PART Ⅰ Reading Comprehension Directions: In this part there are four passages for you to read. After each passage there are five questions, below each of whom there are four answers marked A, B, C and D. Choose the best answer.
At the fall 2001 Social Science History Association convention in Chicago, the Crime and Justice network sponsored a forum on the history of gun ownership, gun use, and gun violence in the United States. Our purpose was to consider how social science history might contribute to the public debate over gun control and gun rights. To date, we have had little impact on that debate. It has been dominated by mainstream social scientists and historians, especially scholars such as Gary Kleck, John Lott, and Michael Bellesiles, whose work, despite profound flaws, is politically congenial to either opponents or proponents of gun control. Kleck and Mark Gertz, for instance, argue on the basis of their widely cited survey that gun owners prevent numerous crimes each year in the United States by using firearms to defend themselves and their property. If their survey respondents are to be believed, American gun owners shot 100, 000 criminals in 1994 in self-defense — a preposterous number. Lott claims on the basis of his statistical analysis of recent crime rates that laws allowing private individuals to carry concealed firearms deter murders, rapes, and robberies, because criminals are afraid to attack potentially armed victims. However, he biases his results by confining his analysis to the year between 1977 and 1992, when violent crime rates had peaked and varied little from year to year. He reports only regression models that support his thesis and neglects to mention that each of those models find a positive relationship between violent crime and real income, and an inverse relationship between violent crime and unemployment.
Contrary to Kleck and Lott, Bellesiles insists that guns and America's "gun culture" are responsible for America's high rates of murder. In Belleville's opinion, relatively few Americans owned guns before the 1850s or know how to use, maintain, or repair them. As a result, he says, guns contributed little to the homicide rate, especially among white, which was low everywhere, even in the South and on the frontier, where historians once assume guns and murder went hand in hand. According to Bellesiles, these patterns changed dramatically after the Mexican War and especially after the Civil War, when gun ownership became widespread and cultural changes encouraged the use of handguns to command respect and resolve personal and political disputes. The result was an unprecedented wave of gun-related homicides that never truly abated. To this day, the United States has the highest homicide rate of any industrial democracy. Belleville's low estimates of gun ownership in early America conflict, however, with those of every historian who has previously studied the subject and have thus far proven irreproducible. Every homicide statistic he presents is either misleading or wrong.
Given the influence of Kleck, kott, Bellesiles and other partisan scholars on the debate over gun control and gun rights, we felt a need to pull together what social science historians have learned to date about the history of gun ownership and gun violence in America, and to consider what research methods and projects might increase our knowledge in the near future. Fear and its companion pain are two of the most useful things that men and animals possess, if they are properly used. If fire did not hurt when it burnt, children would play it until their hands were burnt away. Similarly, if pain existed but fear did not, a child would burn itself again and again, because fear would not warn it to keep away from the fire that had burn it before. A really fearless soldier-and some do exist-is not a good soldier because he is soon killed; and a dead soldier is of no use to his army. Fear and pain are therefore two guards without which men and animals might soon die out.
In our first sentence we suggested that fear ought to be properly used. if, for example, you never go out of your house because of the danger of being knocked down and killed in the street by a car, you are letting fear rule you too much. Even in your house you are not absolutely safe: an airplane may crash on your house, or ants may eat away some of the beams in your roof so that the latter falls on you, or you may get cancer!
The important thing is not to let fear rule you, but instead to use fear as your servant and guide. Fear will warn you of dangers; then you have to decide what action to take. In many cases, you can take quick and successful action to avoid the danger. For example, you see a car coming straight towards you; fear warns you, you jump out of the way, and all is well.
In some cases, however, you decide that there is nothing that you can do to avoid the danger. For example, you cannot prevent an airplane crashing onto your house. In this case, fear has given you its warning; you have examined it and decided on your course, of action, so fear of this particular danger is no longer of any use to you, and you have to try to overcome it. Thirty-one million Americans are over 60 years of age, and twenty-nine million of them are healthy, busy, productive citizens. By the year 2030, one in every five people in the United States will be over 60. People are members of the fastest-growing minority in this country. Many call this the "graying of America".
In D73, a group called the "Gray Panthers" was organized. This group is made up of young and old citizens. They are trying to deal with the special problems of growing old in America. The Gray Panthers know that many elderly people have health problems; some cannot walk well, others cannot see or hear well. Some have financial problems; prices are going up so fast that the elderly can't afford the food, clothing, and housing they need. Some old people are afraid and have safety problems. Others have emotional problems. Many elderly are lonely because of the death of a husband or a wife. The Gray Panthers know another fact, too. Elderly people want to be as independent as possible. So, the Gray Panthers are looking for ways to solve the special problems of the elderly.
The president of the Gray Panthers is Maggie Kuhn, an active woman in her late 70s. She travels across the United States, educating both young and old about the concerns of elders. One of the problems she talks about is where and how elders live. She says that Americans do not encourage elders to live with younger people. As far as Maggie Kuhn is concerned, only elders who need constant medical care should be in nursing homes.
Maggie Kuhn knows that elders need education, too. She spends lots of time talking to groups of older Americans. She encourages them to continue to live in their own houses if it is possible. She also tells them that it is important to live with younger people and to have children around them. This helps elders to stay young at heart. How men first learnt to invent words is unknown; in other words, the origin of language is a mystery. All we really know is that men, unlike animals, somehow invented certain sound to express thoughts and feelings, actions and things, so that they could communicate with each other; and that later they agreed upon certain signs, called letters, which could be combined to represent those sounds, and which could be written down. Those sounds, whether spoken or written in letters, we call words.
