Part II Reading Comprehension (35 minutes)
Directions: There tire 4 passages in this part. Each passage is followed by
some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices
marked A), B), C) and D). You shouM decide on the best choice and mark the
corresponding letter on the,Answer Sheet with a single line through the centre.
Passage One
Questions 21 to 25 are based on the following passage.
It was the worst tragedy in maritime (航海的) history,
six times more deadly than the Titanic.
When the German cruise ship Wilhelm Gustloff was hit by
torpedoes (鱼雷) fired from a Russian submarine in the final winter of World War II,
more than 10,000 people - mostly women, children and old people fleeing the final
Red Army push into Nazi Germany - were packed aboard. An ice storm had turned the
decks into frozen sheets that sent hundreds of families sliding into the sea as the
ship tilted andbegan to go down. Others desperately tried to put lifeboats down. Some
who succeeded fought offthose in the water who had the strength to try to claw their
way aboard. Most people froze immediately. Tll never forget the screams," says Christa
Ntitzmann, 87, one of the 1,200 survivors. She recalls watching the ship, brightly lit,
slipping into its dark grave - and into seeming nothingness, rarely mentioned for more
than half a century.
Now Germanys Nobel Prize-winning author Gtinter Grass has
revived the memory of the 9,000 dead, including more than 4,000 children - with his
latest novel Crab Walk, published last month. The book, which will be out in English
next year, doesnt dwell on the sinking; its heroine is a pregnant young woman who
survives the catastrophe only to say later: "Nobody wanted to hear about it, not here
in the West (of Germany) and not at all in the East." The reason was obvious. As
Grass put it in a recent interview with the weekly Die Woche: "Because the crimes we
Germans are responsible for were and are so dominant, we didn't have the energy left
to tell of our own sufferings.
The long silence about the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff
was probably unavoi dable - and necessary. By unreservedly owning up to their countrys
monstrous crimes in the Second World War, Germans have managed to win acceptance
abroad, marginalize ( 使...不得势 ) the neo- Nazis at home and make peace with their
neighbors. Todays unified Germany is more prosperous and stable than at any time in
its long, troubled history. For that, a half century of willful forgetting about painful
memories like the German Titanic was perhaps a reasonable price to pay. But even the
most politically correct Germans believe that they ye now earned the right to discuss
the full historical record. Not to equate German suffering with that of its victims,
but simply to acknowledge a terrible tragedy.
21、Why does the author say the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff was the worst
tragedy in maritime history?
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Passage Two
Questions 26 to 30 are based on the following passage.
Given the lack of fit between gifted students and their
schools, it is not surprising that such students often have little good to say
about their school experience. In one study of 400 adul who had achieved distinction
in all areas of life, researchers found that three-fifths of these individuals
either did badly in school or were unhappy in school. Few MacArthur Prize fellows,
winners of the MacArthur Award for creative accomplishment, had good things to say
about their precollegiate schooling if they had not been placed in advanced programs.
Anecdotal ( 名人轶事 ) reports support this. Pablo Picasso, Charles Darwin, Mark Twain,
Oliver Gold smith, and William Butler Yeats all disliked school. So did Winston
Churchill, who almost failed out of Harrow, an elite British school. About Oliver
Goldsmith, one of his teachers remarked, "Never was so dull a boy." Often these children
realize that they know more than their teachers, and their teachers often feel that
these children are arrogant, inattentive, or unmotivated.
Some of these gifted people may have done poorly in school
because their, gifts were not scholastic. Maybe we can account for Picasso in this
way. But most fared poorly in school not because they lacked ability but because they
found school unchallenging and consequently lost interest. Yeats described the lack
of fit between his mind and school: "Because I had found it difficult to attend to
anything less interesting than my own thoughts, I was difficult to teach.
" As noted earlier, gifted children of all kinds tend to be
strong-willed nonconformists. Nonconformity and stubbornness (and Yeatss level of
arrogance and self-absorption) are like ly to lead to Conflicts with teachers.
When highly gifted students in any domain talk about what
was important to the development of their abilities, they are far more likely to mention
their families than their schools or teachers. A writing prodigy (神童) studied by
David Feldman and Lynn Goldsmith was taught far more about writing by his journalist
father than his English teacher. High-IQ children, in Australia studied by Miraca Gross
had much more positive feelings about their families than their schools. About half
of the mathematicians studied by Benjamin Bloom had little good to say about school.
They all did well in school and took honors classes when available, and some skipped
grades.
26、he main point the author is making about schools is that
（本题分值：2分）
Questions 31 to 35 are based on the following passage.
When we worry about who might be spying on our private lives, we usually think
about the Federal agents. But the private sector outdoes the government every
time. Its Linda Tripp, not the FBI, who is facing charges under Marylands laws
against secret telephone taping. Its our banks, not the Internal Revenue
Service (IRS), that pass our private financial data to telemarketing finms.
Consumer activists are pressing Congress for better privacy laws without much
result so far. The legislators lean toward letting business people track our financial
habits virtually at will.
As an example of whats going on, consider U.S. Bancorp, which was recently sued
for deceptive practices by the state of Minnesota. According to the lawsuit,
the bank supplied a telemarketer called MemberWorks with sensitive customer
data such as names,, phone numbers, bank-account and credit-card numbers, Social
Security numbers, account balances and credit limits.
With these customer lists in hand, MemberWorks started dialing for dollars - selling
dental plans, videogames, computer software and other products and services. Customers
who accepted a "free trial offer" had, 30 days to cancel. If the deadline passed, they
were charged automatically through their bank or credit-card accounts. U.S. Bancorp
collected a share of the revenu--es_ ....
