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Paragraph One
Three Yale University professors agreed in a panel discussion tonight that the automobile was what one of them called "Public Health Enemy No. 1 in this country. "Besides polluting the air and congesting the cities, cars arc involved in more than half the disabling accidents and they contribute to heart disease "because we don't walk anywhere any more," said Dr. H. Richard Weinerman, professor of medicine and public health. Dr. Weinerman's sharp indictment of the automobile came in a discussion of human environment on Yale Reports, a radio program broadcast by Station WTIC in Hartford, Connecticut. The program opened a three-part series on "Staying Alive." "For the first time in human history, the problem of man's survival has to do with his control of man-made hazards," Dr. Weinerman said. "Before this, the problem had been the control of natural hazards."
Question
The main idea of the article is that
A. Americans are too attached to their cars
B. American cars are too fast
C. Automobiles endanger health
D. Automobiles are the main public transportation tools of USA.
Paragraph Two
Let us consider how voice training may contribute to personality development and an improved social adjustment. In the first place, it has been fairly well established that individuals tend to become what they believe other people think them to be. When people react more favorably toward us because our voices convey the impression that we arc friendly, competent, and interesting, there is a strong tendency for us to develop those qualities in our personality. If we are treated with respect by others, we soon come to have more respect for ourselves. Then, too, one's own consciousness of having a pleasant, effective voice of which he does not need to be ashamed contributes materially to a feeling of poise, self--confidence, and a just pride in himself A good.voice, like good clothes, can do much for an ego that otherwise might be inclined to droop.
Question
The passage is mainly concerned with
A. The way to get self-confidence
B. The reflection of our personality
C. How to acquire a pleasant voice
D.Voice training and personality development
Paragraph three
Human beings have adapted to the physical world not by changing their physical nature, but by adjusting their society. Animals and plants have made adjustments, over long periods, by the development of radical changes in their very organisms. Hereditary differences meet needs of various environments. But among humans, differences in head form and in other physical features are not, in most cases, clearly adaptive. Nor is it clear that mental capacities of races are different. As far as we know, the races are equally intelligent and equally capable of solving their problems of living together. The varying ways of life, it seems, are social and learned differences and not physical and inherited differences. It stands to reason therefore, that man's adjustment to his surroundings should be studied in custom .and institution, not in anatomy and neural structure.
Question
The main point of the passage is
A) Animals and plants change their organisms to adapt to the physical world
B) Human beings not only change their organisms but also adjust their society to adapt to the physical world
C) Human beings adjust their society to adapt to the physical world
D) Animals and plants change their society to adapt to the physical world
Paragraph four
Albert Einstein once attributed the creativity of a famous scientist to the fact that he "never went to school, and therefore preserved the rare gift of thinking fieely." There is undoubtedly truth in Einstein s observation; many artists and geniuses seem to view their schooling as a disadvantage. But such a truth is not a criticism of schools. It is the founction of schools to civilize, not to train explorers. The explorer is always a lonely individual whether his or her pioneering be in art, music, science, or technology .The creative explorer of unmapped lands shares with the genius what William James described as the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way, so far as schools teach perceptual patterns they tend to destroy creativity and genius. But if schools could somehow exist solely to cultivate genius, then society would break down. For the social order demands unity and widespread agreement, both traits that are destructive to creativity.0There will always be conflict between the demands of society and the impulses of creativity and genius.
Question
Which of the following can best summarize the gist of the passage?
A. schools limit creativity and genius and should be abolished
B. Schools should be designed to encourage creativity.
C. Explorers are geniuses.
D.Schools can not meet the demands of both geniuses and society at the time.
Understanding Individual Words And Sentences
paragraph One
For the last 82 years. Sweden's Nobel Academy has decided who will receive the Nobel Prize in literature, thereby determining who will be elevated from the great and the near-great to the immortal But today the Academy is coming under heavy criticism both from without and from within. Critics protest that the selection of the winners often has less to do with true writing ability than with the peculiar internal politics of the Academy and of Sweden itself. According to Ingmar Bjorksten, the cultural editor for one of the country's two major newspapers, the prize continues to represent "what people call a very Swedish exercise: reflecting Swedish tastes."
