Directions:In this section, there is one passage followed by 5 questions. Read the passage carefully, then answer the questions in a maximum of 10 words. Remember to write the answers on the Answer Sheet.
Questions 1-5 are based on the following passage.
Could the bad old days of economic decline be about to return? Since OPEC agreed to supply-cuts in March, the price of crude oil has jumped to almost $26 a barrel, up from less than $10 last December. This near-tripling of oil prices calls up scary memories of the 1973 oil shock, when prices quadrupled, and 1979-1980, when they also almost tripled. Both previous shocks resulted in double-digit inflation and global economic decline. So where are the headlines warning of gloom and doom this time?
The oil price was given another push up this week when Iraq suspended oil exports. Strengthening economic growth, at the same time as winter grips the northern hemisphere, could push the price higher still in the short term.
Yet there are good reasons to expect the economic consequences now to be less severe than in the 1970s. In most countries the cost of crude oil now accounts for a smaller share of the price of petrol than it did in the 1970s. In Europe, taxes account for up to four-fifths of the retail price, so even quite big changes in the price of crude have a more muted effect on pump prices than in the past.
Rich economies are also less dependent on oil than they were, and so less sensitive to swings in the oil price. Energy conservation, a shift to other fuels and a decline in the importance of heavy, energy-intensive industries have reduced oil consumption. Software, consultancy and mobile telephones use far less oil than steel or car production. For each dollar of GDP (in constant prices) rich economies now use nearly 50% less oil than in 1973. The OECD estimates in its latest Economic Outlook that, if oil prices averaged $22 a barrel for a full year, compared with $13 in 1998, this would increase the oil import bill in rich economies by only 0.25-0.5% of GDP. That is less than one-quarter of the income loss in 1974 or 1980. On the other hand, oil-importing emerging economies—to which heavy industry has shifted—have become more energy-intensive, and so could be more seriously squeezed.
One more reason not to lose sleep over the rise in oil prices is that, unlike the rises in the 1970s, it has not occurred against the background of general commodity-price inflation and global excess demand. A sizable portion of the world is only just emerging from economic decline. The economist’s commodity price index is broadly unchanging from a year ago. In 1973 commodity prices jumped by 70%, and in 1979 by almost 30%.
Questions:
1.What is the main reason for the latest rise of oil price?
2.What are the results of the 1970s’ oil shock?
3.It can be inferred from the text that the retail price of petrol will go up dramatically if ________.
4.According to the passage, reduction in oil consumption is due to ________, a shift to other fuels and a decline in the importance of heavy, energy-intensive industries.
5.According to the passage, compared with those in the 1970s, oil-price shocks are ________ now.
In this section, there is one passage followed by a summary. For questions 1 to 5, please read the passage carefully and complete each space in the summary, using a maximum of three words from the passage. Remember to write the answers on the answer sheet.
Questions 1 to 5 are based on the following passage.
Have you ever thought about inventing something? Were you worried that your idea was too strange or unrealistic? Well, maybe you should think again.
Strange and unrealistic ideas never stopped Arthur Pedrick. Pedrick was a British inventor. Originally a government clerk, he spent his retirement in the 1960s and 1970s developing new and unusual ideas. Some of these ideas contradicted basic physics, but that didn’t stop Pedrick. One of his strangest ideas was a plan to connect Australia and Antarctica using large tubes, a distance of 10,000 km! These tubes were designed to carry giant ice balls from Antarctica to Australia. The ice would then melt in the Australian desert, and the water would be used for irrigation. Another of Pedrick’s inventions was a radio-controlled golf ball. A golfer could change the speed and direction of the golf ball using small flaps attached to the ball, which could be controlled by computer chips. Using radio waves, golfers could also find their lost golf balls. Arthur Pedrick had thousands of bizarre ideas for inventions, most of which were never constructed.
Though many of Pedrick’s inventions were never developed, a lot of other strange ideas have been. In 1989, a company designed and sold a theft-prevention device for expensive cars. As part of this device, several tubes were attached to the bottom of a car. If someone tried to steal the car, super hot flames were emitted from the tubes and burned the car thief. Some people who were not thieves, however, were seriously injured by this device which they accidentally set off by walking past the car.