Customers were doubly deceived, the lawsuit claims. They. didnt know that the
bank was giving account numbers to MemberWorks. And if customers asked, they were
led to think the answer was no.
The state sued MemberWorks separately for deceptive selling. Thecompany dehies that
it did anything wrong. For its part, U.S. Bancorp settled without admitting any
mistakes. But it agreed to stop exposing its customers to nonfinancial products sold
by outside firms. A few top banks decided to do the same. Many other banks will still
do business with MemberWorks and similar firms.
And banks will still be mining data from your account in order to sell you financial
products, including things of little value, such as credit insurance and credit-card
protection plans.
You have almost no protection from businesses that use your personal accounts for
profit. For example, no federal law shields "transaction and experience" information
mainly the details of your bank and credit-card accounts. Social Security numbers are
for sale by private fams. Theyve generally agreed not to sell to the public. But to
sinesses, the numbers are an open book. Selfregulation doesnt work. A firm might publish
a privacy-protection policy, but who enforces it?
Take U.S. Bancorp again. Customers were told, in writing, that "all personal
information you supply to us will be considered confidential." Then it sold your data
to MemberWorks. The bank even claims that it doesnt "sell" your data at all. It merely
"shares" it and reaps a profit. Now you know.
31、Contrary to popular belief, the author finds that spying on peoples privacy
（本题分值：2分）
Passage Four
Questions 36 to 40 are based on the following passage.
Its hardly news that the immigration system is a mess. Foreign nationals have
long been slipping across the border with fake papers, and visitors who arrive
in the U.S. legitimately often overstay their legal welcome without being punished.
But since Sept. 11, its become clear that terrorists have been shrewdly factoring
the weaknesses of our system into their plans. In addition to their mastery of
forging passports, at least three of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers (劫机者) were here on
expired visas. Thats been a safe bet until now. The Immigration and Naturalization
Service (INS) ( 移民归化局 ) lacks the resources, and apparently the inclination, to
keep track of the estimated 2 million foreig ners who have intentionally overstayed
their welcome.
But this laxness (马虎) toward immigration fraud may be about to change. Congress
has already taken some modest steps. The U.S.A. Patriot Act, passed in the wake of
the Sept. 11 tragedy, requires the FBI, the Justice Department, the State Department
and the INS to share more data, which will make it easier to stop watch-listed terrorists
at the border.
But whats really needed, critics say, is even tougher laws and more resources aimed
at tightening up border security. Reformers are calling for a rollback of rules that
hinder law enforcement.They also want the INS to hire hundreds m ore border patrol agents
and investigators to keep illegal immigrants out and to track them down once they're
here. Reformers also want to see the INS set up a database to monitor whether visa olders
actually leave the country when they are required to.
All these proposed changes were part of a new border-security bill that passed the
House of Representatives but died in the Senate last week. Before Sept. 11, legislation
of this kind had been blocked by two powerful lobbies: universities, which rely on tuition
from foreign students who could be kept out by the new law, and business, which relies
on foreigners for cheap labor. Since the attacks, theyve backed off. The bill would have
passed this time but for congressional maneuverings and is expected to be reintroduced
and to pass next year.
Also on the agenda for next year: a proposal, backed by some influential law-makers, to
split the INS into two agencies - a good cop that would tend to service functions like
processing citizenship papers and a bad cop that would concentrate on border inspections,
deportation and other functions. One reason for the division, supporters say, is
that the INS has in recent years become too focused on serving tourists and immigrants.
After the Sept. l 1 tragedy, the INS should pay more attention to serving the millions
of ordinary Americans who rely on the nations border security to protect them from
terrorist attacks.
36、Terrorists have obviously taken advantage of
（本题分值：2分）
Part III Vocabulary (20 minutes)
Directions: There are 30 incomplete sentences in this part. For each sentence
there are four choices marked A), B), C) and D). Choose the ONE answer that best
completes the sentence. Then mark the corresponding letter on the Answer Sheet
with a single line through the centre.
41、It is generally known that New York is a city for and a center for odd bits of information.
（本题分值：0.5分）
Culture refers to the social heritage of a people - the learned
patterns for thinking, feeling and acting that characterize a
population or society, include the expression of these pattems in 71、.
material things. Culture is compose of nonmaterial culture - 72、.
abstract creations like values, beliefs, customs and institutional
arrangements - and material culture - physical object like 73、.
cooking pots, computers and bathtubs. In sum, culture reflects
both the ideas we share or everything we make. In ordinary 74、.
speech, a person of culture is the individual can speak another 75、.
language - the person who is unfamiliar with the arts, music, 76、.
literature, philosophy, or history. But to sociologists, to be
human is to be cultured, because of culture is the common world 77、.
of experience we share with other members of our group.
Culture is essentially to our humanness. It provides a kind 78、.
of map for relating to others. Consider how you fred your way
about social life. How do you know how to act in a classroom,
or a department store, or toward a person who smiles or laugh 79、.
at you? Your culture supplies you by broad, standardized, 80、.
ready-made answers for dealing with each of these situations.
Therefore, if we know a persons culture, we can understand
and even predict a good deal of his behavior.
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For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a letter to the editor of a
newspaper complaining about the poor service of a bookstore. You should write
at least 150 words according to the guidelines given below in Chinese.
设想你买了一本英文词典，发现有这样那样的质量问题，书店的服务态度又不好，因此给
报社编辑写信。信中必须包括以下内容：
事情的起因
与书店交涉的经过
呼吁服务行业必须提高服务质量
A Letter to the Editor of a Newspaper
（本题分值：15分）