1997年P(guān)assage 1
It was 3:45 in the morning when the vote was finally taken. After six months of arguing and final 16 hours of hot parliamentary debates, Australia’s Northern Territory became the first legal authority in the world to allow doctors to take the lives of incurably ill patients who wish to die. The measure passed by the convincing vote of 15 to 10. Almost immediately word flashed on the Internet and was picked up, half a world away, by John Hofsess, executive director of the Right to Die Society of Canada. He sent it on via the group’s on line service, Death NET. Says Hofsess: "We posted bulletins all day long, because of course this isn’t just something that happened in Australia. It’s world history."
The full import may take a while to sink in. The NT Rights of the Terminally III law has left physicians and citizens alike trying to deal with its moral and practical implications. Some have breathed sighs of relief, others, including churches, right to life groups and the Australian Medical Association, bitterly attacked the bill and the haste of its passage. But the tide is unlikely to turn back. In Australia - where an aging population, life extending technology and changing community attitudes have all played their part - other states are going to consider making a similar law to deal with euthanasia. In the US and Canada, where the right to die movement is gathering strength, observers are waiting for the dominoes to start falling.
Under the new Northern Territory law, an adult patient can request death - probably by a deadly injection or pill - to put an end to suffering. The patient must be diagnosed as terminally ill by two doctors. After a "cooling off" period of seven days, the patient can sign a certificate of request. After 48 hours the wish for death can be met. For Lloyd Nickson, a 54 year old Darwin resident suffering from lung cancer, the NT Rights of Terminally III law means he can get on with living without the haunting fear of his suffering: a terrifying death from his breathing condition. "I’m not afraid of dying from a spiritual point of view, but what I was afraid of was how I’d go, because I’ve watched people die in the hospital fighting for oxygen and clawing at their masks," he says.
54. The author’s attitude towards euthanasia seems to be that of _____.
[A] opposition
[B] suspicion
[C] approval
[D] indifference
[答案] C
[解題思路]
從全文總體看來，作者雖然一直沒有直接表示自己的態(tài)度，但三段中他引用的例子，如第一段中"John Hofsess"的話和最后一段中"Lloyd Nickson"的例子都是贊成安樂死的。第二段中雖然指出存在反對(duì)的聲音，但該段中間作者"But the tide is unlikely to turn back"（但是安樂死這一潮流已無法逆轉(zhuǎn)）一句話筆鋒一轉(zhuǎn)，指出這種潮流已經(jīng)不可逆轉(zhuǎn)，因此可見作者自己也是持支持態(tài)度的，正確答案為C。
[題目譯文]
作者對(duì)于安樂死的態(tài)度看起來是 _____.
[A]反對(duì)
[B]懷疑
[C]贊成
[D]漠不關(guān)心 1997年P(guān)assage 5
Much of the language used to describe monetary policy, such as "steering the economy to a soft landing" or "a touch on the brakes", makes it sound like a precise science. Nothing could be further from the truth. The link between interest rates and inflation is uncertain. And there are long, variable lags before policy changes have any effect on the economy. Hence the analogy that likens the conduct of monetary policy to driving a car with a blackened windscreen, a cracked rear view mirror and a faulty steering wheel.
Given all these disadvantages, central bankers seem to have had much to boast about of late. Average inflation in the big seven industrial economies fell to a mere 2.3% last year, close to its lowest level in 30 years, before rising slightly to 2.5% this July. This is a long way below the double digit rates which many countries experienced in the 1970s and early 1980s.
It is also less than most forecasters had predicted. 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 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.
Economists have been particularly surprised by favorable inflation figures in Britain and the United States, since conventional measures suggest that both economies, and especially America’s, have little productive slack. America’s capacity utilization, for example, his historically high levels earlier this year, and its jobless rate (5.6% in August) has fallen bellow most estimates of the natural rate of unemployment - the rate below which inflation has taken off in the past.
Why has inflation proved so mild? The most thrilling explanation is, unfortunately, a little defective. Some economists argue that powerful structural changes in the world have up ended the old economic models that were based upon the historical link between growth and inflation.
