Part Ⅱ VocabularyDirections: Choose the one word or phrase which you think closest in meaning to the underlined part of the sentence in its context and mark your choices on the ANSWER SHEET.
Part Ⅳ ClozeDirections: Read the article below and fill in each of the blanks with one suitable word or phrase by marking your choices on the ANSWER SHEET.
The marvel of the machine age, the electronic computer has been 1 only since 1946. It can do simple computations—add, subtract, multiply and divide— 2 lighting speed and perfect accuracy. It can multiply two 1-digit number in 1/1,1000 seconds, a problem that would 3 an average person five minutes to do with pencil and paper. Some computers can work 500,000 times faster than 4 .
Once it is given a "program"—that is, a 5 set of instructions devised by a technician trained in computer language—a computer can gather 6 information for many purposes. For example, it can 7 bank accounts up to date and make out electric bills. If you are planning a trip by plane, the computer will find out 8 route to take. Not only can the computer gather facts, it can also store them as fast as they are gathered and can 9 whenever they are needed. 10 gathering and storing information, the computer can also solve complicated problems that once took months for people to do.
For example, 11 sixteen hours an electronic brain solved a difficult design problem. First, it was 12 all the information necessary for designing a chemical plant. After running through 16,000 possible designs, it 13 the plan for the plant that would produce the most chemical at the lowest cost. Then it issued a printed set of exact 14 . Before it solved this problem, a team of engineers having the same information had worked for a year to produce only three designs, 15 of which was as efficient as the computer's. Part Ⅴ Writing1.
Directions: Write an essay (200-300 words) according to the topic given: Some people say that social change occurs more quickly in heterogeneous societies (where there is a mixture of different kinds of people) than in homogeneous ones ( where people are similar in many ways).
Write an essay comparing the two kinds of societies and explain in which you think social changes is most likely to occur.
Social change is more likely to occur in societies where there is a mixture of different kinds of people (a heterogeneous society) than in societies where people are similar in many ways (a homogeneous society). The principal reason for this is that there are more different ways of looking at things present in the society. There are more ideas, more disagreements in interest, and more groups and organizations with different beliefs. These result in a synergistic condition where in the total change within the society is greater than which occurs merely as a result of mixing different groups and organizations together.
In addition, there is usually a greater worldly interest and greater respect for the beliefs and behavior of others in mixed societies. All these factors tend to promote social change by opening more areas of life to scrutiny and decision rather than keeping them under the control of authority.
In a society where people are quite similar in many ways, there are fewer occasions for people to see the need or the opportunity for change because everything is the same. And although conditions may not be satisfactory, they are at least customary, and no one disagrees with or argues about them.
In my opinion, once conditions, good or bad, become predictable, a certain comfort arises which makes change difficult. Change does occur in homogeneous societies, but it evolves slowly, focusing on details. But it is not the broad, dynamic type of change that occurs in heterogeneous societies.