Other strange inventions include underwear for dogs and pens with drinkable ink. The underwear keeps dogs from making a mess when they go out for a walk. Also if you were ever thirsty during a test, a pen with drinkable ink would be very handy!
If you have an idea that seems a little out in left field, don’t let that stop you from trying it. You’ll be in good company.
Summary:
In this section, there is one passage followed by a summary. Read the passage carefully and complete the summary below by choosing a maximum of three words from the passage to fill in the spaces 76-80. Remember to write the answers on the Answer Sheet.(10 points)
Questions 1-5 are based on the following passage.
Paper is different from other waste produce because it comes from a sustainable resource: trees. Unlike the minerals and oil used to make plastics and metals, trees are replaceable. Paper is also biodegradable, so it does not pose as much threat to the environment when it is discarded. While 45 out of every 100 tonnes of wood fibre used to make paper in Australia comes from waste paper, the rest comes directly from virgin fibre from forests and plantations. By world standards this is a good performance since the worldwide average is 33 per cent waste paper. Governments have encouraged waste paper collection and sorting schemes and, at the same time, the paper industry has responded by developing new recycling technologies that have paved the way for even greater utilization of used fibre. As a result, industry’s use of recycled fibres is expected to increase at twice the rate of virgin fibre over the coming years.
Already, waste paper constitutes 70% of paper used for packaging, and advances in the technology required to remove ink from the paper have allowed a higher recycled content in newsprint and writing paper. To achieve the benefits of recycling, the community must also contribute. We need to accept a change in the quality of paper products; for example stationery may be less white and of a rougher texture. There also needs to be support from the community for waste paper collection programs. Not only do we need to make the paper available to collectors but it also needs to be separated into different types and sorted from contaminants such as staples, paperclips, string and other miscellaneous items.
There are technical limitations to the amount of paper which can be recycled and some paper products cannot be collected for re-use. These include paper in the form of books and permanent records, photographic paper and paper which is badly contaminated. The four most common sources of paper for recycling are factories and retail stores which gather large amounts of packaging material in which goods are delivered, also offices which have unwanted business documents and computer output, paper converters and printers and lastly households which discard newspapers and packaging material. The paper manufacturer pays a price for the paper and may also incur the collection cost.
Once collected, the paper has to be sorted by hand by people trained to recognize various types of paper. This is necessary because some types of paper can only be made from particular kinds of recycled fibre. The sorted paper then has to be repulped or mixed with water and broken down into its individual fibres. This mixture is called stock and may contain a wide variety of contaminating materials, particularly if it is made from mixed waste paper which has had little sorting. Various machinery is used to remove other materials from the stock. After passing through the repulping process, the fibres from printed waste paper are grey in colour because the printing ink has soaked into the individual fibres. This recycled material can only be used in products where the grey colour does not matter, such as cardboard boxes but if the grey colour is not acceptable, the fibres must be de-inked. This involves adding chemicals such as caustic soda or other alkalis, soaps and detergents, water-hardening agents such as calcium chloride, frothing agents and bleaching agents. Before the recycled fibres can be made into paper they must be refined or treated in such a way that they bond together.
Most paper products must contain some virgin fibre as well as recycled fibres and unlike glass, paper cannot be recycled indefinitely. Most paper is down-cycled which means that a product made from recycled paper is of an inferior quality to the original paper. Recycling paper is beneficial in that it saves some of the energy, labour and capital that goes into producing virgin pulp. However, recycling requires the use of fossil fuel, a nonrenewable energy source, to collect the waste paper from the community and to process it to produce new paper. And the recycling process still creates emissions which require treatment before they can be disposed of safely. Nevertheless, paper recycling is an important economical and environmental practice but one which must be carried out in a rational and viable manner for it to be useful to both industry and the community.
Summary:
From the point of view of recycling, paper has two advantages over minerals and oil in that firstly it comes from a resource which is 1 and secondly it is less threatening to our environment when we throw it away because it is 2 Although Australia’s record in the re-use of waste paper is good, it is still necessary to use a combination of recycled fibre and 3 to make new paper. The paper industry has contributed positively and people have also been encouraged by the government to collect their waste on a regular basis. One major difficulty is the removal of 4 from used paper but advances are being made in this area. However, we need to learn to accept paper which is generally of a lower quality than before and to sort our waste paper by removing 5 before discarding it for collection.