The Academy has defended itself against such charges of provincialism in its selection by asserting that its physical distance from the great literary capitals of the world actually serves to protect the Academy from outside influences. This may well be true, but critics respond that this very distance may also be responsible for the Academy's inability to perceive accurately authentic trends in the literary world.
Question
The word "provincialism" in the second paragraph might refer to
A. the location of the Academy
B. internal politics of the Academy
C. iso!ation from outside influences
D. genuine trends in the literary world
Paragraph Two
In late 1994 the panel of economists which The :Economist polls each month said that America's inflation rate would average 3.5% in 1995. In fact, it fell to 2.6% in August, and is expected to average only about 3% for the year as a whole. In Britain and Japan inflation is running half a percentage point below the rate predicted at the end of last year. This is no flash in the pan. Over the past couple of years, inflation has been consistently lower than expected in Britain and America.
Question
The sentence "This is no flash in the pan" means that
A.The low inflation rate will last for some time
B. the inflation rate will soon rise
C. the inflation will disappear quickly
D. there is no inflation at present
Paragraph Three
Science has long had an uneasy relationship with other aspects of culture. Think of Gallileo's 17th century trial for his rebelling belief before the Catholic Church or poet William Blake's harsh remarks against the mechanistic worldview of lssac Newton. The schism between science and the humanities has, if anything deepened in this century.
Question
The word "schism" in the context probably means
A. confrontation B. dissatisfaction C.separation D.contempt
Paragraph Four
In a market system individual economic units are free to interact among each other in the marketplace. It is possible to buy commodities from other economic units or sell commodities to them. In a market, transactions may take place via barter or money exchange. In a barter economy, real goods such as automobiles, shoes, pizzas are traded against each other. Obviously, finding somebody who wants to trade my old car in exchange for a sailboat may not always be an easy task. Hence, the introduction of money as a medium of exchange eases transactions considerably. In the modem market economy, goods and services are bought or sold for money.
Question
The word "real" could best be replaced by which of the following?
A. high quality B..concrete C. utter D. authentic
Searching for implications
Paragraph One
Air pollution costs us a lot of money. It soils and corrodes our buildings. It damages farm crops and forests.It has a destructive effect on our works of art. The cost of all this damage to our government is astronomical. It would be much more worthwhile, both for the environment and for us, to spend our tax dollars on air pollution control.
Question
The author implies that as air pollution becomes more serious,____
A. factories will be forced to stop operation.
B. great damages will be done to our government.
C.more money should be spent to solve the problem.
D. government will spend a lot to development astronomy.
Paragraph Two
The only solid piece of scientific troth about which I feel totally confident is that we are profoundly ignorant about nature. Indeed, I regard this as the major discovery of the past hundred years of biology. It is, in its way, an illuminating piece of news. It would have amazed the brightest minds of the 18th century Enlightenment to be told by any of-us how little we know and how bewildering seems the way ahead. It is this sudden confrontation with the depth and scope of ignorance that represents the most significant contribution of the 20th century science to the human intellect. In earlier times, we either pretended to understand how things worked or ignored the problem, or simply made up stories to fill the gaps. Now that we have begun exploring in earnest, we ate getting glimpses of how huge the questions are, and how far from being answered. Because of this. We are depressed. It is not so bad being ignorant if you are totally ignorant; the hard thing is knowing in some &tail the reality of ignorance, the worst spots and here and there the not-so-bad spots, but no true light at the end of the tunnel nor even any tunnels that can be trusted.
Question
It can be inferred from the passage that scientists of the 18th century ..
A.thought that they knew a great deal and could solve most problems of science
B. were afraid of faceing up the realities of scientific research
C. knew that they were ignorant and wanted to know more about nature
D. did more harm than good in promoting man's understanding of nature
