大学英语四级信息匹配.doc

.- 大学英语四、六级考试信息匹配题阅读训练 Directions: In this section, you are going to read a passage with ten statements attached to it. Each statement contains information given in one of the paragraph. Identify the paragraph from which the information is derived. You may choose a paragraph more than once. Each paragraph is marked with a letter. Answer the questions by marking the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2. Passage 1 Surviving the Recession A) America’s recession began quietly at the end of 2007. Since then it has evolved into a global crisis. Reasonable people may disagree about whom to blame. Financiers who were not as clever as they thought they were? Regulators falling asleep at work? Consumers who borrowed too much? Politicians who thoughtlessly promoted home-ownership for those who could not afford it? All are guilt; and what a mess they have created. B) Since 2007 America has shed 5 million jobs. More than 15% of the workforce are jobless or underemployed—roughly 25 million workers. The only industries swelling their payrolls are health care, utilities and the federal government. The value of listed shares in American firms collapsed by 57% from its peak in October 2007 to a low in March this year, though it has since bounded back somewhat. Industrial production fell by 12.8% in the year to March, the worst slide since the Second World War. Mark Zandi, an economist at Moody’s Economy.com, predicts that the recession will shrink America’s economy by 3.5% in total. “For most executives, this is the worst business environment they’ve ever seen.” C) Times are so tough that even bosses are taking pay cuts. Median （中位数的）pay for chief executives of S&P 500 companies fell 6.8% in 2008. The overthrown business giants of Wall Street took the biggest knock, with average pay cuts of 38% and median bonuses of zero. But there was some pain for everyone: median pay for chief executives of non-financial firms in the S&P 500 fell by 2.7%. D) Nearly every business has a sad tale to tell. For example, Arne Sorenson, the president of Marriott hotel, likens the crisis to the downturn that hit his business after September 11th, 2001. When the twin towers fell, Americans stopped travelling. Marriott had its worst quarter ever, with revenues per room falling by 25%. This year, without a terrorist attack, the hotel industry is “putting the same numbers on the board”, says Mr. Sorenson. E) Other industries have suffered even more. Large numbers of builders, property firms and retailers have gone bankrupt. And a disaster has hit Detroit. Last year the American car industry had the capacity to make 17 million vehicles. Sales in 2009 could be barely half of that. The Big Three American carmakers—General Motors, Ford and Chrysler—accumulated ruinous costs over the post-war years, such as gold-plated health plans and pensions for workers who retired as young as 48. All three are desperately restructuring. Only Ford may survive in its current form. F) Hard times breed hard feeling. Few Americans understand what caused the recession. Some are seeking scapegoats （替罪羊）. Politicians are happy to take advantage. Bosses have been summoned to Washington to be scolded on live television. The president condemns their greed. G) Business folks are bending over backwards to avoid seeming extravagant. Meetings at resorts are suddenly unacceptable. Goldman Sachs, an investment bank, cancelled a conference in Las Vegas at the last minute and rebooked it in San Francisco, which cost more but sounded less fun. H) Anyway, the pain will eventually end. American business will regain its shine. Many firms will die, but the survivors will emerge leaner and stronger than before. The financial sector’s share of the economy will shrink, and stay shrunk for years to come. The importance of non-financial firms will accordingly rise, along with their ability to attract the best talent. America will remain the best place on earth to do business, so long as Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress resist the temptation to interfere too much, and so long as organized labors does not overplay its hand. I) Mr. Obama’s plan to curb carbon dioxide emissions （排放）, though necessary, will be far from cost-free, whatever his sunny speeches on the subject might suggest. The shift to a low-carbon economy will help some firms, hurt others and require every organization that uses much energy to rethink how it operates. It is harder to predict how Mr. Obama’s proposed reforms to the failing health-care system will turn out. If he succeeds in curbing costs—a big if—it would be a huge gain for America. Some business will benefit but the vast bulk of the savings will be captured by workers, not their employers. J) In the next couple of years the businesses that thrive will be those that are tight with costs, careful of debt, cautious with cash flow and extremely attentive to what customers want. They will include plenty of names