70. The passage shows that the author is _____ the present situation.
[A]critical of
[B]puzzled by
[C]disappointed at
[D]amazed at
[答案] D
[解題思路]
從總體上看來，本文主要討論的是經(jīng)濟(jì)現(xiàn)象中新的現(xiàn)象、變化和趨勢(shì)。文中第一段第二、三句中指出"Nothing could be further from the truth. The link between interest rates and inflation is uncertain"（而事實(shí)并非如此。利率和通貨膨脹之間的關(guān)系并不是確定的），第三段第一句話指出"It is also less than most forecasters had predicted"（這樣的通脹率也低于許多預(yù)測(cè)家預(yù)測(cè)的數(shù)字），第四段第一句話指出"Economists have been particularly surprised by favorable inflation figures in Britain and the United States"（尤其讓經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家感到驚訝的是，英美兩國的通脹率帶來了良性的結(jié)果），而最后一段總結(jié)到"powerful structural changes in the world have up ended the old economic models that were based upon the historical link between growth and inflation"（世界經(jīng)濟(jì)結(jié)構(gòu)強(qiáng)有力的變化已經(jīng)打破了那個(gè)以經(jīng)濟(jì)增長和通貨膨脹的原有關(guān)聯(lián)為基礎(chǔ)的舊有經(jīng)濟(jì)模式）。從這些語句中都可以判斷作者也是以非常驚奇的語氣來進(jìn)行描述的，因此正確答案為D。
[題目譯文]
文章顯示了作者對(duì)目前形勢(shì)的態(tài)度是_____ 。
[A]批評(píng)
[B]困惑
[C]失望
[D]驚奇1998年P(guān)assage 3
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 Isaac Newton. The schism between science and the humanities has, if anything, deepened in this century.
Until recently, the scientific community was so powerful that it could afford to ignore its critics - but no longer. As funding for science has declined, scientists have attacked antisciencein several books, notably Higher Superstition, by Paul R.Gross, a biologist at the University of Verginia, and Norman Levitt, a mathematician at Rutgers University; and The Demon Haunted World, by Car Sagan of Cornell University.
Defenders of science have also voiced their concerns at meetings such as The Flight from Science and Reason,held in New York City in 1995, and Science in the Age of (Mis)information,which assembled last June near Buffalo.
Antiscience clearly means different things to different people. Gross and Levitt find fault primarily with sociologists, philosophers and other academics who have questioned science’s objectivity. Sagan is more concerned with those who believe in ghosts, creationism and other phenomena that contradict the scientific worldview.
A survey of news stories in 1996 reveals that the antiscience tag has been attached to many other groups as well, from authorities who advocated the elimination of the last remaining stocks of smallpox virus to Republicans who advocated decreased funding for basic research.
Few would dispute that the term applies to the Unabomber, those manifesto, published in 1995, scorns science and longs for return to a pretechnological utopia. But surely that does not mean environmentalists concerned about uncontrolled industrial growth are antiscience, as an essay in US News & World Report last May seemed to suggest.
The environmentalists, inevitably, respond to such critics. The true enemies of science, argues Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University, a pioneer of environmental studies, are those who question the evidence supporting global warming, the depletion of the ozone layer and other consequences of industrial growth.
Indeed, some observers fear that the antiscience epithet is in danger of becoming meaningless. The term ‘a(chǎn)ntiscience’ can lump together too many, quite different things,notes Harvard University philosopher Gerald Holton in his 1993 work Science and Anti Science. They have in common only one thing that they tend to annoy or threaten those who regard themselves as more enlightened
62. The author’s attitude toward the issue of science vs. antiscienceis _____ .
[A] impartial
[B] subjective
[C] biased
[D] puzzling
[答案] A
[解題思路]
本文討論的主要論題就是關(guān)于科學(xué)與文化在各個(gè)方面上的關(guān)系問題，其中舉了很多互相矛盾的例子，之后又提出了antiscience這個(gè)問題，為讀者提供了大量的信息。但是顯然文章中并沒有表示作者感情態(tài)度的詞語出現(xiàn)，作者最后也沒有做出明確的結(jié)論，說明他的態(tài)度是客觀的，沒有偏見的。
[題目譯文]
作者對(duì)于科學(xué)與反科學(xué)對(duì)立這個(gè)問題的態(tài)度是 _____。
[A]公正的
[B]主觀的
[C]有偏見的
[D]令人困惑的1999年P(guān)assage l
It’s a rough world out there. Step outside and you could break a leg slipping on your doormat. Light up the stove and you could burn down the house. Luckily, if the doormat or stove failed to warn of coming disaster, a successful lawsuit might compensate you for your troubles. Or so the thinking has gone since the early 1980s, when juries began holding more companies liable for their customers’ misfortunes.