Directions: In this section, there is one passage followed by 5 questions. Read the passage carefully, then answer the questions in as few words as possible (not more than 10 words). Remember to write the answers on the Answer Sheet.
Questions 1-5 are based on the following passage.
Rare among American actors, Depp has made a name for himself effortlessly switching between mainstream Hollywood Movies and more “out of the ordinary” projects. Talking about his choice of roles, he once said, “With any part you play, there is a certain amount of yourself in it. There has to be, otherwise it’s not acting. It’s lying.” Highlights of a richly diverse career include Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hollowand Pirates of the Caribbean.
Depp dropped out of school at sixteen to concentrate on a career in music, playing the guitar (he played with more than twenty bands). However, his musical career failed to take off, and he found himself selling pens over the phone to pay the bills. His lucky break came when makeup artist Lori Allison, to whom he was briefly married, introduced him to Nicolas Cage. Although at first they did not like each other, they later became good friends and Cage persuaded him to try acting. Depp signed on with Cage’s agent, and made his feature film debut in Wes Craven’s horror film Nightmare on Elm Street, in which the character he played was eaten by his bed. After that he had his first screen leading role in Pirate Resort.
Depp went on to achieve teen idol status in the TV series 21 Jump Street, but after four seasons, he wanted out, with the hope of making the transition to the big screen. He starred in CryBaby, followed by Tim Burtons’ Edward Scissorhands, after which he went on to win considerable critical acclaim in Ed Wood, a reunion with Burtons. Depp made his feature directorial debut with The Brave in 1997, a film he also co-wrote and starred in. Premiering at the Cannes Film Festival, the film also featured Marlow Brando, but earned mostly negative reviews, with most critics blaming its weak script. Sleepy Hollowteamed him with director Burton yet again, before he starred in Ted Demme’s Blow, and appeared in the thriller From Hell, about Jack the Ripper.
Off screen, his good looks and “bad boy” image (he was once arrested for attacking intrusive paparazzi with a wooden plank) have earned him a lot of media attention. He was voted one of the fifty most beautiful people in the world by People magazine in 1996. He has also had his fair share of celebrity romances; when his engagement to Edward Scissirhandsco-star Winona Ryder ended, he had a tattoo (one of at least eight), which said “Winona Forever”, altered by laser to get rid of the last two letters of her name. His relationship with model Kate Moss also ended abruptly in 1998, when he started dating French singer-actress Vanessa Paradis. They are now married and have two children, Lily-Rose Melody and Jack. More recent work has included Pirates of the Caribbeanwith Geoffrey Rush and Once Upon a Time in Mexico.
Questions:
1.What does Johnny Depp think of acting a role without having any part of oneself in it?
2.Who inspired Depp to start his film career?
3.Why did many critics negatively review Depp’S film The Brave?
4.How many films has Depp made with director Tim Burton?
5.What have brought Depp a lot of media attention off screen?
()measured at the midship section and taken from outside of the ship’s side shell plating on one side to the outside of ship’side shell plating on the other side.
Directions:In this section, there is one passage followed by 5 questions. Read the passage carefully, then answer the questions in a maximum of 10 words. Remember to write the answers on the Answer Sheet.
High Dropout Rate in US
Many young people in the United States never finish high school. Exactly how many dropouts is another issue. Recent studies of dropout rates have had conflicting results. For one thing, schools define and measure their dropout rates differently.
Some researchers say about fifteen to twenty parents of public school students do not complete their education. But many other experts and policymakers believe that for the past twenty years, the dropout rate has been around thirty percent. For Latino and black students, the numbers are even higher. Researchers say almost half of them leave school.
At the same time, almost half the states let students leave school before the age of eighteen without informing their parents.
Finding a good job without a high school education is more and more difficult. A Northeastern University study in 2002 found that almost half of all dropouts aged sixteen to twenty-four did not have a job.
The lack of high school education can also lead to other problems. An estimated two-thirds of prisoners in the United States dropped out of high school.
Recent studies have shown that the majority of students who drop out do not do it because they are failing. Many are bored with their classes or feel disconnected from their school and teachers. Some students feel that educators place low expectations on them. Teen pregnancies also add to the dropout problem.
During the past twenty years, there have been efforts to increase graduation rate through education reforms. Some communities are working on dropout prevention programs. These include alternative high schools to meet special needs.
