A history of long and effortless success can be a dreadful handicap, but, if properly hand

A history of long and effortless success can be a dreadful handicap, but, if properly handled, it may become a driving force. When the United States entered just such a glowing period after the end of the Second World War, it had a market eight ties larger than any competitor, giving its industries unparalleled economies of scale. Its scientists were the worlds best, its workers the most skilled. America and Americans were prosperous beyond the dreams of the Europeans and Asians whose economies the war had destroyed.

It was inevitable that this primacy should have narrowed as other countries grew richer. Just as inevitably, the retreat from predominance proved painful. By the mid-1980s Americans had found themselves at a loss over their fading industrial competitiveness. Some huge American industries, such as consumer electronics, had shrank or vanished in the face of foreign competition. By 1987 there was only one American television maker left, Zenith. Now there is none: Zenith was bought by South Koreas LG Electronics in July. Foreign-made cars and textiles were sweeping into the domestic market Americas machine-tool industry was on the ropes. For a while it looked as though the making of semiconductors, which America had which sat at the heart of the new computer age, was going to be the next casualty.

All of this caused a crisis of confidence. Americans stopped taking prosperity for granted. They began to believe that their way of doing business was failing, and that their incomes would therefore shortly begin to fall as well. The mid-1980s brought one inquiry after another into the causes of Americas industrial decline. Their sometimes sensational findings were filled with warnings about the growing competition from overseas.

How things have changed! In 1995 the United States can look back on five years of solid growth while Japan has been struggling. Few Americans attribute this solely to such obvious causes as a devalued dollar or the turning of the business cycle. Self-doubt has yielded to blind pride. "American industry has changed its structure, has gone on a diet, has learnt to be more quick-witted," according to Richard Cavanagh, executive dean of Harvards Kennedy School of Government, "It makes me proud to be an American just to see how our businesses are improving their productivity, says Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute, a think-tank in Washington, DC. And William Sahlman of the Harvard Business school believes that people will look back on this period as "a golden age of business management in the United States."

The U.S. achieved its predominance after World War Ⅱ because ______.

A．it had made painstaking efforts towards this goal

B．its domestic market was eight times larger than before

C．the war had destroyed the economies of most potential competitors

D．the unparalleled size of its workforce had given an impetus to its economy

A history of long and effortless success can be a dreadful handicap, but, if properly handled, it may become a driving force. When the United States entered just such a glowing period after the end of the Second World War, it had a market eight times larger than any competitor, giving its industries unparalleled economies of scale. Its scientists were the world's best, its workers the most skilled. America and Americans were prosperous beyond the dreams of the Europeans and Asians whose economies the war had destroyed.

It was inevitable that this primacy should have narrowed as other countries grew richer. Just as inevitably, the retreat from predominance proved painful. By the mid-1980s Americans had found themselves at a loss over their fading industrial competitiveness. Some huge American industries, such as consumer electronics, had shrunk or vanished in the face of foreign competition. By 1987 there was only one American television maker left, Zenith. (Now there is none: Zenith was bought by South Korea's LG Electronics. ) Foreign-made cars and textiles were sweeping into the domestic market. America's machine-tool industry was on the ropes. For a while it looked as though the making of semiconductors, which America had sat at the heart of the new computer age, was going to be the next casualty.

All of this caused a crisis of confidence. Americans stopped taking prosperity for granted. They began to believe that their way of doing business was failing, and that their incomes would therefore shortly begin to fail as well. The mid-1980s brought one inquiry after another into the causes of America's industrial decline. Their sometimes sensational findings were filled with warnings about the growing competition from overseas.

How things have changed! In 1995 the United States can look back on five years of solid growth while Japan has been straggling. Few Americans attribute this solely to such obvious causes as a devalued dollar or the turning of the business cycle. Self-doubt has yielded to blind pride. "American industry has changed its structure, has gone on a diet, has learnt to be more quick-witted," according to Richard Cavanagh, executive dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "It makes me proud to be an American just to see how our businesses are improving their productivity," says Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute, a think-tank in Washington, D. C. And William Sahlman of the Harvard Business School believes, that people will look back on this period as "a golden age of business management in the United States".

