Part Ⅱ Reading Comprehension Few people would defend the Victorian attitude to children, but if you were a parent in those days, at least you knew where you stood: children were to be seen and not heard. Freud and company did away with all that and parents have been bewildered ever since. The child's happiness is all-important, the psychologists say, but what about the parents' happiness? Parents suffer continually from fear and guilt while their children gaily romp about pulling the place apart. A good "old-fashioned" spanking is out of the question: no modern child-rearing manual would permit such barbarity. The trouble is you are not allowed even to shout. Who knows what deep psychological wounds you might inflict? The poor child may never recover from the dreadful traumatic experience. So it is that parents bend over backwards to avoid giving their children complexes which a hundred years ago hadn't even been heard of. Certainly a child needs love, and a lot of it. But the excessive permissiveness of modern parents is surely doing more harm than good. Psychologists have succeeded in undermining parents' confidence in their own authority. And it hasn't taken children long to get wind of the fact. In addition to the great modern classics on childcare, there are countless articles in magazines and newspapers. With so much unsolicited advice flying about, mum and dad just don't know what to do any more. In the end, they do nothing at all. So, from early childhood, the kids are in charge and parents' lives are regulated according to the needs of heir offspring. When the little dears develop into teenagers, they take complete control. Lax authority over the years makes adolescent rebellion against parents all the more violent. If the young people are going to have a party, for instance, parents are asked to leave the house. Their presence merely spoils the fun. What else can the poor parents do but obey'? Children are hardy creatures (far hardier than the psychologists would have us believe) and most of them survive the harmful influence of extreme permissiveness which is the normal condition in the modern household. But a great many do not. The spread of juvenile delinquency in our own age is largely due to parental laxity. Mother, believing that little Johnny can look after himself, is not at home when he returns from school, so little Johnny roams the streets. The dividing-line between permissiveness and sheer negligence is very fine 'indeed. The psychologists have much to answer for. They should keep their mouths shut and let parents get on with the job. And if children are knocked about a little bit in the process, it may not really matter too much. At least this will help them to develop vigorous views of their own and give them something positive to react against. Perhaps there's some truth in the idea that children who have had a surfeit of happiness in their childhood appear like stodgy puddings and fail to make a success of life.
A.are bombarded with excessive amounts of child-care literature.
B.draw a distinction between permissiveness and negligence.
C.are partial towards children from happy home backgrounds.
D.weigh their children's intellect rather than intelligence.
A B C D
A
[解析]题干问:“作者认为今天的父母……”。正确选项为A“面临过量的抚养孩子的书”,第1自然段中的“child-rearing manual”和第2自然段中的“countless articles in magazines and newspapers”说明了这一观点。而选项B“在放纵和忽略间划清界限”和原文的意思相反。选项C“对那些来门于快乐家庭背景的孩子相当地偏爱”和选项D“看重孩子的知识而不是其实际能力”在文中都没有提及。
3. What does the author wants to illustrate with Johnny roaming the streets?
Ever since this government's term began, the attitude to teachers has been overshadowed by the mantra that good teachers cannot be rewarded if it means bad teachers are rewarded, too. That's why, despite the obvious need for them, big pay rises have not been awarded to teachers across the board. The latest pay rise was 3.6 per cent--mad in the present situation. That's why, as well, the long battle over performance-related pay was fought as teacher numbers slid. The idea is that some kind of year zero can eventually be achieved whereby all the bad teachers are gone and only the good teachers remain. That is why the Government's attempts to relieve the teacher shortage have been so focused on offering incentives to get a new generation of teachers into training. The assumption is that so many of the teachers we have already are bad, that only by starting again can standards be raised. But the teacher shortage is not caused only because of a lack of new teachers coming into the profession. It is also because teaching has a retention problem, with many leaving the profession. These people have their reasons for doing so, which cannot be purely about wanting irresponsibly to "abandon" pupils more permanently. Such an exodus suggests that even beyond the hated union grandstanding, teachers are not happy. Unions and government appear to be in broad agreement that the shortage of teachers is a parlous state of affairs. Oddly, though, they don't seem entirely to agree that the reasons for this may lie in features of the profession itself and the way it is run. Instead, the Government is so suspicious of the idea that teachers may be able to represent themselves, that they have set up the General Teaching Council, a body that will represent teachers whether they want it to or not, and to which they have to pay £ 25 a year whether they want to or not. The attitudes of both sides promise to exacerbate rather than solve the problem. Teachers are certainly exacerbating the problem by stressing just how bad things are. Quite a few potential teachers must be put off. And while the Government has made quite a success of convincing the public that bad education is almost exclusively linked to bad teachers represented by destructive unions, it also seems appalling that in a survey last year, working hours for primary teachers averaged 53 hours per week, while secondary teachers clocked up 51 hours. At their spring conferences, the four major teaching unions intend to ballot their members on demanding from government an independent inquiry into working conditions. This follows the McCrone report in Scotland, which produced an agreement to limit hours to 35 per week, with a maximum class contact-time of 22 and a half hours. That sounds most attractive.