Feeling threatened, companies responded by writing ever-longer warning labels, trying to anticipate every possible accident. Today, stepladders carry labels several inches long that warn, among other things, that you might-surprise! --fall off. The label on a child’s Batman cape cautions that the toy does not enable user to fly.
While warnings are often appropriate and necessary--the dangers of drug interactions, for example--and many are required by state or federal regulations, it isn’t clear that they actually protect the manufacturers and sellers from liability if a customer is injured. About 50 percent of the companies lose when injured customers take them to court.
Now the tide appears to be turning. As personal injury claims continue as before, some courts are beginning to side with defendants, especially in cases where a warning label probably wouldn’t have changed anything. In May, Julie Nimmons, president of Schutt Sports in Illinois, successfully fought a lawsuit involving a football player who was paralyzed in a game while wearing a Schutt helmet. We’re really sorry he has become paralyzed, but helmets aren’t designed to prevent those kinds of injuries, says Nimmons. The jury agreed that the nature of the game, not the helmet, was the reason for the athlete’s injury. At the same time, the American Law Institute--a group of judges, lawyers, and academics whose recommendations carry substantial weight-issued new guidelines for tort law stating that companies need not warn customers of obvious dangers or bombard them with a lengthy list of possible ones. Important information can get buried in a sea of trivialities, says a law professor at Cornell law School who helped draft the new guidelines. If the moderate end of the legal community has its way, the information on products might actually be provided for the benefit of customers and not as protection against legal liability.
54. The author’s attitude towards the issue seems to be__
[A] biased
[B] indifferent
[C] puzzling
[D] objective
[答案] D
[解題思路]
縱觀全文，作者在討論這一系列事件及發(fā)展的過程中幾乎沒有用到一些感情色彩強(qiáng)烈的語氣詞、形容詞和副詞，只是忠實(shí)地討論問題的各個(gè)方面，顯而易見他的態(tài)度是非?？陀^的，沒有加入個(gè)人見解。
[題目譯文]
作者對(duì)這個(gè)問題的態(tài)度看起來是__ 。
[A] 帶偏見的
[B] 漠不關(guān)心的
[C] 令人困惑的
[D] 客觀的
It was 3:45 in the morning when the vote was finally taken. After six months of arguing and final 16 hours of hot parliamentary debates, Australia’s Northern Territory became the first legal authority in the world to allow doctors to take the lives of incurably ill patients who wish to die. The measure passed by the convincing vote of 15 to 10. Almost immediately word flashed on the Internet and was picked up, half a world away, by John Hofsess, executive director of the Right to Die Society of Canada. He sent it on via the group’s on line service, Death NET. Says Hofsess: "We posted bulletins all day long, because of course this isn’t just something that happened in Australia. It’s world history."
The full import may take a while to sink in. The NT Rights of the Terminally III law has left physicians and citizens alike trying to deal with its moral and practical implications. Some have breathed sighs of relief, others, including churches, right to life groups and the Australian Medical Association, bitterly attacked the bill and the haste of its passage. But the tide is unlikely to turn back. In Australia - where an aging population, life extending technology and changing community attitudes have all played their part - other states are going to consider making a similar law to deal with euthanasia. In the US and Canada, where the right to die movement is gathering strength, observers are waiting for the dominoes to start falling.
Under the new Northern Territory law, an adult patient can request death - probably by a deadly injection or pill - to put an end to suffering. The patient must be diagnosed as terminally ill by two doctors. After a "cooling off" period of seven days, the patient can sign a certificate of request. After 48 hours the wish for death can be met. For Lloyd Nickson, a 54 year old Darwin resident suffering from lung cancer, the NT Rights of Terminally III law means he can get on with living without the haunting fear of his suffering: a terrifying death from his breathing condition. "I’m not afraid of dying from a spiritual point of view, but what I was afraid of was how I’d go, because I’ve watched people die in the hospital fighting for oxygen and clawing at their masks," he says.