no one has yet heard of. K) Times change, and corporations change with them. In 1955 Time’s Man of the Year was Harlow Curtice, the boss of GM. His firm was leading America towards “a new economic order”, the magazine wrote. Thanks to men like Curtice, “the bonds of scarcity” had been broken and America was rolling “to an all-time high of prosperity”. Soon, Americans would need to spend “comparatively little time earning a living”. L) Half a century later GM is a typical example for poor management. In March its chief executive was fired by Time’s current Man of the Year, Mr. Obama. The government now backs up the domestic car industry, lending it money and overseeing its turnaround plans. With luck, this will be short-lived. But there is a danger that Washington will end up micromanaging not only Detroit but also other parts of the economy. And clever as Mr. Obama’s advisers are, history suggests they will be bad at this. 1. The America’s recession affected the hotel industry as badly as the 9/11 terrorist attack. 2. Businessmen are trying to avoid seeming wasteful in response to the recession. 3. In the near future, a thriving business will go with cautious management tactics. 4. Much doubt remains whether the Obama administration will do well in micromanaging the America’s economy. 5. A combination of causes is responsible for the current American recession, which began in 2007. 6. The government is not supposed to interfere too much in American businesses. 7. The big Three American carmakers need restructuring to survive due to their accumulation of the ruinous costs over the post-war years. 8. In March, GM”s chief executive was fired by Obama for poor management. 9. According to the author, Obama’s plan to limit carbon dioxide emissions will by no means be inexpensive. 10. At the worst time, the total value of listed shares in American firms shrank by fifty-seven percent. (D G J L A H E L I B) Passage two Small schools Rising A) This year’s list of the top 100 high schools shows that today, those with fewer students are flourishing. B) Fifty years ago, they were the latest thing in educational reform: big, modern, suburban high schools with students counted in the thousands. As baby boomers（二战后婴儿潮时期出生的人）came of high-school age, big schools promised economic efficiency. A greater choice of courses, and, of course, better football teams. Only years later did we understand the trade-offs this involved: the creation of excessive bureaucracies（官僚机构）,the difficulty of forging personal connections between teachers and students. SAT scores began dropping in 1963; today, on average, 30% of students do not complete high school in four years, a figure that rises to 50% in poor urban neighborhoods. While the emphasis on teaching to higher, test-driven standards as set in No Child Left Behind resulted in significantly better performance in elementary (and some middle) schools, high schools for a variety of reason seemed to have made little progress. C) Size isn’t everything, but it does matter, and the past decade has seen a noticeable countertrend toward smaller schools. This has been due, in part, to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has invested $1.8 billion in American high schools, helping to open about 1000 small schools—most of them with about 400 kids each, with an average enrollment of only 150 per grade. About 500 more are on the drawing board. Districts all over the county are taking notice, along with mayors in cities like New York, Chicago and San Diego. The movement includes independent public charter schools, such as No.1 BASIS in Tucson, with only 120 high-schools and 18 graduates this year. It embraces district-sanctioned magnet schools, such as the Talented and Gifted School, with 198 students, and the Science and Engineering Magnet, with 383, which share a building in Dallas, as well as the City Honors School in Buffalo, N.Y., which grew out of volunteer evening seminars for students. And it includes alternative schools with students selected by lottery（抽签）, such as H.B Woodlawn in Arlington, Va. And most noticeable of all, there is the phenomenon of large urban and suburban high schools that have split up into smaller units of a few hundred, generally housed in the same grounds that once boasted thousands of students all marching to the same band. D) Hillsdale High School in San Mateo, Calif., is one of those, ranking No. 423—among the top 2% in the country—on Newsweek’s annual ranking of America’s top high schools. The success of small schools is apparent in the listings. Ten years ago, when the first Newsweek list based on college-level test participation was published, only three of the top 100 schools had graduating classes smaller than 100 students. This year there are 22. Nearly 250 schools on the full Newsweek list of the top 5% of schools nationally had fewer than 200 graduates in 2007. E) Although many of Hillsdale’s students came from wealthy households, by the