5. The third sentence of Paragraph 1 implies that a 3% pay rise______
In promising to fuse media as diverse as television, telephone communication, video games, music and data transmission, the era of digital convergence goes better than yesterday's celebrated "information superhighway". Yet achieving this single technology is far from straightforward. There are currently three major television broadcast standards, and they are all incompatible with each other. But this is nothing compared to the many technologies supporting the Internet, each with a different bandwidth and physical media. The problems faced in designing platforms and communication systems that will be accepted across the world can appear insuperable. Even once global standards are assured, however, a further obstacle lies in wait. The Internet is plagued by long, erratic response times because it is a pull-technology, driven by patterns of user demands. Push technology, on the other hand, reverses the relationship: servers simply send information to passive users, as in television and radio. But if some form of combination between one-way television flow and interactive Internet is to be the basis of our future media, it is hard to see how it could be operated. Moreover, the problem of fusing Internet with television is also one of defining the services offered. Information, entertainment and relaxation appear at first to be quite different needs. Serious doubts remain over whether consumers will be interested in having to make the sort of mental effort associated with computing while also settling down in front of a sitcom. Besides the issue of consumer habits, infrastructure costs are set to be immense, and will have to be met by national states or the private sector before being passed on to users. Platforms do not necessarily have to be expensive. The mobile phone is a good example of how something that is technologically sophisticated can almost be given away, with its cost recovered through service charges. Users are then coerced through clever marketing to upgrade to newer phones with more features to reinforce their dependence. Whatever the outcome, it is obvious that technology will play an increasing part in our everyday lives. Beyond technology, digital convergence embraces the services, industrial practices and social behavior that form modern society. We have in our hands the technology to construct the most sophisticated machines ever built, but if they are unusable, simply because of their operating instructions, then recent lessons have taught us they will not survive. Whatever we design must be simple, reliable and useful. Perhaps this is where artificial intelligence will come in.
9. By digital convergence, the writer means______
A.diversification of communication systems.
B.integrating a wide range of means of media.
C.adaptation of global standards to consumer habits.
Never has a straitjacket seemed so ill-fitting or so insecure. The Euro area's "stability and growth pact" was supposed to stop irresponsible member states running excessive budget deficits, defined as 3% of GDP or more. Chief among the restraints was the threat of large fines if member governments breached the limit for three years in a row. For some time now, no one has seriously believed those restraints would hold. In the early hours of Tuesday November 25th, the Euro's fiscal straitjacket finally came apart at the seams. The pact's fate was sealed over an extended dinner meeting of the Euro area's 12 finance ministers. They chewed over the sorry fiscal record of the Euro's two largest members, France and Germany. Both governments ran deficits of more than 3% of GDP last year and will do so again this year. Both expect to breach the limit for the third time in 2004. Earlier this year the European Commission, which polices the pact, agreed to give both countries an extra year, until 2005, to bring their deficits back into line. But it also instructed them to revisit their budget plans for 2004 and make extra cuts. France was asked to cut its underlying, cyclically adjusted deficit by a full 1% of GDP, Germany by 1.8%. Both resisted. Under the pact's hales, the commission's prescriptions have no force until formally endorsed in a vote by the Euro area's finance ministers, known as the "Eurogroup". And the votes were simply not there. Instead, the Eurogroup agreed on a set of proposals of its own, drawn up by the Italian finance minister, Giulio Tremonti. France will cut its structural deficit by 1.8% of GDP next year, Germany by 0. 6%. In 2005, both will bring their deficits below 3%, economic growth permitting. Nothing will enforce or guarantee this agreement except France and Germany's word. The European Central Bank (ECB) was alarmed at this outcome, the commission was dismayed, and the smaller Euro-area countries who opposed the deal were apoplectic: treaty law was giving way to the "Franco-German steamroller", as Le Figaro, a French newspaper, put it. This anger will sour European politics and may spill over into negotiations on a proposed EU constitution. Having thrown their weight around this week, France and Germany may find other smaller members more reluctant than ever to give ground in the negotiations on the document. The EU's midsized countries also hope to capitalize on this ressentiment. Spain opposes the draft constitution because it will give it substantially less voting weight than it currently enjoys. It sided against France and Germany on Tuesday, and will point to their fiscal transgressions to show that the EU's big countries do not deserve the extra power the proposed constitution will give them.
14. The text is mainly about______
A.the enforcement of Eurogroup's prescriptions.
B.the hypocrisy of some Euro's members on deficit.