Which of the following statements is TRUE about US economic predominance after World War Ⅱ?

A．The unparalleled size of its workforce had given an impetus to its economy.

B．The war had destroyed the economies of most potential competitors.

C．Its domestic market was eight times larger than before.

D．It had made painstaking efforts towards this goal.

A history of long effortless success can be a dreadful handicap, but, if properly handled, it may become a driving force. When the Untied States entered just such a glowing period after the end of the Second World War, it had a market eight times larger than any competitor, giving its industrial unparalleled economies of scale. Its scientists were the world's best, its workers the most skilled. America and Americans were prosperous beyond the dreams of the Europeans and Asians whose economies the war had destroyed.

It was inevitable that this primacy should have narrowed as other countries grew richer. Just as inevitably, the retreat from predominance proved painful. By the mid-1980% Americans had found themselves at a loss over their fading industrial competitiveness. Some huge American industries, such as consumer electronics, had shrunk or vanished in the face of foreign competition. By 1987 there was only one American television maker left, Zenith. (Now there is none: Zenith was bought by South Korea's LG electronics in July.) Foreign-made cars and textiles were sweeping into the domestic market. America's machine-tool industry was on the ropes. For a while it looked as though the making of semiconductors, which America had invented and which sat at the heart of the new computer age, was going to be the next casualty.

All of this caused a crisis of confidence. Americans stopped taking prosperity for granted. They began to believe that their way of doing business was failing and that their incomes would therefore shortly begin to fall as well. Tile mid-1980s brought one inquiry after another into the cause of America's industrial decline. Their sometimes sensational findings were filled with warnings about the growing competition from overseas.

How things have changed! In 1995 the United States can look back on five years of solid growth while Japan has been struggling. Few Americans attribute this solely to such obvious causes as devalued dollar or the turning of the business cycle. Self-doubt has yield to blind pride. "American industry has changed its structure, has gone on a diet, has learned to be more quick-witted". According to Richard Cavanaugh, executive dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "It makes me proud to be an American just to see how our business are improving their productivity". Says Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute, a think-tank in Washington, D.C. And William Sahlman of the Harvard Business School believes that people will look hack on this period as "a golden age of business management in the United States".

The U.S. achieved its predominance after World War Ⅱ because ______.

A．it had made painstaking effort towards this goal

B．its domestic market was eight times larger than before

C．the war had destroyed the economies of most potential competitors

D．the unparalleled size of its workforce had given an impetus to its economy

?Read the article below about management teams in making decisions.

?Choose the best sentence from the opposite page to fill each of the gaps.

?For each gap 8-12，mark one letter(A-G).

?Do not use any letter more than once.

How Management Teams Can Have a Good Fight

Top managers often find it very difficult to manage conflict. They know that conflict over issues is natural and even necessary. Reasonable people，making decisions under conditions of uncertainty，are likely to have honest disagreements over the best path for their company's future. Management teams whose members challenge one another's thinking develop a more complete understanding of the choices, cerate a richer range of options. Ultimately they are able to make the kinds of effective decisions necessary in today's competitive environments. But, unfortunately, healthy conflict can quickly turn unproductive. A comment meant as a substantive remark can be interpreted as a personal attack. (8) Personalities frequently become closely connected with issues. Because most executives are proud of their ability to make rational decisions，they find it difficult even to acknowledge—let alone manage—this emotional，irrational dimension of their behavior.

The challenge is familiar to anyone who has ever been part of a management team. (9) The managers should be encouraged to argue without destroying their ability to work as a team.

