| Part III Reading
Comprehension (40 minutes, 25 points)
Directions: There are five passages
in this part. Each passage is followed by five questions or unfinished
statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A,
B, C and D.Choose the best one and mark the corresponding letter
on the ANSWER SHEET with a single line
through the center.
·Passage 1
John Grisham was born on February 2, 1955, in Jonesboro, Arkansas,
in the USA.His lather was a construction worker and moved his
family all around the southern states of America, stopping wherever
he could find work. Eventually they settled in Mississippi. Graduating
from law school in 1981, Grisham practiced law for nearly a decade
in Southaven, specializing in criminal defense and personal injury
litigation (诉讼). In 1983, he was elected to the state House of
Representatives and served until 1990.
One day at the Dessoto County courthouse, Grisham heard the
horrifying testimony of a 12-year-old rape victim. He decided
to write a novel exploring what would have happened if the girl's
father had murdered her attackers. He proceeded to get up every
morning at 5 a.m. to work on the novel, called A Time to Kill,
which was published in 1988. Grisham's next novel, The Firm, was
one of the biggest hits of 1991, spending 47 weeks on The New
York Times bestseller list. Grisham was then able to give up law
and concentrate on writing. Grisham lives with his wife and two
children, dividing their time between their Victorian home on
a 67 acre farm in Mississippi and a 204 acre plantation near Charlottesville,
VirginiA.
When he's not writing, Grisham devotes time to charitable causes,
including mission trips with his church group. As a child he dreamt
of becoming a professional baseball player, and now serves as
the local Little League commissioner. He has built six ballfields
on his property and hosts children from 26 Little League teams.36.
X-rays are also called Rontgen rays_______the discoverer who first
put them to use.
46. John Grisham is__________at present.
47. What inspired Grisham to write his first novel?
48. The story of the novel A Time [o Kill would probably lochs
on_____.
49. Which of the following is NOT true of the novel The Firm?
50. It can be inferred from the passage that Grisham has built
ballfields on his property________.
·Passage 2
A quality education is the ultimate liberator, it can free
people from poverty, giving them the power to greatly improve
their lives and take a productive place in society. It can also
free communities and countries, allowing them to leap forward
into periods of wealth and social unity that otherwise would not
be possible.
For this reason, the international community has committed itself
to getting all the world's children into primary school by 2015,
a commitment known as Education for All.
Can education for all be achieved by 2015? The answer is definitely
"yes," although it is a difficult task. If we now measure
the goal in terms of children successfully completing a minimum
of five years of primary school, instead of just enrolling for
classes, which used to be the measuring slick for education, then
the challenge becomes even more difficult. Only 32 countries were
formerly believed to be at risk of not achieving education for
all on the basis of enrollment rates. The number rises to 88 if
completion rates are used as the criterion.
Still, the goal is achievable with the right policies and the
right support from the international community. 59 of the 88 countries
at risk can reach universal primary completion by 2015 if they
bring the efficiency and quality of their education systems into
line with standards observed in higher-performing systems. They
also need significant increases in external financing and technical
support. The 29 countries lagging farthest behind will not reach
the goal without unprecedented rates of progress. But this is
attainable with creative solutions, including use of information
technologies, flexible and targeted foreign aid, and fewer people
living in poverty.
A key lesson of experience about what makes development effective
is that a country's capacity to use aid well depends heavily on
its policies, institutions and management. Where a country scores
well on these criteria, foreign assistance can be highly effective.
51. In the first paragraph, the author suggests that a quality
education can_______.
52. Ideally, the goal of the program of Education for All is
to_________by 2015.
53.________ countries are now at risk of not achieving education
for all on the basis of completion rates.
54. According to the passage, which of the following is NOT mentioned
as the right policy?
55. As can be gathered from the last paragraph, foreign aid ________.
·Passage 3
Most people think of lions as strictly African beasts, but
only because they've been killed off almost everywhere else. Ten
thousand years ago lions spanned vast sections of the globe. Now
lions hold only a small fraction of their former habitat, and
Asiatic lions, a subspecies that split from African lions perhaps
100,000 years ago, hang on to an almost impossibly small slice
of their former territory.
India is the proud steward of these 300 or so lions, which live
primarily in a 560-square-mile sanctuary (保护区). It took me a year
and a half to get a permit to explore the entire Gir Forest－and
no time at all to see why these lions became symbols of royalty
and greatness. A tiger will hide in the forest unseen, but a lion
stands its ground, curious and unafraid--lionhearteD.Though they
told me in subtle ways when I got too close, Gir's lions allowed
me unique glimpses into their lives during my three months in
the forest. It's odd to think that they are threatened by extinction;
Gir has as many lions as it can hold－too many, in fact. With territory
in short supply, lions move about near the boundary of the forest
and even leave it altogether, often clashing with people. That's
one reason India is creating a second sanctuary. There are other
pressing reasons: outbreaks of disease or natural disasters. In
1994 a serious disease killed more than a third of Africa's Serengeti
lions—a thousand animals—a fate that could easily happen to Gir's
cats. These lions are especially vulnerable to disease because
they descend from as few as a dozen individuals. "If you
do a DNA test, Asiatic lions actually look like identical twins,"
says Stephen O'Brien, a geneticist (基因学家) who has studied them.