Advertisers tend to think big and perhaps this is why they're always coming in for criticism. Their critics seem to resent them because they have a flair for self-promotion and because they have so much money to threw around. "It's iniquitous," they say, "that this entirely unproductive industry (if we can call it that) should absorb millions of pounds each year. It only goes to show how much profit the big companies arc making. Why don't they stop advertising and reduce the price of their goods? After all, it's the consumer who pays." The poor old consumer. He would have to pay a great deal more if advertising didn't create mass markets for products. It is just because of the heavy advertising that consumer goods are so cheap. But we get the wrong idea if we think the only purpose of advertising is to sell goods. Another equally important function is to inform. A great deal of the knowledge we have about household goods derives large from the advertisements we read. Advertisements introduce us to new products or remind us of the existence of ones we already know about. Supposing you wanted to buy a washing-machine, it is more than likely you would obtain details regarding performance, price, etc. from an advertisement. Lots of people pretend that they never read advertisements, but this claim may be seriously doubted. It is hardly possible not to read advertisements these days. And what fun they often are, too] Just think what a railway station or a newspaper would be like without advertisements. Would you enjoy gazing at a blank wall or reading railway by-laws while waiting for a train? Would you like to read only closely-printed columns of news in your daily paper? A cheerful, witty advertisement makes such a difference to a drab wall or a newspaper full of the daily ration of calamities. We must not forget, either, that advertising makes a positive contribution to our pockets. Newspapers, commercial radio and television companies could not subsist without this source of revenue. The fact that we pay so little for our daily paper, or can enjoy so many broadcast programs is due entirely to the money spent by advertisers. Just think what a newspaper would cost if we had to pay its full price ! Another thing we shouldn't forget is the "little ads", which are in virtually every newspaper and magazine. What a tremendously useful service they perform for the community ! Just about anything can be accomplished through these columns. For example, you can find a job, buy or sell a house, announce a birth, marriage or death in what used to be called the "hatch, match and dispatch" columns; but by far the most fascinating section is the personal or "agony" column. No other item in a newspaper provides such entertaining reading or offers such a deep insight into human nature. It's the best advertisement for advertising there is!
17. An argument made by critics of advertisers is that______
A.advertising makes contribution to the pockets.
B.readers claim they never read advertisements.
C.advertising may entail a price rise for goods.
D.little ads invariably appeal to baser instincts.
Part Ⅱ Cloze Directions: Read the following passage. For each numbered blank there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. Choose the best one and mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1. The government is to ban payments to witnesses by newspapers seeking to buy up people involved in prominent cases 1 the trial of Rosemary West. In a significant 2 of legal controls over the press, Lord Irvine, the Lord Chancellor, will introduce a 3 bill that will propose making payments to witnesses 4 and will strictly control the amount of 5 that can be given to a case 6 a trial begins In a letter to Gerald Kaufman, chairman of the House of Commons media select committee. Lord Irvine said he 7 with a committee report this year which said that self regulation did not 8 sufficient control. 9 of the letter came two days after Lord Irvine caused a 10 of media protest when he said the 11 of privacy controls contained in European legislation would be left to judges 12 to Parliament. The Lord Chancellor said introduction of the Human Rights Bill, which 13 the European Convention on Human Rights legally 14 in Britain, laid down that everybody was 15 to privacy and that public figures could go to court to protect themselves and their families.
[解析] A项authorized意为“被授权的,公认的,检定过的,经委托的”;B项be credited to sth.意为“归因于,归咎于”;C项entitled意为“对有资格/有权利的”;D项 qualified意为“有资格的,有能力的,适合的,称职的”。
Part Ⅲ Reading Comprehension Directions: In this section you will read 6 passages. Each one is followed by 5 questions about it. You are to choose one best answer A, B, C or D to each question. Answer all the questions following each passage on the basis of what is stated or implied in that passage.
Part Ⅳ Translation Directions:Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese. Write your pieces of Chinese version in the proper space on your Answer Sheet Ⅱ The potential of computers for increasing the control of organizations or society over their members and for invading the privacy of those members has caused considerable concern. The privacy issue has been raised most insistently with respect to the creation and maintenance of data files that assemble information about persons from a multitude of sources. Files of this kind would be highly valuable for many kinds of economic and social research, but they are bought at too high a price if they endanger human freedom or seriously enhance the opportunities of blackmailers. (2) While such dangers should not be ignored, it should be noted that the lack of comprehensive data files has never before been the limiting barrier to the suppression of human freedom. Making the computer the villain in the invasion of privacy or encroachment on civil liberties simply diverts attention from the real dangers. Computer data banks can and must be given the highest degree of protection from abuse. (3) But we must be careful, also, that we do not employ such crude methods of protection as to deprive our society of important data it needs to understand its own social processes and to analyze its problems. Perhaps the most important question of all about the computer is what it has done and will do to man's view of himself and his place in the universe. (4) The most heated attacks on the computer are not focused on its possible economic effects, its presumed destruction of job satisfaction, or its threat to privacy and liberty, but upon the claim that it causes people to be viewed, and to view themselves, as 'machines'. What the computer and the progress in artificial intelligence challenge is an ethic that rests on man's apartness from the rest of nature. An alternative ethic, of course, views man as a part of nature, governed by natural law, subject to the forces of gravity and the demands of his body. (5) The debate about artificial intelligence and the simulation of man's thinking is, in considerable part, a confrontation of these two views of man's place in the universe.