Some programs, for example, provide free transportation and childcare to help young mothers and fathers finish school. Yet special programs can cost a lot, and many school systems have limited budgets.
Federal spending on second-chance programs to help students finish school has decreased from the 1970s. This was shown in a report last year from the Educational Testing Service.
Experts suggest "early warning systems" to help identify young schoolchildren at risk of dropping out of high school. They say schools also need to get parents more involved, especially if their children are missing school often.
Questions:
1.What is the researchers’ estimated percentage of school dropouts among Latino and black students?
2.What efforts have been made to increase graduation rates?
3.What has been done to help young parents complete their education?
4.Who made a report about the decrease,of Federal spending on second-chance programs to help students finish school?
5.What do experts suggest setting up to help prevent students from dropping out of school?
Directions:In this section, there is one passage followed by a summary. Read the passage carefully and complete the summary below by choosing no more than three words from the passage. Remember to write the answers on the Answer Sheet.
Questions 1-5 are based on the following passage.
The City of the Future What will city life be like in the future? Some people think that life in the cities is going to be horrible. They predict that cities will become more and more crowded. As the number of people increases, there will be less space for each person. This overcrowding will cause other problems—more crime, dirtier streets, and worse problems with traffic than we have now. How will people find enough drinking water, energy (such as gas and electricity), and housing? Because life will be hard, people who live in cities will worry more, and they may become sick. For these reasons, some say that nobody will want to live in urban areas.
How can we solve such problems as overcrowding, crime, and traffic? In some cities, thousands of people are already sleeping in the streets because there is so little suitable housing—and because rents are so high. The crime rate isn’t going down. Instead, it is increasing so fast that many people are afraid to go out at night. Traffic is also getting worse. More and more often, traffic jams are so bad that cars don’t move at all for several blocks. These urban problems have been getting worse, not better, so many people see no hope for the future of the city.
Los Angeles, California, for instance, has no subway system and the buses are slow. Instead, most commuters drive many miles from their homes to work. Many of these drivers spend several hours each day on busy freeways. New York, by contrast, has a mass transit system—buses, commuter trains, and subways. Because the public transportation is crowded and dirty, however, many people drive private cars, and the traffic jams are worse than in Los Angeles.
On the other hand, some cities have clean, fast, and pleasant public transportation systems. In Paris, France, and Toronto, Canada, for example, anyone can use mass transit to move quickly from one part of the city to another.
The disadvantages of any modern city are not unique to that city—that is, cities all over the world have to solve the problems of traffic jams, crime, housing, energy, drinking water, and overcrowding. Yet many cities have found answers to one or more of these difficulties. Some European cities, such as Stockholm, Sweden, or London, England, have planned communities that provide people with apartments, jobs, shopping centers, green space, entertainment, and transportation. Many U.S. cities are rebuilding their downtown areas. Urban planners can learn from one another. They can try solutions that have been successful in other parts of the world.
Summary:
Some people think that life in the cities is going to be horrible. They say that cities will become more and more crowded and many other problems will be caused by this 1 Due to the hard life, people do not want to live in 2 These urban problems such as overcrowding, crime and traffic have been getting worse, so many people 3 for the future of the city. However, these disadvantages of any modern city are not unique to that city. All the cities all over the world must solve the problems and fortunately, many of them have found answers to one or more of these difficulties. For example, 4 or London has planned communities providing people with apartments, jobs and so on. Besides, many U. S. cities 5 In a word, solutions that have been successful in a place should be adopted and tried in another place.
Directions:In this section, there is one passage followed by 5 statements. Go over the passage quickly and mark the answers on the Answer Sheet. For questions 1-6, mark
T (for True) if the statement agrees with the information given in the passage;
F (for False) if the statement contradicts with information given in the passage;
NG (for Not Given) if the information is not given in the passage.
During World War II at the height of the blitz on East London, a boy of 12 was found wandering the rubble streets near Tower Bridge. His dirty face and torn clothing suggested that something awful had happened.
It was 7 a.m., and dawn was breaking into a sky of crimson red lit up by the many fires that burned across the City, London’s docks were ablaze as far as the eye could see, and the river had become a wall of crackling flame with dark plumes of smoke rising into the air as beleaguered firemen fought to put out fires with their spent hoses.