late 1990 average test scores were sliding and it had earned the unaffectionate nickname “Hillsjail”. Jeff Gibert, a Hillsdale teacher who became principal last year, remembers sitting with other teachers watching students file out of a graduation ceremony and asking one another in astonishment, “How did that student graduated?” F) So in 2003 Hillsdale remade itself into three “houses”, romantically named Florence, Marrakech and Kyoto. Each of the 300 arriving ninth graders are randomly assigned to one of the houses, where they will keep the same four core subject teachers for two years, before moving on to another for 11th and 12th grades. The closeness this system cultivates is reinforced by the institution of “advisory” classes. Teachers meet with students in groups of 25, five mornings a week, for open-ended discussions of everything from homework problems to bad Saturday-night dates. The advisers also meet with students privately and stay in touch with parents, so they are deeply invested in the students’ success. “We’re constantly talking about one another’s advisers,” says English teacher Chris Crockett. “If you hear that yours isn’t doing well in math, or see them sitting outside the dean’s office, it’s like a personal failure.” Along with the new structure came a more demanding academic program, the percentage of freshmen taking biology jumped from 17 to 95. “It was rough for some. But by senior year, two-thirds have moved up to physics,” says Gilbert. “Our kids are coming to school in part because they know there are adults here who know them and care for them.” But not all schools show advances after downsizing, and it remains to be seen whether smaller schools will be a cure-all solution. G) The Newsweek list of top U.S. high schools was made this year, as in years past, according to a single metric, the proportion of students taking college-level exams. Over the years the system has come in for its share of criticism for its simplicity. But that is also its strength: it’s easy for readers to understand, and to do the arithmetic for their own schools if they’d like. H) Ranking schools is always controversial, and this year a group of 38 superintendents（地区教育主管）from five states wrote to ask that their schools be excluded from the calculation. “It is impossible to know which high schools are ‘the best’ in the nation,” their letter read, in part. “Determining whether different schools do or don’t offer a high quality of education requires a look at many different measures, including students’ overall academic accomplishments and their subsequent performance in college. And taking into consideration the unique needs of their communities.” I) In the end the superintendents agreed to provide the data we sought, which is, after all, public information. There is, in our view, no real dispute here; we are all seeking the same thing, which is schools that better serve our children and our nation by encouraging students to make tough subjects under the guidance of gifted teachers. And if we keep working toward that goal, someday, perhaps a list won’t be necessary. 1. In practical use, simplicity is still considered a strength of Newsweek’s school ranking system in spite of the criticism it receives. 2. As a result setting up big schools, students’ performance declined. 3. Newsweek ranked high schools according to their college-level test participation. 4. Half a century ago, big, modern, suburban high schools were established to ensure efficient education for baby boomers. 5. It is agreed that qualified teachers, better services and encouragement are keys to reaching the ultimate goal of school education. 6. The most noticeable trend in high school education is the splitting of large schools into smaller ones. 7. It is still unknown whether smaller schools will be a solution to all educational problems. 8. High schools funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are small in size. 9. Different measures should be used in assessing the quality of school education. 10. The “advisory” classes at Hillsdale were set up so that students could maintain closer relationship with their teachers. (G B D B I C F C H F) Passage 3. Highways A) Early in the 20th century, most of the streets and roads in the U.S. were made of dirt, brick, and cedar wood blocks. Built for horse, carriage, and foot traffic, they were usually poorly cared for and too narrow to accommodate（容纳）automobiles. B) With the increase in auto production, private turnpike（收费公路）companies under local authorities began to spring up, and by 1921 there were 387000 miles of paved roads. Many were built using specifications of 19th century Scottish engineers Thomas Telford and John MacAdam (for whom the macadam surface is named), whose specifications stressed the importance of adequate drainage. Beyond that, there were no national standards for size, weight restrictions, or commercial signs. During World War I. roads throughout the country w