result of governments
setting both prices and the quantities of goods produced rather than letting a
free market determine them. Olson agrees there is some merit to this point of
view, but he argues that government intervention is not enough to explain the
poverty of these countries. Rather, the real problem is lack of individual
rights that give people incentive to generate wealth. "If a society has clear
and secure individual rights, there are strong incentives (刺激,动力) to produce,
invest, and engage in mutually advantageous trade, and therefore at least some
economic advance," Olson concludes.