Owing to the insufficient gas supply in the United States, the gas price has dramatically risen. The new gas price reality and the policy decisions it may trigger will undoubtedly lead to critical financial implications for some individuals or companies, but the situation can hardly be termed a “national crisis“ or even a “shortage“. What is true is that buyers—particularly those in the chemical industry and in independent power generation will not be able to acquire the quantity of gas they wish at the prices they wish to pay, or even at prices that will allow them to remain competitive in their markets, particularly during peak demand seasons. Over the next year or two, the result will be higher, and more volatile prices, to be sure, but there are market-driven adjustment mechanisms even in the short term, e.g., more electric power from coal and oil, reduced production of domestic chemicals, and a commensurate substitution of imports. Consumers and companies will feel the economic pinch of higher prices; particularly, if we experience an exceptionally hot summer and a winter, when average temperatures were 20% colder than the year before in the Northeast. Still, the United States faces neither the specter of economic recession—at least not solely due to gas prices—nor of freezing families unable to ’obtain gas to heat their homes. Given this new price plateau, demand adjustments will also take place and vary across regions of the United States and across industries, with power generation and chemicals perhaps the most affected. Some in those industries may find that their facilities are no longer financially viable at the new price plateau, and there will likely be another round of industrial restructuring not unlike others that have resulted from international differences in resource and labor costs—lest we forget, natural gas is still abundant and very low cost in other countries such as Trinidad, Qatar, and Iran, just as labor is abundant and low cost in China, Indonesia, and parts of Latin America. From a policy perspective, the United States needs to carefully evaluate a series of trade-offs between environmental concerns and economic growth. The gas price experiences of the last two years are the first real tastes of the economic costs of a gas-based environmental strategy. Evaluating these trade-offs needs to be done with a level head and a clear understanding of those trade-offs.What is the main topic of the article? American economy is strongly hit by the high prices of gas. American economy is affected by the high price of gas, but it is not a crisis. American economic policy is a failure. The prices of gas will rise in the following years.

Shopping habits in the United States have changed greatly in the last quarter of the twentieth century. (1)_____ in the 1990s most American towns and cities had a Main Street. Main Street was always in the heart of a town. This street was. (2)_____ on both sides with many. (3)_____ businesses, Here shoppers walked into stores to look at all sorts of merchandise: clothing, furniture, hardware, and groceries (4)_____ some shops offer (5)_____. These shops included drag-stores, shoe-repair stores and barber or hairdressing shops. (6)_____ in the 1950s, a change began to (7)_____ Too many automobiles had crowded into Main Street (8)_____ too few parking places were (9)_____ shoppers. Because the streets were crowded, merchants began to look with inter6st at the open spaces (10)_____ the city limits. Open space is what their car-driving customers needed. And open space is what they got. (11)_____ the first shopping center was built. Shopping center (12)_____ malls, started as a collection of small new stores. (13)_____ congested city centers. (14)_____ by hundreds of free parking spaces customers were drawn away from (15)_____ areas to outlying malls. And the growing (16)_____ of shopping centers led (17)_____ to the building of bigger and better stocked stores (18)_____ the late 1970s, many shopping malls had almost developed into small cities themselves. In addition to providing the (19)_____ of one-stop shopping, malls were transformed into landscaped parks (20)_____ benches, fountains, and outdoor entertainment. As early as Early Early as Earlier

More Americans are cohabiting-living together out of wedlock—than ever. Some exports applaud the practice, but others warn playing house does not always lead to marital bliss. At one time in America, living together out of wedlock was scandalous. Unmarried spouses who “shacked up“ were said to be “living in sin“. Indeed, cohabitation was illegal throughout the country until about 1970. Today, statistics tell a different tale. The number of unwed couples living together has risen to a new high—more than 4.1 million as of March 1997, according to the Census Bureau. That figure was up from 3.96 million couples the previous year and represents a quantum leap from the 430,000 cohabiting couples counted in 1960. The bureau found’ that cohabiting is most prevailing in the 24—35 age group, accounting for 1.6 million such couples. Cohabitants claim they live together primarily to solidify their love and commitment to each other. Most intend to marry; only 13% of cohabitants do not anticipate legalizing their relationship. But the reality from many couples is different: Moving in does not lead to “happily ever after.“ Forty percent of cohabitants never make it to the altar. Of the 60% who do marry, more than half divorce within 10 years (compared with 30% of married couples who did not live together first). Cohabiting partners are more unfaithful and fight more often than married couples, according to research by the Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society. Other studies have come to equally similar conclusions. Still, experts predict the number of cohabiting couples is likely to increase. As the offspring of the baby boomer come of age, they are inclined to defer marriages, as did their parents. This will lead to more cohabitation and nontraditional families. Until people unearth that living together has pitfalls, it won’t wane in popularity. Cohabiting has been portrayed with “careful neutrality“ in the media, and Hollywood celebrities who move in and out of each other’s homes set the standard. But Warren Farrell, the San Diego-based author of Why Men Are the Way They Are, argues that living together is a good idea for a short period. “To make the jump from dating, when we put our best foot forward, to being married“—without showing each other the “shadow side of ourselves“—is to treat marriage frivolously, he says.It can be seen from the passage that______. experts hold an unanimously critical view on cohabitation Americans are in general more tolerant of cohabitation cohabitation rate actually dropped despite the increase in the number of unwed couples living together living together out of wedlock is considered morally wrong today

