The first Chinese to reach the United States were envied by their American competitors because of their success.

A．Y

B．N

C．NG

The passage is mainly a discussion of______.

A. the adaptations of organisms to their environments

B. the reasons why organisms have their particular shapes and colors

C. the special way of life of each living thing

D. the hows and whys of the structures of organisms

The nineteenth century brought about the greatest expansion of wealth the world had ever known. Its sources lay in the industrialisation of Europe and the techniques for assuring the continuance of this growth were by no means exhausted or compromised in 1900. There had not only been a vast and accelerating flow of commodities available only in (relatively) tiny quantities a century before, but whole new ranges of goods had come into existence. Oil and electricity had joined coal, wood, wind and water as sources of energy. A chemical industry existed which could not have been envisaged in 1800. Growing power and wealth had been used to tap seemingly inexhaustible natural resources, both agricultural and mineral. Railways, electric trams, steamships, motor cars and bicycles gave mil-lions of men a new control over their environment; they accelerated travel from place to place and eased transport for the first time since animals had been harnessed to carts thou-sands of years before. In terms of consumption, or of the services to which they had access, or in the enjoyment of better health, even the mass of the population in develope countries were much better off in 1900 than their predecessors a hundred years before In spite of this cheerful picture, doubts could break in. Even if what might happen in the future were ignored, contemplation of the cost of the new wealth and doubts about the social justice of its distribution were troubling. Most people were still terribly poor, whether or not they lived in rich countries where the illogicalness of this was particularly more striking than in earlier times. Another change in the way men thought about their condition arose over their power to get a livelihood at all. It was not new that men should be without work. What was new that situations should suddenly arise in which the operation of blind forces of boom and slump produced millions of men without work concentrated in great towns. This was "unemployment", the new phenomenon for which a new word had been needed. Nor were the cities themselves yet rid of all the evils which had so struck the first observers of industrial society. By 1900 the majority of western Europeans were town-dwellers and they lived in more than 140 cities of over 100,000 inhabitants in 1914. In some of them, millions of people were cramped, ill-housed, under-pro-vided with schools and fresh air, let alone amusement other than that of the street, and this often in sight of the wealth their society helped to produce. "Slums" was another word invented by the nineteenth century.

Oil and electricity became available as sources of energy ______.

A．after 1900

B．before 1900

C．in about 1800

D．in about 1900

Cross Cultural Conflict Resolution in Teams

Team members work in increasingly diverse environments: in terms of age, gender, race, language, and nationality. Beyond these differences, there are also deeper cultural differences that influence the way conflict is approached.

The use of teams represents an important change in the way we work. The theory is that through the interdependency of the parts greater productivity is achieved by the whole. Experience has been less kind. One reason that teams fail to meet performance expectations is their paralysis through unresolved conflict.

Teams Dynamics

Over time successful teams develop culturally distinct pathways to communicate, problem solving, make decisions, and resolve conflict. Most literature on teams suggests that they realize high performance levels by passing through four distinct development phases, 'forming', 'storming', 'norming' and 'performing'.

The development of team norms does not take place in a vacuum, but is embedded in the wider social, political and economic context of the day; Another reality is that team members do not have access to the same power. Sources of power differ, as do expectations about how and when it will be used. It is suggested that a successful team will:

be comfortable dealing with conflict

be committed to resolving disputes close to the source

resolve disputes based on interests before rights and power

learn from experience with Conflicts.

This ties in with research on the effects of interpersonal conflict in teams. A team member's commitment to the team and the team mission decreases if conflict goes unresolved, but can increase if conflict is well-managed and resolved. If unhealthy conflict goes unresolved for too long, team members are likely to quit or to search for alternatives.

Defining Culture

Social anthropology, as the academic field responsible for the study of culture, has yet to settle on a definition of culture. However, for our practical purposes, culture is defined as the shared set of values, beliefs, norms, attitudes, behaviors, and social structures that define reality and guide everyday interactions.

This definition implies that culture is an attribute of a group, and also contemplates the fact that there may be as much variation within the group as between different groups: We often associate culture with a national group, however, culture includes ethnic groups, clans, tribes and organizations. Teams within organizations also have beliefs, attitudes and behaviors that constitute unique cultures.

Although there are many similarities between cultures, it is important not to minimize real differences that do exist.

A useful tool for considering the cultures of different groups is the bell curve. The majority of a group culture will confirm to a dominant set of beliefs, attitudes and behaviors, but there will be members of the cultural group that differ in significant ways from the norm.

Individualistic and Collectivist Dimensions of a Culture

An important dimension of culture is the extent to which members identify with the group (in this case the team) rather than themselves as individuals. Individualistic cultures place a high value on "autonomy, initiative, creativity, and authority in decision making." Individual interests trump group interests, and any group commitment is a function of a perceived self-benefit. Collectivist cultures, on the other hand, value the group above the individual. Group conformity and commitment is maintained at the expense of personal interests. Harmony, getting along and maintaining 'face are seen as crucial'.

The dominant culture in the USA, Canada, Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand is individualistic, while collectivism predominates the rest of the

A．Y

B．N

C．NG

聽力原文： Florence Hayes is a journalist for the Green Ville Journal, the daily newspaper in town. Specifically she covers crime in the Green Ville area. This responsibility takes her to many different places every week—the police station, the court and the hospital. Most of the crimes that she writes about fall into two groups: violent crimes and crimes against property. There isn't much violent crime in a small town like Green Ville, or at least not as much as in the large urban areas. But assaults often occur on Friday and Saturday nights, near the bars downtown. There're also one or two rapes on campus every semester. Florence is very interested in this type of crime and tries to write a long article about each one. She expects that this will make women more careful when they walk around Green Ville alone at night.