In a study，in 4 of the 12 companies，there was little or no substantive disagreement over major issues and therefore little conflict to observe. But the other 8 companies experienced considerable conflict. In 4 of them，the top-management teams handled conflict in a way that avoided interpersonal hostility or discord. (10) They described the way they work as a team as‘open’，‘fun’，and ‘productive’. The executives vigorously debated the issues，but they wasted little time on carefully considering and posturing. As one put it, 'I really don't have time. 'Another said, 'We don't gloss over the issues：we hit them straight on. But we're not political, ' Still another observed of her company's management team, 'We scream a lot，then laugh，and then resolve the issue. '

The other four companies in which issues were contested were less successful at avoiding interpersonal conflict. Their top teams were plagued by intense hostility. (11) When executives described their colleagues to us，they used words such as‘manipulative’, ‘secretive’.‘burned out’，and‘political’. The teams with minimal interpersonal conflict were able to separate substantive issues from those based on personalities. (12) How did they do that? After analyzing the observations of the teams’ behavior, the experts found that their companies used the same tactics for managing interpersonal conflict. For instance，team members worked with more, rather than less, information and debated on the basis of facts.

A. They must try to keep constructive conflict over issues from turning into nonfunctional interpersonal conflict.

B. Executives Often failed to cooperate. rarely talking with one another, tending to fragment into cliques, and openly displaying their frustration and anger.

C. Anxiety and frustration over difficult choices can evolve into anger directed at colleagues.

D. Executives in those companies referred to their colleagues as 'smart', 'team player', and 'best In the business'.

E. All the teams had to make high-stakes decisions in the face of considerable uncertainty and under pressure to move quickly.

F. They managed to disagree over questions of strategic significance and still get along with one another.

(8)

Mystery of Time

If you can read a clock, you can know the time of day. But no one knows what time itself is. We can not see it. We can not hear it. We know it only by the way we mark its passing. For ail our success in measuring the tiniest parts of time, time remains one of the great mysteries of the universe.

One way of thinking about time is to imagine a world without time. There could be no movement, because time and movement can not be separated. A world without time could exist only as long as there were no changes, for time and change are linked. When something changes, you know time has passed. In the real world, changes never stop. Some changes happen only once in a while, like an eclipse of the moon. Others happen repeatedly, like the rising and setting of the sun. People have always noted natural events that repeat themselves. When people began to count such events, they began to measure time.

In early human history, the only changes that seemed to repeat themselves evenly were the movements of objects in the sky. The most easily seen result of these movements was the difference between light and darkness.

The sun rose in the eastern sky, producing light. It moved overhead and sank in the western sky, causing darkness. The appearance and disappearance of the sun was even and unfailing. The periods of light and darkness it created were the first accepted periods of time. We have named each period of light and darkness one day. People saw the sun rise higher in the sky during the summer than in winter. They counted the days that passed from the sun's highest position until it returned to that position. They counted 365 days. We now know that is the time Earth takes to move once around the sun. We call this period of time a year.

Early humans also noted changes in the moon. As it moved across the night sky, they must have wondered. Why did it look different every night? Why did it disappear? Where did it go?

Even before they learned the answers to these questions, they developed a way to use the moon's changing faces to tell time. The moon was "full" when its face was bright and round. They counted the number of times the sun appeared between full moons. They learned that this number always remained the same, about 29 suns. Twenty-nine suns equaled one moon. We now know this period of time as one month.

Early people hunted animals and gathered wild plants. They moved in groups, or tribes, from place to place in search of food. Then people learned to plant seeds and grow crops. They learned to raise animals. They found they no longer needed to move from one place to another to survive. As hunters, people did not need a way to measure time. As farmers, however, they had to plant crops in time to harvest them before winter. They had to know when the seasons would change. So they developed calendars.

No one knows when the first calendar was developed. But it seems possible that it was based on moons, or lunar months. When people started farming, the wise men of the tribes became very important. They studied the sky. They gathered enough information to be able to say when the seasons would change. They announced when it was time to plant crops.

The divisions of time we use today were developed in ancient Babylonia 4,000 years ago. Babylonian astronomers believed the sun moved around the Earth every 365 days. They divided the trip into 12 equal parts or months. Each month was 30 days. Then they divided each day into 24 equal pans, or hours. They divided each hour into 60 minutes, and each minute into 60 seconds.