Yet the dangers are hidden, and you wouldn't suspect them by watching
these lords of the forest. The lions display vitality, and no
small measure of charm.
Though the gentle intimacy of play vanishes when it's time to
eat, meals in Gir are not necessarily frantic affairs. For a mother
and her baby lion sharing a deer, or a young male eating an antelope
(羚羊), there's no need to fight for a cut of the kill. The animals
they hunt for food are generally smaller in Gir than those in
Africa, and hunting groups tend to be smaller as well.
56. In the first paragraph, the author tells us that Asiatic
lions_____.
57. What impressed the author most when he went to watch the
lions in the Gir Forest?
58. What does the sentence "...meals in Gir are not necessarily
frantic affairs" mean?
59. The lions in the Gir Forest are especially vulnerable to
disease because _______.
60. One of the reasons why India is creating a secondary sanctuary
for the Asiatic lions is that______.
·Passage 4
After retirement from medical research, my wife and I built
our home in a gated community surrounded by yacht clubs and golf
courses on Hilton Head IslanD.But when I left for the other side
of the island, I was traveling on unpaved roads lined with leaky
cottages. The "lifestyle" of many of the native islanders
stood in shocking contrast to my comfortable existence.
By talking to the local folks, I discovered that the vast majority
of the maids, gardeners, waitresses and construction workers who
make this island work had little or no access to medical care.
It seemed outrageous to me. I wondered why someone didn't do something
about that. Then my father's words, which he had asked his children
daily when they were young, rang in my head again: "What
did you do for someone today?"
Even though my father had died several years before, 1 guess
I still didn't want to disappoint him. So I started working on
a solution. The island was full of retired doctors. If I could
persuade them to spend a few hours a week volunteering their services,
we could provide free primary health care to those so desperately
in need of it. Most of the doctors I approached liked the idea,
so long as they could be re-licensed without troubles. It took
one year and plenty of persistence, but I was able to persuade
the state legislators to create a special license for doctors
volunteering in not-for-profit clinics.
The town donated land, local residents contributed office and
medical equipment and some of the potential patients volunteered
their weekends ornamenting the building that would become the
cliniC.We named it Volunteers in Medicine and we opened its doors
in 1994, fully staffed by retired physicians, nurses and dentists
as well as nearly 150 nonprofessional volunteers. That year we
had 5,000 patient visits; last year we had 16,000.
Somehow word of what we were doing got arounD.Soon we were receiving
phone calls from retired physicians all over the country, asking
for help in starting VIM clinics in their communities, we did
the best we could--there are now 15 other clinics operating--but
we couldn't keep up with the neeD.Yet last month I think my father's
words found their way up north, to McNeil Consumer Healthcare,
the maker of Tylenol (泰诺：一种感冒药). A major grant from McNeil will
allow us to respond to these requests and help establish other
free clinics in communities around the country.
61. What is the passage mainly about?
62. The author of the passage is ______.
63. The purpose of Volunteers in Medicine is to________.
64. Which of the following has been done by the author himself?
65. In the last paragraph, "1 think my father's words found
their way up north to McNeil" implies that _____.
·Passage 5
Even before Historian Joseph Ellis became a best-selling author,
he was famous for his vivid lectures. In his popular courses at
Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, he would often make classroom
discussions lively by describing his own combat experience in
Vietnam. But as Ellis's reputation grew－his books on the Founding
Fathers have won both the prestigious National Book Award and
the Pulitzer Prize－the history professor began to entertain local
and national reporters with his memories of war. Last year, after
The Boston Globe carried accounts of Ellis's experience in the
Vietnam war, someone who knew the truth about Ellis dropped a
dime (揭发). Last week The Boston Globe revealed that Ellis, famous
for explaining the nation's history, had some explaining to do
about his own past.
"Even in the best of lives, mistakes are made," said
a wretched Ellis. It turned out that while the distinguished historian
had served in the Army, he'd spent his war years not in the jungles
of Southeast Asia, but teaching history at West Point (西点军校).
He'd also overstated his role in the antiwar movement and even
his high-school athletic records. His admission shocked colleagues,
fellow historians and students who wondered why someone so accomplished
would beautify his past. But it seems that success and truthfulness
don't always go hand in hand, Even among the distinguished achievers,
security experts say, one in ten is deceiving－indulging in everything
from empty boasting to more serious offenses such as plagiarism
(剽窃), fictionalizing military records, making up false academic
certificates or worse. And, oddly, prominent people who beautify
the past often do so once they're famous, says Ernest Brod of
Kroll Associates, which has conducted thousands of background
checks. Says Brod: "It's not like they use these lies to
climb the ladder."
Then what makes them do it? Psychologists say some people succeed,
at least in pan, because they are uniquely adjusted to the expectations
of others. And no matter how well-known, those people can be haunted
by a sense of their own shortcomings. "From outside, these
people look anything but fragile," says Dennis Shulman, a
New York psychoanalyst. "But inside, they feel hollow, empty.
"
66. Which of the following is true about Ellis?
67. While Ellis served in the Army, he _____.
68. What did Ellis lie about?
69. What does "to climb the ladder" in the second paragraph
mean?
70. According to psychologists, successful people who lie about
themselves_______.
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