Fortunately, there were usually no murders in Green Ville. Crimes against property make up most of Miss Hayes's reporting. They range from minor cases of deliberate damaging of things to much more serious offenses, such as car accidents involving drunk drivers or bank robberies. But Florence has to report all of these violations from the thief who took typewriters from every unlocked room in the dormitory to the thief who stole one million dollars worth of art work from the university museum. Miss Hayes enjoys working for a newspaper but she sometimes gets unhappy about all the crimes she has to report. She would prefer to start writing about something more interesting and less unpleasant such as local news or politics, maybe next year.

Questions:

32. What is Florence Hayes’main responsibility as a journalist?

33. What does the speaker say about security in Green Ville?

34. What do we learn about crimes against property in the Green Ville area?

35. What would Florence Hayes prefer to do?

(33)

A．Covering major events of the day in the city.

B．Reporting criminal offenses in Greenville.

C．Hunting news for the daily headlines.

D．Writing articles on family violence.

聽力原文： Florence Hayes is a journalist for the Green Ville Journal, the daily newspaper in town. Specifically she covers crime in the Green Ville area. This responsibility takes her to many different places every week—the police station, the court and the hospital. Most of the crimes that she writes about fall into two groups: violent crimes and crimes against property. There isn't much violent crime in a small town like Green Ville, or at least not as much as in the large urban areas. But assaults often occur on Friday and Saturday nights, near the bars downtown. There're also one or two rapes on campus every semester. Florence is very interested in this type of crime and tries to write a long article about each one. She expects that this will make women more careful when they walk around Green Ville alone at night.

Fortunately, there were usually no murders in Green Ville. Crimes against property make up most of Miss Hayes's reporting. They range from minor cases of deliberate damaging of things to much more serious offenses, such as car accidents involving drunk drivers or bank robberies. But Florence has to report all of these violations from the thief who took typewriters from every unlocked room in the dormitory to the thief who stole one million dollars worth of art work from the university museum. Miss Hayes enjoys working for a newspaper but she sometimes gets unhappy about all the crimes she has to report. She would prefer to start writing about something more interesting and less unpleasant such as local news or politics, maybe next year.

Questions:

32. What is Florence Hayes’main responsibility as a journalist?

33. What does the speaker say about security in Green Ville?

34. What do we learn about crimes against property in the Green Ville area?

35. What would Florence Hayes prefer to do?

(33)

A．Covering major events of the day in the city.

B．Reporting criminal offenses in Greenville.

C．Hunting news for the daily headlines.

D．Writing articles on family violence.

You wouldn't expect an Information Age company like Intel to get on the wrong side of environmentalists, but the company's recent 42 billion expansion at Rio Rancho, New Mexico, plunged the world's largest semiconductor maker into an age-old Western problem., water rights. Chip plants consume millions of gallons of water a day, mainly to wash microscopic dirt from the surface of chips. That's a problem in the dry West, where, as Twain remarked, whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting about.

During construction of the new 1.3 million-square-foot chip-making plant, which starts pro duction this month, residents and activists complained that the company's expanding thirst would be too great a drain on local supplies. After weeks of public hearings, the state of New Mexico last year granted Intel 72% of the water it requested.

The strife at Rio Rancho is the most intense the industry has faced．"I think it sensitized us," says Howard High, spokesman for Intel. "We have a lot of efforts under way to try and minimize the amount of water we use." Current conservation efforts may not work for an industry that in North America is expected to double in size to ＄ 75 billion in sales in the next three years.

The trend is to reuse treated wastewater from chip cleaning in places such as cooling towers and air-conditioning systems. Motorola employs such methods in Phoenix and Austin. Recycling water for chip cleaning is the most logical approach. But the technology to make ultra-pure water for such a closed-loop system is still too costly.

New technologies could eventually take the water out of chip cleaning. One company, Radiance Services, a six-person start-up based in Bethesda, Maryland, holds patents for a new "dry cleaning" method．Using laser light and inert gas (惰性氣體) to lift impurities (雜質,不潔物) from surfaces of a chip, Radiance claims its process can clean as effectively as the current water- based methods.

What is the main subject of this passage?

A．Chipmakers face a water problem.

B．Intel causes pollution to environment.

C．Shortage of water resources in Information Age.

D．Intel's new technology of saving water.

Man has long wanted to fly. He saw birds, envied them and tried to imitate them. Over the ages, countless attempts were made: men constructed wings, fastened them to their arms and legs and jumped off towers and hilltops. These "bird-men" flapped (拍動) their wings for a short space of time and then fell to the ground.

【B1】What was not realized in those early years was that birds have muscles very much stronger, in proportion to their size, than men. Human limbs cannot provide sufficient strength to lift the body off the ground.【B2】The secret of flight did not lie in the making of wings, but in discovering the right kind of power, and how to use it.

In the 18th century, the invention of the hot-air balloon by the Montgolfier brothers of France was seen as a great step forward,【B3】But balloons and the cigar-shaped airship, which was invented slightly later, did not solve the problem of flying because they had no means of power or control. So the difficulty remained: a true flying machine which was heavier than air and capable of carrying people was still to be invented.【B4】Experiments were carried out in many countries, sometimes with models driven by steam engines, but these were too heavy to be used in an airplane with a pilot. The answer finally came at the beginning of this century with the invention of the internal combustion engine (內燃機)--the kind used in motor cars. Here at last was a powerful, yet comparatively light engine, driven by petrol and capable of being fitted into an airplane.

In 1903, two Americans, the brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright, flew a powered airplane for the first time. Their success encouraged designers everywhere.【B5】Although there were now newer, different problems, mainly to do with safety and the training of pilots, progress was rapid. These were exciting days and interest was intense. The age of airplane arrived.

What was not realized in those early years was that birds have muscles very much stronger, in proportion to their size, than men.