automobile often brings.
Prior to the seventies, the auto' s usefulness and assured role in society were hardly questioned. Even worries about uprising gas prices and future fuel availability subsided(减退) in the eighties almost as quickly as they had emerged. Car sales recovered, driving is up, and wealthy
customers are once more shopping for highperformance cars.
The motor vehicle industry's apparent success in dealing with the challenges of the seven-
ties has obscured the harmful long - term trends of automobile centered transportation. Rising
gasoline consumption will before long put increased pressure on oil production capacities. In addition, as more and more people can afford their own cars and as mass motorization takes hold,
traffic jam becomes a tough problem. And motor vehicles are important contributors to urban air
pollution, acid rain, and global warming.
Society's interest in fuel supply security, the integrity of its cities, and protection of the en-
vironment calls for a fundamental rethinking of the automobile's role. Stricter fuel economy and
pollution standards are the most obvious and immediate measures that can be adopted. But they
can only be part of the answer. In the years ahead, the challenge will be to develop innovative
(革新的) transportation policies.
26. Which of the following is TRUE according to the first paragraph?
A) A good car indicates its owner's high social position.
B) A good car allows its owner to travel free.
C) A car provides its owner with a sense of safety.
D) A car adds to its owner's attractiveness.
27. The phrase "rolled off assembly lines"(Para. 1, Lines 2 - 3) means
A) "were turned out from factories" B) "moved along production lines"
C) "moved along the streets" D) "were lined up in the streets"
28. The passage states that there is
A) a sharp contrast between the cost and usefulness of the cars
B) a sharp contrast between the cost and performance of the cars
C) a sharp conflict between car drivers and traffic rules
D) a sharp contradiction between the convenience of car owners and the burdens of society
29. It is implied that the auto's assured role in society is
A) threatened by the rising gas prices
B) challenged by a series of fundamental problems
C) protected by law
D) firmly established
30. Stricter fuel economy and pollution standards are
A) only part of the solution to massive automobile use
B) the best way to cope with the massive use of cars
C) innovative transportation policies
D) future policies of the automobile industry
Passage Three
Questions 31 to 35 are based on the following passage:
While America' s grade - school and high - school system is coming under attack, one fact
remains: U.S. universities are among the best in the world. Since World War II, American scientists - mostly working in universities or colleges - have won more than half of all Nobel Prizes in physics and medicine. Foreign students rush to the United States by the tens of thousands;last year they earned more than one quarter of the doctoral degrees awarded in the country. Yet while American universities produce great research and great graduate programe, they some-times pay little attention to the task that lies at their very core: the teaching of undergraduate students.
In an era of $ 20,000 academic years, college presidents can no longer afford to ignore the
creeping rot at their core. In speeches and interviews the nation' s higher educators have rediscovered teaching. Robert Rosenzweig, president of the Association of American Universities,
said: "Our organization was never very concerned about teaching. In the last 18 months, we
have spent more time on undergraduate education than on any other subject."
Despite such promising efforts, no one doubts that research still outranks teaching at the
leading universities, not least because it is a surer and faster way to earn status. Some people
don' t think it has to be that way. They argue that the reward system for college faculty can be
changed, so that professors will be encouraged to devote more time and effort to teaching. They
say that they are beginning to believe that the 1990s may come to be remembered as the decade
of the undergraduate.
That would bring 'it full circle. For more than two centuries after the founding of Harvard
College in 1636, the instruction of undergr
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