54. The author’s attitude towards euthanasia seems to be that of _____.
[A] opposition
[B] suspicion
[C] approval
[D] indifference
[答案] C
[解題思路]
從全文總體看來，作者雖然一直沒有直接表示自己的態(tài)度，但三段中他引用的例子，如第一段中"John Hofsess"的話和最后一段中"Lloyd Nickson"的例子都是贊成安樂死的。第二段中雖然指出存在反對(duì)的聲音，但該段中間作者"But the tide is unlikely to turn back"（但是安樂死這一潮流已無法逆轉(zhuǎn)）一句話筆鋒一轉(zhuǎn)，指出這種潮流已經(jīng)不可逆轉(zhuǎn)，因此可見作者自己也是持支持態(tài)度的，正確答案為C。
[題目譯文]
作者對(duì)于安樂死的態(tài)度看起來是 _____.
[A]反對(duì)
[B]懷疑
[C]贊成
[D]漠不關(guān)心 1997年P(guān)assage 5
Much of the language used to describe monetary policy, such as "steering the economy to a soft landing" or "a touch on the brakes", makes it sound like a precise science. Nothing could be further from the truth. The link between interest rates and inflation is uncertain. And there are long, variable lags before policy changes have any effect on the economy. Hence the analogy that likens the conduct of monetary policy to driving a car with a blackened windscreen, a cracked rear view mirror and a faulty steering wheel.
Given all these disadvantages, central bankers seem to have had much to boast about of late. Average inflation in the big seven industrial economies fell to a mere 2.3% last year, close to its lowest level in 30 years, before rising slightly to 2.5% this July. This is a long way below the double digit rates which many countries experienced in the 1970s and early 1980s.
It is also less than most forecasters had predicted. 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 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.
Economists have been particularly surprised by favorable inflation figures in Britain and the United States, since conventional measures suggest that both economies, and especially America’s, have little productive slack. America’s capacity utilization, for example, his historically high levels earlier this year, and its jobless rate (5.6% in August) has fallen bellow most estimates of the natural rate of unemployment - the rate below which inflation has taken off in the past.
Why has inflation proved so mild? The most thrilling explanation is, unfortunately, a little defective. Some economists argue that powerful structural changes in the world have up ended the old economic models that were based upon the historical link between growth and inflation.
70. The passage shows that the author is _____ the present situation.
[A]critical of
[B]puzzled by
[C]disappointed at
[D]amazed at
[答案] D
[解題思路]
從總體上看來，本文主要討論的是經(jīng)濟(jì)現(xiàn)象中新的現(xiàn)象、變化和趨勢(shì)。文中第一段第二、三句中指出"Nothing could be further from the truth. The link between interest rates and inflation is uncertain"（而事實(shí)并非如此。利率和通貨膨脹之間的關(guān)系并不是確定的），第三段第一句話指出"It is also less than most forecasters had predicted"（這樣的通脹率也低于許多預(yù)測(cè)家預(yù)測(cè)的數(shù)字），第四段第一句話指出"Economists have been particularly surprised by favorable inflation figures in Britain and the United States"（尤其讓經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家感到驚訝的是，英美兩國的通脹率帶來了良性的結(jié)果），而最后一段總結(jié)到"powerful structural changes in the world have up ended the old economic models that were based upon the historical link between growth and inflation"（世界經(jīng)濟(jì)結(jié)構(gòu)強(qiáng)有力的變化已經(jīng)打破了那個(gè)以經(jīng)濟(jì)增長和通貨膨脹的原有關(guān)聯(lián)為基礎(chǔ)的舊有經(jīng)濟(jì)模式）。從這些語句中都可以判斷作者也是以非常驚奇的語氣來進(jìn)行描述的，因此正確答案為D。
[題目譯文]
文章顯示了作者對(duì)目前形勢(shì)的態(tài)度是_____ 。
[A]批評(píng)
[B]困惑
[C]失望
[D]驚奇1998年P(guān)assage 3
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 Isaac Newton. The schism between science and the humanities has, if anything, deepened in this century.
Until recently, the scientific community was so powerful that it could afford to ignore its critics - but no longer. As funding for science has declined, scientists have attacked antisciencein several books, notably Higher Superstition, by Paul R.Gross, a biologist at the University of Verginia, and Norman Levitt, a mathematician at Rutgers University; and The Demon Haunted World, by Car Sagan of Cornell University.
Defenders of science have also voiced their concerns at meetings such as The Flight from Science and Reason,held in New York City in 1995, and Science in the Age of (Mis)information,which assembled last June near Buffalo.
Antiscience clearly means different things to different people. Gross and Levitt find fault primarily with sociologists, philosophers and other academics who have questioned science’s objectivity. Sagan is more concerned with those who believe in ghosts, creationism and other phenomena that contradict the scientific worldview.