AIDS is one of the most fatal and rampant diseases that deprives of hundreds of thousands of lives each year all over the world, and the condition in African countries is much worse for lack of medicine, education as well as preventive measures. Scientists and researchers have never ceased their efforts to halt the wide spreading tendency of this infecting disease, unfortunately, till now, they have not invented any effective vaccine. Last week, an experimental AIDS vaccine tested in Thailand on some 2,500 drug users failed to protect them from becoming infected with HIV, declared VaxGen Inc., the vaccine’s developer. The pool results were widely expected since VaxGen Inc. had said earlier that its vaccine did not work in a larger North American study. Most AIDS researchers agree that vaccines will be the only effective way to control a virus that has killed 28 million people and infected 42 million more worldwide. Two dozen other vaccines are being tested on 12,000 human volunteers, but none has advanced as far as VaxGen’s, and any successful candidate is years away. Officials at Brisbane, Calif-based VaxGen said the Thai results underscored again how wily AIDS is in thwarting the immune system. The findings also show “how important it is for the international public health community to redouble the effort to develop an effective vaccine,“ President Dr. Donald Francis said. VaxGen’s vaccine, like most others being tested, did not contain the virus itself and cannot cause AIDS. Instead, the vaccine contained small, manmade genetic bits of the virus that scientists had hoped would provoke an immune response strong enough to stop the virus from invading healthy cells. Three years ago, the company enrolled 2,546 people in and around Bangkok who were at high risk for HIV because they habitually swapped needles to inject drugs. Half were given the experimental vaccine and half were given a placebo. All volunteers were given extensive risk-reduction counseling, the company said. In the end, the vaccine offered no greater protection: 105 people given the placebo became infected with HIV, while 106 people given the vaccine tested positive. In February, VaxGen announced its vaccine was ineffective against a different AIDS strain found in North America. The failure of this experimental vaccine reinforces the hardness of anti-AIDS battle, and the ultimate success seems to emerge years later. However, mankind is not so vulnerable to be completely defeated by AIDS.Where is the experimental AIDS vaccine tested? In Thailand In North America At Brisbane In Africa

In an Internet era, whether globalization means democracy and development or hindrance to progress, foreign interference and U.S.-led economic domination over the developing countries has evoked hot debate. Globalization is an inevitable tendency which has brought great opportunities such as exchange of knowledge and information, access to other societies, as well as economic competitions and exposure to different value systems. On the other hand, it is also accompanied by a multitude of challenges together with side effects on the form of increased poverty rates, but the effect is not always predetermined, because the problem is how to deal with it and make preparation for minimizing the challenge. Statistics demonstrate in the last two centuries the individual income average has decreased, and the shares of profit in the Third World also have demolished, in contrary to the developed world. There is an international distortion due to the exploitation of telecommunication technology which facilitates money transfer, which made it easier for capital flight. During the last two centuries, the number of civil wars has increased and the world became under the control of globalization and economic reform which eventually led countries like Indonesia to be bankrupted. This year in Seattle, over 40,000 young demonstrators protested against capitalism and its “brutality“ during meetings of the World Trade Organization. Two hundred protesters against globalization were arrested and hauled many away in buses after they ventured into a downtown security zone, where police had restricted movement and imposed a curfew. “Globalization is an expression repeated by international media, which is trying to polish it for us to only see the bright side to it. We have to beware of the motives behind this ideological expression and the influence of this expression on our destiny. Globalization has proven that it is nothing but corruption and the world is against it“, said Dr. Hisham Gasseib, professor of Sumaya University. If globalization is forced itself on any nation, it is considered occupation, because it wipes any culture or education and instead reflects poverty and unemployment. The high competition made a huge number of people live on the edge which forces them do anything to gain money, and eventually put their countries under control of other countries. Globalization is like a flat character with no dimensions, a challenge for all nations. Nations with great cultural background should not accept any gesture from the West without thoroughly studying it.What’s the main idea of the article? Globalization brings great opportunity to all the nations in the world. The developing countries sh6uld resist globalization because it will harm their economy. Globalization is both an opportunity and a challenge, all the countries must study it carefully before they accept it. Globalization will harm those countries that own great cultural background more than those that haven’t.