Humans have used many devices to measure time. The sundial was one of the earliest and simplest. A sundial measures the movement of the sun across the sky each day. It has a stick or other object that rises above a flat surface. The stick, blocking sunlight, creates a s

A．Y

B．N

C．NG

There is no way to learn the material for college course without spending time and effort in studying. There is no magic formula that will result in getting that knowledge. You must spend time and effort in the process. A certain number of hours of hard work are required. But you can make better use of the time through some common-sense tips.

A Time-Budgeting Plan

Consider some practical suggestions for the arrangement of your study schedule. In other words, you need a plan to budget your time. It will pay big dividends if you will set aside a few minutes or an hour as soon as possible after classes each day. Use this time to review the materials covered in the class periods of the day. Remember that you will forget a large portion within twenty-four hours after you hear or read it for the first time. Try to find a time at the end of your regular school day-or in the middle of it, if you have vacant period. You can review what was covered in each of the day's classes before it has had time to slip out of your mind. As a result, your memory will be stepped up greatly.

A Regular Time for Study

Set aside a regular time for your study of tomorrow's lessons. If you can possibly arrange it, it is a good policy to study at the same time each day. Doing this will help avoid :the problem of needing to study and letting the time slip by so that it doesn't get done. All of us have done this. We had the best of intentions, but we did not get started until it was too late. So have a routine of studying at a certain time each day, and never schedule anything else for that time. Then you will have the best possible chance to avoid missing your study due to poor use of time.

A Place for Study

Have one particular place where you can go to study. This does not mean, of course, that you can never, under any circumstance, study anywhere else. It does mean that when you have serious study to do, you try to go to this place to do it. Pick a place that has few distractions. It must be a place where there are no conversations, no activities of friends, or no interesting noises. There must be no reminders of things more pleasant than studying to compete for your attention. A table facing a wall with nothing but your actual work materials is best. And while your chair may have a soft cushion, it should not be so comfortable that it encourages you to relax completely. Habit Can Help You Study

Get into the habit of going to a place at a certain time to study. Then you will find that it becomes easier for you to concentrate. You lose less time in warming up to your subject. Right away you will get into the proper frame. of mind at your special study place and time. When doing this becomes a habit, you have made good progress. It has become easier to make yourself go through your study routine. In other words, going to one place at a regular time for study not only helps you to get started more easily, but also replaces willpower with the habit of studying.

Which of the following statements best covers the suggestions given for study?

A．You need a regular plan, place, and time for study.

B．You must be willing to spend time and effort studying.

C．You should pick a place where you can study and won't be distracted.

D．You need to get into the habit of study.

Part A

Directions: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. (40 points)

The standardized educational or psychological tests, that are widely used to aid in selecting, assigning, or promoting students, employees, and military personnel have been the target of recent attacks in books, magazines, the daily press, and even in Congress. The target is wrong, for in attacking the tests; critics divert attention from the fault that lies with ill-informed or incompetent users. The tests themselves are merely tools, with characteristics that can be measured with reasonable precision under specified conditions. Whether the results will be valuable, meaningless, or even misleading depends partly upon the tool itself but largely upon the user.

All informed predictions of future performance are based upon some knowledge of relevant past performance. How well the predictions will be validated by later performance depends upon the amount, reliability, and appropriateness of the information used and on the skill and Wisdom with which it is interpreted. Anyone who keeps careful score knows that the information available is always incomplete and that the predictions are always subject to error.

Standardized tests should be considered in this context. They provide a quick, objective method of getting some kinds of information about what a person has learned, the skills he has developed, or the kind of person he is. The information so obtained has, qualitatively, the same advantages and shortcomings as other kinds of information. Whether to use tests, other kinds of information, or both in a particular situation depends, therefore, upon the empirical evidence concerning comparative validity, and upon such factors as cost and availability.