Wherever he looked, the boy could see the flames, the buildings all around him were on fire, and his nostrils were filled with the smell charcoal and smoke, he could hear the sparks crackle as the flames licked at the burning beams of wood.
It is a vision that the boy, now a man, remembers, as though it were yesterday, for that boy was me and this is my true stow:
That morning my father had sent me out after the “all clear” had sounded, to get fresh milk at the local dairy, I had been scampering up the road when an unexploded bomb went off in a house nearby covering me in rubble.
Somehow, dazed and bewildered, I had managed to brush myself down and run on, but I was badly cut by flying glass, and in no state to continue my journey.
It was then that an Air-raid Precautions Warden appeared, his dog had found me with tail wagging, “Come along son” he said “you need a bandage on that wound”, he looked me over apprehensively, “Come up the road to our first-aid unit and we’ll patch you up.”
By nine o’clock I was covered with sticky plasters and bandages, and looked like a wounded war veteran, “I’ve got to get the milk at Evans now” I said. The Warden looked at me sadly, “I’m afraid there’ll be no milk supplied today; the dairy was blitzed last night.”
I wondered what my father would say, me coming home in such a state and without milk too.
I hobbled back towards home through the back streets covered in rubble and bomb damage, but as I neared I had to rub my eyes, where my home had stood was a large smoldering crater. Everything and everyone had gone, blown away by a bomb.
I remember searching with others for many hours, calling for my father and mother, I found his pocket watch and chain in the rubble just as another air-raid started and we had to rush once more for shelter, I opened up the watch when I felt safe, inside an inscription read “Happy Birthday, Dad”, and I cried.
I can’t ever forget what the war did to me and my family, as a London cockney I have taught my children about their past so that they can guard against the future, this is one family that knows the anguish and loss that war brings, my children have never known their grandparents, but they do know right from wrong, for those who perish in war are often the innocent and we must remember that for all time.
Statements:
1.The author’s father asked him to buy some milk after the air-raid alarm was lifted.
2.he author could not get any milk because the dairy was closed for the day.
3.After the author had his wound bandaged, he walked home in high spirits.
4.The author was sure that his father would scold him for returning home without the milk.
5.When the boy reached home, he found that his home had been destroyed by a bomb.
6.The author found the birthday present his father was going to give him and ran to an air-raid shelter to get a closer look at it.
In this section, there is one passage followed by a summary. Read the passage carefully and complete the summary below by choosing a maximum of three words from the passage to fill in the spaces 76-80. Remember to write the answers on the Answer Sheet.(10 points)
Questions 1-5 are based on the following passage.
Paper is different from other waste produce because it comes from a sustainable resource: trees. Unlike the minerals and oil used to make plastics and metals, trees are replaceable. Paper is also biodegradable, so it does not pose as much threat to the environment when it is discarded. While 45 out of every 100 tonnes of wood fibre used to make paper in Australia comes from waste paper, the rest comes directly from virgin fibre from forests and plantations. By world standards this is a good performance since the worldwide average is 33 per cent waste paper. Governments have encouraged waste paper collection and sorting schemes and, at the same time, the paper industry has responded by developing new recycling technologies that have paved the way for even greater utilization of used fibre. As a result, industry’s use of recycled fibres is expected to increase at twice the rate of virgin fibre over the coming years.
Already, waste paper constitutes 70% of paper used for packaging, and advances in the technology required to remove ink from the paper have allowed a higher recycled content in newsprint and writing paper. To achieve the benefits of recycling, the community must also contribute. We need to accept a change in the quality of paper products; for example stationery may be less white and of a rougher texture. There also needs to be support from the community for waste paper collection programs. Not only do we need to make the paper available to collectors but it also needs to be separated into different types and sorted from contaminants such as staples, paperclips, string and other miscellaneous items.
There are technical limitations to the amount of paper which can be recycled and some paper products cannot be collected for re-use. These include paper in the form of books and permanent records, photographic paper and paper which is badly contaminated. The four most common sources of paper for recycling are factories and retail stores which gather large amounts of packaging material in which goods are delivered, also offices which have unwanted business documents and computer output, paper converters and printers and lastly households which discard newspapers and packaging material. The paper manufacturer pays a price for the paper and may also incur the collection cost.
