Passage One The market is a concept. If you are growing tomatoes in your backyard for sale you are producing for the market. You might sell some to your neighbor and some to the manager of the local supermarket. But in either case, you are producing for the market. Your efforts are being directed by the market. If people stop buying tomatoes, you will stop producing them. If you take care of a sick person to earn money, yon are producing for the market. If your father is a steelworker or a truck driver or a doctor or a grocer, he is producing goods or service for the market. When you spend your income, you are buying things from the market. You may spend money in stores, supermarkets, gas stations, and restaurants. Still you are buying from the market. When the local grocer hires you to drive the delivery truck, he is buying your labor in the labor market. The market may seem to be something abstract. But for each person or businessman who is making and selling something, it's very real. If nobody buys your tomatoes, it won't be long before you get the message. The market is telling you something. It's telling you that you are using energies and resources in doing something the market doesn't want you to do.
1. Which of the following would be the best title for the passage?
Passage Two Where the Galapagos Islands lie today, there was once an unbroken expanse of Pacific. Then the sea began to seethe and simmer, the earth's crust was pierced, and matter gushed forth continuously. Lava and scoriae (loose, cinderlike lava) piled up until one day spewing volcanoes raised peaks above the brawling sea. Many thousands of years passed before life could settle upon the cooled land. Then wind and waves brought the first hardy seed of primitive plants. After these came others, then insects, lizards, and birds. The chance that any animal would survive the trip from the South American continent more than six hundred miles away was slight; only a few hardy species came through alive. This is why there are many gaps in the animal life of the islands. Those that did reach the out-of-the-way islands developed over the ages into a number of quite peculiar forms. Because conditions in the Galapagos differed from those in their original homes, the animals had to change or perish. Only in the Galapagos are there seaweed-eating marine lizards, giant tortoises, and flightless cormorants. In fact, most of the species found in the Galapagos Islands are endemics, they exist only in the archipelago.
Passage Three Are you worried by the rising crime rate? If you are then you probably know that your house, possessions and person are increasingly in danger of suffering from the tremendous rise in the cases of burglary (盗窃) and assault (袭击). Figures indicate an ever-increasing crime rate, but it is only too easy to imagine "It will never happen to me". Unfortunately, statistics show that it really can happen to you and, if you live in a large city, you run twice the risk of being a victim. Fortunately, there's something definite which you can do. Protect Alarms can help to protect your house with a burglar alarm system which is effective, simple to operate and easily affordable. You must remember that possessing a burglar alarm is no indication that your house is packed with valuable possessions. It quite simply indicates to unwelcome visitors that yours is one house they will not break into easily, so they carry on to an unprotected house where their job is made a lot easier. Send now for our free leaflet(小册子) telling you how we can Protect Alarm your house quickly, easily and cheaply. Complete and tear off the slip below and post it to us. Postage is free. Alternatively, telephone us at 3276721 where we have a round-the-clock answering service. It costs nothing to find out about Protect Alarms.
1. Anyone who takes an interest in the crime rate will, according to the text, be aware that ______.
A.more burglars are being caught than ever before
B.people have more possessions to worry about nowadays
C.burglars are more at risk than they used to be
D.homes are more likely to be broken into than before
Passage Four The agricultural revolution in the nineteenth century involved two things, the invention of labor-saving machinery and the development of scientific agriculture. Labor-saving machinery naturally appeared first where labor was scarce. "In Europe," said Thomas Jefferson, "the object is to make the most of their land, labor being abundant; here it is to make the most of our labor, land being abundant." It was in America, therefore, that the great advances in nineteenth century agricultural machinery first came. At the opening of the century, with the exception of a crude plow, farmers could have carried practically all of the existing agricultural implements on their backs; by 1860, most of the machinery in use today had been designed in an early form. The most important of the early inventions was the iron plow. As early as 1790 Charles Newbold of New Jersey had been working on the idea of a castiron plow and spent his entire fortune in introducing his invention. The farmers, however, would have none of it, claiming that the iron poisoned the soil and made the weeds grow. Nevertheless, many people devoted their attention to the plow, until in 1869 James Oliver of South Bend, Indiana, turned out the first chilled-steel plow.
1. The word "naturally" as used in the second sentence is closest in meaning to which of the fol-lowing?
Passage Five Now custom has not been commonly regarded as a subject of any great importance. The inner workings of our own brains we feel to be uniquely worthy of investigation, but custom, we have a way of thinking, is behavior at its most commonplace. As a matter of fact, it is the other way around. Traditional custom, taken the world over, is a mass of detailed behavior more astonishing than what any one person can ever evolve in individual actions. Yet that is a rather trivial aspect of the matter. The fact of first-rate importance is the predominant role that custom plays in experience and in belief and the very great varieties it may manifest. No man ever looks at the world with pristine (未受外界影响的) eyes. He sees it edited by a definite set of customs and institutions and ways of thinking. Even in his philosophical probings he cannot go behind these stereotypes (固定的模式); his very concepts of the true and the false will still have reference to his particular traditional customs. John Dewey has said in all seriousness that the part played by custom in shaping the behavior of the individual as over against any way in which he can affect traditional custom, is as the proportion of the total vocabulary of his mother tongue over against those words of his own baby talk that are taken up into the language of his family. When one seriously studies social orders that have had the opportunity to develop independently, the figure (这种比喻) becomes no more than an exact and matter-of-fact observation. The life history of the individual is first and foremost an adjustment to the patterns and standards traditionally handed down in his community. From the moment of his birth the customs into which he is born shape his experience and behavior. By the time he can talk, he is the little creature of his culture, and by the time he is grown and able to take part in its activities, its habits are his habits, its beliefs his beliefs, its impossibilities his impossibilities.
1. The author thinks the reason why custom has been ignored in the academic world is that ______.
A.custom reveals only the superficial nature of human behavior
B.the study of social orders can replace the study of custom
C.people are still not aware of the important role that custom plays in forming our world outlook
D.custom has little to do with our ways of thinking