A survey of news stories in 1996 reveals that the antiscience tag has been attached to many other groups as well, from authorities who advocated the elimination of the last remaining stocks of smallpox virus to Republicans who advocated decreased funding for basic research.
Few would dispute that the term applies to the Unabomber, those manifesto, published in 1995, scorns science and longs for return to a pretechnological utopia. But surely that does not mean environmentalists concerned about uncontrolled industrial growth are antiscience, as an essay in US News & World Report last May seemed to suggest.
The environmentalists, inevitably, respond to such critics. The true enemies of science, argues Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University, a pioneer of environmental studies, are those who question the evidence supporting global warming, the depletion of the ozone layer and other consequences of industrial growth.
Indeed, some observers fear that the antiscience epithet is in danger of becoming meaningless. The term ‘a(chǎn)ntiscience’ can lump together too many, quite different things,notes Harvard University philosopher Gerald Holton in his 1993 work Science and Anti Science. They have in common only one thing that they tend to annoy or threaten those who regard themselves as more enlightened
62. The author’s attitude toward the issue of science vs. antiscienceis _____ .
[A] impartial
[B] subjective
[C] biased
[D] puzzling
[答案] A
[解題思路]
本文討論的主要論題就是關(guān)于科學(xué)與文化在各個(gè)方面上的關(guān)系問題，其中舉了很多互相矛盾的例子，之后又提出了antiscience這個(gè)問題，為讀者提供了大量的信息。但是顯然文章中并沒有表示作者感情態(tài)度的詞語出現(xiàn)，作者最后也沒有做出明確的結(jié)論，說明他的態(tài)度是客觀的，沒有偏見的。
[題目譯文]
作者對(duì)于科學(xué)與反科學(xué)對(duì)立這個(gè)問題的態(tài)度是 _____。
[A]公正的
[B]主觀的
[C]有偏見的
[D]令人困惑的1999年P(guān)assage l
It’s a rough world out there. Step outside and you could break a leg slipping on your doormat. Light up the stove and you could burn down the house. Luckily, if the doormat or stove failed to warn of coming disaster, a successful lawsuit might compensate you for your troubles. Or so the thinking has gone since the early 1980s, when juries began holding more companies liable for their customers’ misfortunes.
Feeling threatened, companies responded by writing ever-longer warning labels, trying to anticipate every possible accident. Today, stepladders carry labels several inches long that warn, among other things, that you might-surprise! --fall off. The label on a child’s Batman cape cautions that the toy does not enable user to fly.
While warnings are often appropriate and necessary--the dangers of drug interactions, for example--and many are required by state or federal regulations, it isn’t clear that they actually protect the manufacturers and sellers from liability if a customer is injured. About 50 percent of the companies lose when injured customers take them to court.
Now the tide appears to be turning. As personal injury claims continue as before, some courts are beginning to side with defendants, especially in cases where a warning label probably wouldn’t have changed anything. In May, Julie Nimmons, president of Schutt Sports in Illinois, successfully fought a lawsuit involving a football player who was paralyzed in a game while wearing a Schutt helmet. We’re really sorry he has become paralyzed, but helmets aren’t designed to prevent those kinds of injuries, says Nimmons. The jury agreed that the nature of the game, not the helmet, was the reason for the athlete’s injury. At the same time, the American Law Institute--a group of judges, lawyers, and academics whose recommendations carry substantial weight-issued new guidelines for tort law stating that companies need not warn customers of obvious dangers or bombard them with a lengthy list of possible ones. Important information can get buried in a sea of trivialities, says a law professor at Cornell law School who helped draft the new guidelines. If the moderate end of the legal community has its way, the information on products might actually be provided for the benefit of customers and not as protection against legal liability.
54. The author’s attitude towards the issue seems to be__
[A] biased
[B] indifferent
[C] puzzling
[D] objective
[答案] D
[解題思路]
縱觀全文，作者在討論這一系列事件及發(fā)展的過程中幾乎沒有用到一些感情色彩強(qiáng)烈的語氣詞、形容詞和副詞，只是忠實(shí)地討論問題的各個(gè)方面，顯而易見他的態(tài)度是非?？陀^的，沒有加入個(gè)人見解。
[題目譯文]
作者對(duì)這個(gè)問題的態(tài)度看起來是__ 。
[A] 帶偏見的
[B] 漠不關(guān)心的
[C] 令人困惑的
[D] 客觀的