Passage One Calvin Coolidge (1872—1933) was the thirtieth president of the United States. He looked down on a person as being unworthy of respect who was too fond of talking about the details of other people's actions and private lives; he had no time for small talk. The following two incidents clearly show how Coolidge treasured silence. When he was vice-president, Coolidge had plenty of opportunity to participate in Washington's social life, especially the many dinner parties. Because of his complete disregard for the art of conversation, he couldn't exactly make himself dear to his hostesses. One lady felt she could solve this problem. She placed him next to Alice Roosevelt Longworth, daughter of former President Theodore Roosevelt. Mrs. Longworth, brilliant conversationalist, began to talk in her usual charming manner, but all attempts to awake interest on the part of vice-president were unproductive. Finally, being shamed into annoyance, she said, "I'm sure that going to as many dinners as you do, you must get terribly bored." Without lifting his eyes from his plate, Coolidge said not very clearly, "Well, a man has to eat somewhere." Later, when he was president and once again at a dinner party, Coolidge was seated next to an outstanding society woman, one of those people who seem to take delight in trying to change the lives of everyone they meet. "Oh, Mr. President," she spoke with too much enthusiasm, "you are always so quiet. I made a bet (打赌) today that I could get more than two words out of you. In anger, the president made a low, rough sound and then said, "You lose."
1. President Coolidge considered those people as being unworthy of respect ______.
Passage Two A breakthrough (突破) in the provision of energy from the Sun for the European Economic Community (EEC) could be brought forward by up to two decades, if a modest increase could be provided in the EEC's research effort in this field, according to the senior EEC scientists engaged in experiments in solar energy at EEC's scientific laboratories at Ispra, near Milan. The senior West German scientist in charge of the Community's solar energy programme, Mr. Joachim Gretz, told journalists that at present levels of research spending it was most unlikely that solar energy would provide as much as three per cent of the Community's energy requirements even after the year 2000. But he said that with a modest increase in the present sums, devoted by the EEC to this work it was possible that the breakthrough could be achieved by the end of the next decade. Mr. Gretz calculates that if solar energy only provided three per cent of the EEC's needs, this could still produce a saving of about a billion pounds in the present bill for imported energy each year. And he believes that with the possibility of utilizing more advanced technology in this field it might be possible to satisfy a much bigger share of the Community's future energy needs. At present the EEC spends about $2.6 millions a year on solar research at Ispra, one of the EEC's official joint research centres, and another $3 millions a year in indirect research with universities and other independent bodies.
1. The phrase "be brought forward" (Line 2, Para. 1) most probably means ______.
A.be expected
B.be completed
C.be advanced
D.be introduced
A B C D
C
本题是一道考查词汇短语的含义类问题。我们可以根据上下文来确定词义。本题中的bringforward这一短语动词以被动语态的形式做本句的谓语,其主语是以breakthrough为中心词的名词词组,bring forward又被状语by up to tWO decades修饰。因此,在这样一个上下文里,即“在为欧洲共同体提供太阳能方面的突破”和“多至20年”,能与bring forward替换而意义又相近的词只有C项的be advanced。因此,本题的正确答案应是C“提前,提前发生”。另外,如果我们的词汇量足够大的话,可以直接选出本题的正确答案。
2. Some scientists believe that a breakthrough in the use of solar energy depends on ______.
Passage Three Parents have to do much less for their children today than they used to do, and home has become much less of a workshop. Clothes can be bought ready made, washing can go to the laundry, food can be bought cooked, canned or preserved, bread is baked and delivered by the baker, milk arrives on the doorstep, meals can be had at the restaurant, the works' canteen, and the school dining room. It is unusual now for father to continue his trade or other employment at home, and his children rarely, if ever, see him at his place of work. Boys are therefore seldom trained to follow their father's occupation, and in many towns they have a fairly wide choice of employment and so do girls. The young wageearner often earns good money, and soon acquires a feeling of economic independence. In textile areas it has long been customary for mothers to go out to work, but this practice has become so widespread that the working mother is now a not unusual factor in a child's home life, the number of married women in employment having more than doubled in the last twenty-five years. With mother earning and his older children drawing substantial wages, father is seldom the dominant (支配的) figure that he still was at the beginning of the century. When mother works, economic advantages increase, but children lose something of great value if mother's employment prevents her from being home to greet them when they return from school.
1. The writer compares home to a workshop because ______.
A.fathers often pursue employment at home
B.parents have to make food and necessity themselves for their dailylife
C.many families produce goods at home for sale
D.both fathers and mothers in most families are workers
Passage Four Just seven years ago, the Jarvik-7 artificial heart was being cheered as the model of human creativeness. The sight of Barney Clark alive and conscious after trading his diseased heart for a metal and plastic pump the press, the public and many doctors convinced that the future had arrived. It hadn't. After monitoring production of the Jarvik-7, and reviewing its effects on the 150 or so patients (most of whom got the device as a temporary measure) in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration concluded that the machine was doing more to endanger lives than to save them. Last week the agency cancelled its earlier approval, effectively banning the device. The recall may hurt Symbion Inc. , maker of the Jarvik-7, but it won't end the request for an artificial heart. One problem with the banned model is that the tubes connecting it to an external power source created a passage for infection. Inventors are now working on new devices that would be fully placed, along with a tiny power pack, in the patient's chest. The first sample products aren't expected for another 10 or 20 years. But some people are already worrying that they'll work and that America's overextended health care programs will lose a precious $2.5 billion to $5 billion a year providing them for a relatively few dying patients. If such expenditures cut into funding for more basic care, the net effect could actually be a decline in the nation's health.
1. According to the passage, the Jarvik-7 artificial heart proved to be ______.
Passage Five First of course, it is plain that in the year 2010 everyone will have at his elbow several times more mechanical energy than he has today. Second, there will be advances in biological knowledge as farreaching as those that have been made in physics. We are only beginning to learn that we can control our biological environment as well as our physical one. Starvation has been prophesied twice to a growing world population: by Malthus about 1800, by Crookes about 1900. It was headed off the first time by taking agriculture to America and the second time by using the new fertilizers. In the year 2010 starvation will be headed off by the control of the diseases and the heredity (遗传性) of plants and animals—by shaping our own biological environment. And third, I come back to the haunting theme of automation. The most common species in the factory today is the man who works or minds a simple machine—the operator. By the year 2010, he will be as extinct as the hand-loom weaver and the dodo. The repetitive tasks of indus-try will be taken over by the machines, as the heavy tasks were taken over long ago; and the mental tedium (疲劳,沉闷) will go the way of physical exhaustion. Today we still distinguish, even among repetitive jobs, between the skilled and the unskilled, but in the year 2010 all repetition will be unskilled. We simply waste our time if we oppose this change, it is as inevitable as the year 2010 itself.