The power of words, then, lies in their associations-the things they bring up before our minds. Words become filled with meaning for us by experience; and the longer we live, the more certain words recall to us the glad and sad events of our past; and the more we read and learn, the more the number of words that mean something to us increases.
Great writers are those who not only have great thoughts but also express these thoughts in words which appeal powerfully to our minds and emotions. This charming use of words is what we call literary style. Above all, the real poet is a master of words. He can convey his meaning in words which sing like music, and which by their position and association can move men to tears. We should therefore learn to choose our words carefully and use them accurately, or they will make our speech silly and dull. Section A: Translate the following short paragraphs into Chinese.1. The recovery of the US economy during the first quarter of this year has been so spectacular that it is creating a new set of risks for financial markets. The great new risks now facing the US economy center on monetary policy and the oil market.
今年第一季度美国经济如此壮观的复苏在给金融市场造成一系列新的风险。货币政策和石油市场是美国经济面临这些巨大的新风险的集中来源。
2. The current federal funds interest rate of only 1.75 percent has clearly become unsustainable in view of the economy's resilience. The Federal Reserve will raise interest rates by at least 0.25 percentage points during the second quarter and could increase short-term interest rates to at least 3 percent before the autumn-the level they were at before September 11.
从经济恢复力来看,当前只有1.75%的联邦利率已明显无法持续。美联储决定将在第二季度提升利率至少0.25个百分点,并会在秋季前将短期利率提升至3%以上——这同样是美国在9.11之前的利率水平。
3. Such tightening would probably cause refinancing to slump to about $ 300 billion at annual rates late this year, which would eliminate capital gains as a prop for consumer spending. Rising interest rates could also clamp the rally likely to occur in the equity market as corporate profits recover. If investment spending fails to revive, the economy' s annual growth rate could slide back to the 2 ~ 3 percent.
这样的紧缩政策也许会引起今年年底再集资水平跌至3亿/年,这将使资本收益在消费性支出中的支柱作用完全失去。利率的提高也将抑制企业利润好转下股票市场的回升。假如投资支出没能复原,整个经济的年增长率将回落至2%~3%。
4. The oil price is also a big risk, mainly because the Bush administration appears determined to attack Iraq. The probability of war could easily push the oil price back into the $ 35 ~ $ 40 a barrel range for at least a few months. In effect, that would impose a big new tax on consumer spending and corporate profits. The prospect of monetary tightening and a sharp increase in the oil price suggests that late 2002 and early 2003 could be a period of great volatility for the US economy.
同样是一大风险的还有石油价格,主要原因是布什政府表现出来的攻打伊拉克的坚决态度。战争的可能性可以轻而易举地将油价推回到35~40美元一桶,而且这一持续就会是几个月,结果将是在消费性支出和公司利润头上新加了一大笔税赋。货币紧缩政策与油价急剧攀升的前景暗示着2002年底和2003年初可能是美国经济的一大波动期。
Section B :Translate the following paragraph into English.1. 陆地交通的形式,与其说取决于技术,不如说取决于政治、经济和环境方面的考虑。我们现在就可以建造更坚固、更安静、更防滑的道路,但却不建,因为费用太高。我们可以在高速公路两旁安装隔音板并且设计出尾气少、轮胎噪音低的卡车,从而使交通噪音减半,但我们不愿意掏这笔钱。环保游说者们已对汽车厂商产生了巨大影响,对尾气排放的控翩已经严格了许多,但是在控制空气污染方面仍然任重而道远。
The traffic forms on land depend on more consideration of the aspect of politics, economy and environment than technology. Currently we can construct more solid, tranquil and skidproof road, but we don't do it because of high expenditure. We can install celotex on both sides of highway and design truck with little tail gas and tire of low noise to reduce half traffic noise. However, we are unwilling to pay out for it. environmentally-friendly canvasser has exercised great influence over auto manufacturers so that they have been much more strict with the control of tail gas emission. However, we still take up a heavy responsibility and a long course in the aspect of air pollution control.
Part Ⅲ Writing Direction: Write a composition of at least 250 words on the given topic "My idea of the future world" with the following outline. Present your argument with supporting details.
1.
My idea of the future world
What will our future world be like? This is a controversial question with which many people are concerned. Like a coin with two sides, various people hold various replies to it.
In the eyes of the pessimistic, sooner or later our world will come to its doom. The following points are their evidence. First, AIDS is the best example. In terms of statistics, so far there are about 40 million people infected AIDS all over the world and 2.3 million people died just in 2003. Secondly, it seems that terrorists' attacks never cease. It makes many ordinary people lose their household, becoming innocent victims. Thirdly, going with the widespread outbreak of SARS, countless people died of this fatal disease.
Whereas the optimistic point of view is that our world in the future will be a better place to live. As far as they are concerned, there is numerous progress in the past few decades. The popularization of computer technology and Internet renders us to acquire all kinds of information we need and to know what happens at the other end of the world in a few seconds.
As for me, I'm convinced that our world's prospect will be far more brilliant and prosperous than now. Yet in order to realize it, we must take some measures and adopt an active attitude to change and develop our world. So long as while continuing to develop the science and technology, all of us take active actions and make great efforts to solve these problems, a beautiful world will come soon.