The following paragraphs are given in a wrong order. For Questions 41-45, you are required to reorganize these paragraphs into a coherent article by choosing from the list A-G. Some of the paragraphs have been placed for you. (10 points) A. Electronics should also make it technically easier to charge cars the proper costs for road congestion. Road-side sensors could identify and charge cars at a high rate during busy periods, and less or nothing at other times. The trouble is that the technology looks easier to develop than the political will to use it. Drivers are as hooked on cars as smokers are on cigarettes. This is true not only when there are few alternatives, as in rural America, but even in cities such as Paris, with a highly developed urban rail system and stinging petrol taxes. Indeed, even colossal traffic jams, for all their cost in wasted time, have failed to deter motorists. B. There are 500 million cars on the world’s roads today, ten times as many as 50 years ago. By 2030 there could be a billion, plus another 500 million lorries and motorcycles. That is splendid news: few things transform lives for the better as fast and as thoroughly as access to a car. Yet even drivers admit that more cars (other people’s, of course) will also bring heavy costs, notably in air pollution and congestion. C. Indeed, all political action to reduce car use seems as gridlocked as downtown New York. California, which pioneered innovations such as catalytic converters to reduce carbon-monoxide emissions and car-sharing on highway, has backed off its demand that 2% of new sales should be “zero emission vehicles“ (i.e. electric cars) in 1998. This was not merely the result of lobbying; battery technology is simply not good enough to make electric cars attractive. Petrol taxes remain highly unpopular in America. In Europe, although high fuel taxes are more widely accepted, experiments to reduce congestion by charging car commuters have repeatedly been postponed. D. Over the past 20 years, technical fixes have made cars far cleaner. Now the fixes will get fewer; and sheer traffic growth will soon swamp any gains. Cleaning up city air is also easier than curbing output of carbon dioxide, a gas thought to cause climate change. Road transport accounts for one-fifth of world carbon-dioxide out-put, and the share may grow as developing countries get wheels. Congestion makes things worse: cars stuck in traffic jam pollute three times as much as those on the open road. But the simple answer to the building more roads-is increasingly expensive and politically unacceptable. E. Yet something must be done about the future rise in congestion and pollution. The best approach is to tackle what remains the fundamental cause of both problems: the fact that the full external costs of each car journey (in congestion, pollution and accidents) are not home by the motorist. That suggests using the tax system in harness with market forces to limit the growth of car travel and to coax motorists into more environmentally friendly behavior. F. As with cigarette taxes, higher taxes on car use in general look like good ways to raise revenue. It is surely sensible to tax socially and economically damaging behavior rather than such desirable activities as saving and hard work. If voters see such taxes as substitutes for more undesirable ones, they may grudgingly accept them. But they will always be more unpopular than taxes merely aimed at persuading drivers to switch, for instance, those that have successfully promoted unleaded over leaded petrol. Taxes of this sort should be able to boost sales of less polluting cars such as today’s natural-gas vehicles and tomorrow’s hybrid electric cars, which will use tiny internal-combustion engines running at a steady, low-polluting rate to generate electricity for the engine. G. New technology ought to make this easier. A promising way to load the pollution costs of motoring on to motorists may be a plan developed by green activists in Germany. This would implant an electronic smart card in cars’ engine-management systems, to monitor the quantity of polluting emissions. The results would then be totted up every year to produce a tax bill. Order: B is the first paragraph, and F is the last one.

You bought a new color TV set made in Guangdong, but it is in poor quality. You want to write a letter to the store and have the set repaired or changed. Your letter should cover the following points: 1) the picture is not clear enough, and some channel buttons don’t work well; 2) sometimes there is no sound, and the color is not stable; 3) Customer First, Service Best. You should write about 100 words. Do not sign up your own name at the end of the letter. Use “Li Ming“ instead. You do not need to write the address.

You are required to write an essay off the topic “Stress in Modem Life“. You should write no less than 200 words neatly, and base your essay on the OUTLINE given in Chinese below: 1) 压力在现实生活中无处不在。 2) 不同的人对压力有不同的看法。 3) 我的看法。

A market is commonly thought of as a place where commodities are bought and sold. Thus fruit and vegetables are sold wholesale at Covent Garden Market and meat is sold wholesale at Smithfield Market. But there are markets for things other than commodities in the usual sense. (46)There are real estate markets, foreign exchange markets, labor markets, short term capital markets; and so on; there may be a market for anything that has a price. And there may be no particular place to which dealings are confined. (47)Buyers and sellers may be scattered over the whole world and instead of actually meeting together in a market place, they may deal with one another by telephone, telegram, cable or letter. Even if dealings are restricted to a particular place, the dealers may consist wholly or in part of agents acting on instructions from clients far away. Thus agents buy meat at Smithfield on behalf of retail butchers all over England; and brokers on the London Stock Exchange buy and sell securities on instructions from clients all over the world. (48)We must therefore define a market as an area over which buyers and sellers are in such close touch with one another, either directly or through dealers, that the prices obtainable in one part of the market affect the prices paid in other parts. (49)Modem means of communication are so rapid that a buyer can discover what price a seller is asking, and can accept it if he wishes, although he may be thousands of miles away. Thus the market for anything is, potentially, the whole world. But in fact things have, normally, only a local or national market. This may be because nearly the whole demand is concentrated in one locality. These special local demands, however, are of quite minor importance. (50)The main reason why many things have not a world market is that they are costly or difficult to transport.

What conclusion can we draw from the second paragraph?

Which of the following is NOT correct according to the third paragraph?

What does the underlined word “commensurate“ in the second paragraph mean?

Which of the following is NOT true according to the article?