Once collected, the paper has to be sorted by hand by people trained to recognize various types of paper. This is necessary because some types of paper can only be made from particular kinds of recycled fibre. The sorted paper then has to be repulped or mixed with water and broken down into its individual fibres. This mixture is called stock and may contain a wide variety of contaminating materials, particularly if it is made from mixed waste paper which has had little sorting. Various machinery is used to remove other materials from the stock. After passing through the repulping process, the fibres from printed waste paper are grey in colour because the printing ink has soaked into the individual fibres. This recycled material can only be used in products where the grey colour does not matter, such as cardboard boxes but if the grey colour is not acceptable, the fibres must be de-inked. This involves adding chemicals such as caustic soda or other alkalis, soaps and detergents, water-hardening agents such as calcium chloride, frothing agents and bleaching agents. Before the recycled fibres can be made into paper they must be refined or treated in such a way that they bond together.
Most paper products must contain some virgin fibre as well as recycled fibres and unlike glass, paper cannot be recycled indefinitely. Most paper is down-cycled which means that a product made from recycled paper is of an inferior quality to the original paper. Recycling paper is beneficial in that it saves some of the energy, labour and capital that goes into producing virgin pulp. However, recycling requires the use of fossil fuel, a nonrenewable energy source, to collect the waste paper from the community and to process it to produce new paper. And the recycling process still creates emissions which require treatment before they can be disposed of safely. Nevertheless, paper recycling is an important economical and environmental practice but one which must be carried out in a rational and viable manner for it to be useful to both industry and the community.
Summary:
From the point of view of recycling, paper has two advantages over minerals and oil in that firstly it comes from a resource which is 1 and secondly it is less threatening to our environment when we throw it away because it is 2 Although Australia’s record in the re-use of waste paper is good, it is still necessary to use a combination of recycled fibre and 3 to make new paper. The paper industry has contributed positively and people have also been encouraged by the government to collect their waste on a regular basis. One major difficulty is the removal of 4 from used paper but advances are being made in this area. However, we need to learn to accept paper which is generally of a lower quality than before and to sort our waste paper by removing 5 before discarding it for collection.
Directions: In this section, there is one passage followed by a summary. Read the passage carefully and complete the summary with the appropriate words from the passage. Remember to write your answers on the Answer Sheet.
Questions 1—5 are based on the following passage.
The most crucial way, however, of improving the labour cost structure at SAH (Sydney Airport Hotel) was to find better, more productive ways of providing customer service. SAH management concluded this would first require a process of “benchmarking”. The prime objective of the benchmarking process was to compare a range of service delivery processes across a range of criteria using teams made up of employees from different departments within the hotel which interacted with each other. This process resulted in performance measures that greatly enhanced SAH’s ability to improve productivity and quality.
The front office team discovered through this project that a high proportion of AHI (Australian Hotels Inc) Club member reservations were incomplete. As a result, the service provided to these guests was below the standard promised to them as part of their membership agreement. Reducing the number of incomplete reservations greatly improved guest perceptions of service.
In addition, a program modelled on an earlier project called “Take Charge” was implemented. Essentially, Take Charge provides an effective feedback loop from both customers and employees. Customer comments, both positive and negative, are recorded by staff. These are collated regularly to identify opportunities for improvement. Just as importantly, employees are requested to note down their own suggestions for improvement. (AHI has set an expectation that employees will submit at least three suggestions for every one they receive from a customer.) Employee feedback is reviewed daily and suggestions are implemented within 48 hours, if possible, or a valid reason is given for non-implementation. If suggestions require analysis or data collection, the Take Charge team has 30 days in which to address the issue and come up with recommendations.
Although quantitative evidence of AHI’s initiatives at SAH are limited at present, anecdotal evidence clearly suggests that these practices are working. Indeed AHI is progressively rolling out these initiatives in other hotels in Australia, whilst numerous overseas visitors have come to see how the program works.
Summary:
What They Did at SAH Teams of employees were selected from different hotel departments to participate in a benchmarking exercise. The information collected was used to compare a range of 1 which, in turn, led to the development of 2 that would be used to increase the hotel’s capacity to improve 3 as well as quality. Also, an older program known as 4 was introduced at SAH. In this program, feedback is sought from customers and staff. If possible, their suggestions are implemented within 48 hours. Some of these suggestions may be investigated for their feasibility for a period of up to 5 .