In general, the tests work most effectively when the traits or qualities to be measured can be most precisely defined (for example, ability to do well in a particular course of training program) and least effectively when what is to be measured or predicted cannot be well defined (for example, personality or creativity). Properly used, they provide a rapid means of getting comparable information about many people. Sometimes they identify students whose high potential has not been previously recognized, but there are many things they do not do. For example, they don't compensate for gross social inequality, and thus don't tell how able an underprivileged younger might have been had he grown up under more favorable circumstances.

What is the essence of this text?

A．Attacking standardized tests.

B．Don't blame the test—blame the user.

C．Standardized tests and their wide applications.

D．The standardized test—a useful means of assessment.

Part A

Directions: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. (40 points)

The standardized educational or psychological tests that are widely used to aid in selecting, assigning, or promoting students, employees, and military personnel have been the target of recent attacks in books, magazines, the daily press, and even in Congress. The target is wrong, for in attacking the tests, critics divert attention from the fault that lies with ill-informed or incompetent users. The tests themselves are merely tools, with characteristics that can be measured with reasonable precision under specified conditions. Whether the results will be valuable, meaningless, or even misleading depends partly upon the tool itself but largely upon the user.

All informed predictions of future performance are based upon some knowledge of relevant past performance. How well the predictions will be validated by later performance depends upon the amount, reliability, and appropriateness of the information used and on the skill and wisdom with which it is interpreted. Anyone who keeps careful score knows that the information available is always incomplete and that the predictions are always subject to error.

Standardized tests should be considered in this context. They provide a quick, objective method of getting some kinds of information about what a person has learned, the skills he has developed, or the kind of person he is. The information so obtained has, qualitatively, the same advantages and shortcomings as other kinds of information. Whether to use tests, other kinds of information, or both in a particular situation depends, therefore, upon the empirical evidence concerning comparative validity, and upon such factors as cost and availability.

In general, the tests work most effectively when the traits or qualities to be measured can be most precisely defined (for example, ability to do well in a particular course of training program) and least effectively when what is to be measured or predicted cannot be well defined (for example, personality or creativity). Properly used, they provide a rapid means of getting comparable information about many people. Sometimes they identify students whose high potential has not been previously recognized, but there are many things they do not do. For example, they don't compensate for gross social inequality, and thus don't tell how able an underprivileged younger might have been had he grown up under more favorable circumstances.

Notes: divert attention from 没有注意到。keep careful score 仔细记分。define vt.界定。

What is the essence of this text?

A．Attacking standardized tests.

B．Don't Blame the test blame the user.

C．Standardized tests and their wide applications.

D．The standardized test—a useful means of assessment.

II. Read the following 6 short passages, and do the True (T) and False (F) based on each passage. 1. Bodily contact is of interest since it is the most primitive kind of social act, and is found in all animals. In addition to aggressive and sexual contacts there are various methods of influence, as when others are pushed, pulled or led. There are symbolic contacts, such as patting on the back, and-the various ways of shaking hands. 2. Bodily posture is another signal which is largely involuntary, but which can communicate important social signals. There are distinctive “superior” (or dominant) and “inferior” (or sub. missive) postures. 3. Gestures are movements of hands, feet or other parts of the body. Some are intended to communicate definite messages; others are involuntary social cues which may or may not be correctly interpreted by others. 4. Head-nods are a rather special kind of gesture, and have two distinctive roles. They act as reinforcers, i.e. they reward and encourage what has gone before, and can be used to make another talk more, for example. 5. Facial expression can be reduced to changes in eyes, brows, mouth, and so on. The face is an area which is used by animals to communicate emotions and attitudes to others; for humans it does not work so well since we control our facial expression, and may smile sweetly while seething within. (From a book by Michael Argyle titled The Psychology of Interpersonal Behaviour. It was published in London by Pelican in 1967 and this extract was from pages 36-37.) 1. ____ Symbolic contacts include patting on the back and shaking hands. 2. ____ Bodily posture is largely voluntary. 3. ____ Gestures are movements of the face. 4. ____ Head-nods indicate rewarding and encouraging what has gone before. 5. ____ Facial expression are movements of hands, feet or other parts of the body. Keys: