Direction: In this part, there are four passages followed by questions or unfinished statements, each with four suggested answers marked A, B, C and D. Choose the on
e that you think is the correct answer.
Passage 1
Philip Morris, the conglomerate that owns Kraft Foods but is probably best known for its cigarettes and costly tobacco, litigation, recently decided to change its name to Altria to reflect the diversity of the companys brands. And Enron, which is in the process of moving its core energy assets out from under the bankruptcy and into a separate company, is looking for a new name for that entity.
The recent name changes highlight the importance for companies of choosing a moniker that is relevant and authoritative while still being catchy an appealing to consumers, say marketing experts. A rose by any other name might smell as sweet, but if a company chooses a name that does not work, the stench can hover for quite some time.
Companies often decide to change their names in an effort to rebrand themselves after a merge or a spinoff. For instance, Andersen Consulting changed its name to Accenture shortly after that firm split from parent Arthur Andersen — a move that turned out to be fortuitous, given Andersens troubles. Companies may also want to reinvent themselves after a scandal has tarnished its name, as Enron is doing. Or perhaps they simply want to give their image a makeover.
But a new name that does not work can be a mistake that can cost company customers, credibility and millions of dollars. One example out of Britain last year was the U.K. Post Offices decision to change its name to Consignee. The postal service recently renamed itself once again to Royal Mail Inc., capping off a year of steep job and revenue for the entity.
Though a hefty advertising and marketing budget will help to make a new name successful, other factors, such as familiarity, a coherent message from the company and a name in peoples minds. When U.S. automaker Chrysler merged with German company DaimlerBenz to form DaimlerChrysler in 1998, a year after the deal, the familiarity of the newly merged company dropped to a score of 89 when the company was just called Chrysler.
These days, PWC Consultings new Monday title is causing more than one brand expert to raise their eyebrows in puzzlement. The companys web site proudly announces that “Monday is a fresh start, a positive attitude, part of everybodys life. Monday is a real name universally understood and easy to remember. Monday is confident. It stands for something.”
Too bad the only thing Monday stands for in most peoples minds is the beginning of a week full of toil and drudgery. Monday is not everyones favorite day; its just an odd choice. “Like with any name, its going to be what we make of it,” says PWC Consultings spokeswoman, “Whereas some look upon it perhaps with dread, we see it as a fresh start and a new beginning.”
1. Which of the following statements best expresses the main idea of the passage?
A. To operate a company successfully is full of challenge and it needs effective strategies.
B. There are various reasons that cause name changes among the companies.
C. An attractive name is the key to a companys success.
D. Nowadays changing name is considered as a prevailing fashion in business world.
2. According to the passage, which of the following is NOT true?
A. Enron changed its name because of its ill reputation after a scandal.
B. “Philip Morris” was replaced by “Altria” because this company had to employ a new name to rebrand the various productions.
C. The U.K. Post Offices strategy to change its name came to nothing at last.
D. PWC Consultings terrific new Monday title absolutely reflects most peoples thoughts.
3. From the passage we know that all of the followings are the causes of a companys name change except
A. to attract costumers after combining with other companies.
B. to avoid sharing the same name with other companies.
C. to recover from the disgraceful events.
D. just to build a new image.
4. After reading this passage we know that in the authors opinion,
A. a rose by any name might smell as sweet and a good company with any other name might as popular as well.
B. “monday” is a fresh start and a new beginning and its a marvelous choice.
C. the familiarity of a company is as significant as its huge sum of publicizing.
D. if a company is facing problems, the best solution is to change its name.
5. The word “hefty”(in paragraph 5, line 1) can be replaced by “”?
A. substantialB. splendidC. terrificD. marvelous
Passage 2
Los AngelesBill Joy is not a Luddite. He is not afraid of new technology. As founder and chief scientist of the Silicon Valley Company, he has been in the vanguard of the hightech revolution for 20 years. But recently Joy took a glimpse into the future and it scared him to death. What he saw was a world in which humans have been effectively supplanted by machines; a world in which superpowerful computers with at least some attributes of human intelligence manage to replicate themselves and develop their own autonomy and people become superfluous and risk becoming extinct.
“It might be arguable that the human race would never be foolish enough to hand over all the power to the machines. But what we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but accept all of the machines decisions. As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more of their decisions for them. Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People wont be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them would amount to suicide.”
Previously, Joy had dismissed such scenarios as scifi fantasy, but then he listened to friends who were experts in robotics and realized that this brave new world was much closer than any of us might imagine — as close as 30 years away. The further that Joy dug into the cutting edge of research in the new technologies — robotics, genetic engineering and Nan technology — the more horrified he became. Not only did he see scenarios in which robots would like to take on a life of their own and exterminate the human race, but also he began to see ways in which other staples of scifi horror might come to pass. Specifically, robots, engineered organism, and Nan bots share a dangerous amplifying factor: they can selfreplicate. A bomb is blown only once — but one robot can become many, and quickly get out of control.
“I think it is no exaggeration to say we are on the cusp of the further perfection of extreme evil, an evil whose possibility spreads well beyond that which weapons of mass destruction bequeathed to the nationstates, on to a surprising and terrible empowerment of extreme individuals. We are being propelled into this new century with no plan, no control, no brakes.” Joy concludes. “Have we already gone too far down the path to alter course? I dont believe so, but we arent trying yet, and the last chance to assert control — the failsafe point — is rapidly approaching.”
1. According to the passage, the word “Luddite”(in paragraph 1, line1) means?
A. the name of a place where science is underdeveloped
B. the name of a country
C. the name of an organization which aims to advocate developing the new technology
D. the name of a party which protest at developing science
2. From the passage, we know that it is that scared Bill Joy to death?
A. robots have been practically running the world
B. humans are actually at the mercy of the machines
C. humans are facing a fatal situation that the machines are out of control gradually and the machines will overwhelm the whole world
D. humans will be exiled from the earth by the machines and they have to explore another fixed star
3. What does the sentence “I dont believe so, but we arent trying yet...”(in the last paragraph, line 5) indicate
A. it is high time for us to give an end to the new technologies.
B. we should cease to explore the perilous Nan technology.
C. humans have to devoted themselves to save the whole world by containing and wrecking the machines.
D. it is right time for humans to dominate the high developing technology effectively and handle it skillfully.
4. Bill Joy realized the situation that
A. the day when the world controlled by the machines is just round the corner.
B. the human world is on the edge of an exceeding danger.
C. the machines in the future will be as perilous as the mass destruction.
D. humans are now on their wits end.
5. Which of the following can best describe the author attitude towards the future relationship between humans and machines?
A. OptimisticB. PessimisticC. Confident C. Indifferent
Passage 3
Hollywood racked up another “record” year at the box office. But the higher ticket sales mask fundamental issues in the U.S. movie industry, where the socalled blockbuster strategy is causing movies to open with big tallies that fall off faster than in previous years. Movie ticket sales reached an estimated $8.35 billion in 2001, up 8.4% from $7.7 billion in 2000, the largest gain since 1998. Moreover, the number of tickets sold — a more reliable indicator — rose to an estimated 1.49 billion, according to boxoffice tracking firm Exhibitor Relations Co. The strong sales were aided by the postChristmas, prenew Year weekend. Although many observers though people would stay away from the theaters after the 9.11, the numbers have been up 5% industrywide since then from yearearlier levels.
Those positive trends, however, gloss over deeper problems facing the Hollywood studios and movietheater chains, where real audience growth has been marginal. Boxoffice totals have nearly tripled during the past decade, while the number of tickets sold has risen 30%; indicating the boxoffice record is driven by higher ticket prices, not increase in movie attendance. A more dangerous development, at least for theater operators, has been the trend toward movies opening to large boxoffice figures during the first weekend and then quickly trailing off. Theater operators earn most of the money from movies playing in their theaters after the second week. Studios, in contrast, collect the majority of a movies ticket receipts the first week.
But, for the Hollywood studios that distribute the bulk of the movies seen by the public, the blockbuster strategy of putting as many marketable highprofile movies into theaters as possible will continue in 2002. “I call it the year of the sequel,” says Paul, a boxoffice analyst, noting the coming years lineup includes Men in Black 2, Stuart Little 2, Spy Kids 2, second installments for Harry Potter and Lord of the Ring. “Studios are playing it safe,” he says. Such hyper marketed movies can open big at box office, but they dont tend to hold up in subsequent weeks, as the core movie — going audience — teenagers and adults in their 20sflock to the next “big” movie. Some of last years largest openers, such as Planet of the Apes, The Mummy Return and Jurassic Park saw their boxoffice number plunge by 50% or more the second weekend.
One possible outcome is that the decadesold relationship between studios and theaters will undergo changes. If the studios persist in pushing “blockbuster” movies, then the traditional system of the studios taking a larger share of the boxoffice receipts in the first weeks could be revised to something more equitable. Studios, however, would be expected to fight any effort to revamp the current system.
1. The fundamental issue in the U.S. movie industry is that
A. the boxoffice figures have been declining ceaselessly without any improvement.
B. as the ticket price is going up rapidly these years, fewer people can afford it.
C. those “big” movies open with a extremely large boxoffice figures, but decline quickly after a short period.
D. highquality movie are becoming marginal and the core of the moviegoings audience is limited.
2. The theater operators are facing perilous problems except
A. the number of the audience is getting smaller year after year.
B. the studios gain most of the ticket receipts while the theater operators gain less.
C. generally speaking, after the second week, the audiences nearly have little interest in the socalled “blockbuster” movies.
D. the boxoffice figures usually fall off rapidly after the first weekend.
3. The socalled “blockbuster” (in paragraph 1) means
A. show a meticulously highquality movie to attract the audience.
B. show as many highprofile movies as possible.
C. put on the wellpublicized movies to overwhelm the audiences.
D. put a lot of movies into the theaters in a short period.
4. According to the passage, one possible solution that can solve the current problem between the studios and the theaters is that
A. produce more and more marketable “big” movies and put them into theaters immediately.
B. improve the quality of the movies and enlarge the number of the audiences.
C. stop carrying out the “blockbuster” strategy and implement revised system to balance the interest.
D. have recourse to law in order to achieve a more equitable pattern.
5. Which of the following words can take place of the word “revamp”?
A. RenewB. ReplaceC. RevertD. Review
Passage 4
It is the year 2050, and April blizzards have gripped southern England for the third successive year while violent storms batter the North Sea coast. In America, much of Alaska has turned into a quagmire as permafrost and glaciers disintegrate. In Colorado, chair lift pylons stand rusting in the warm drizzle, remainders that the nation supported a billiondollar ski industry, while the remnants of Florida are declared Americas second island state. Africa is faring badly. Its coastline from Cairo to Lagos is completely flooded and many of the major cities have been abandoned. Tens of millions of people have been forced to flee and are struggling to survive in a parched, waterless interior. In Asia, Bangladesh is almost totally inundated and the East Indies have been reduced to a few scrappy islands.
This is a startling scenario. And it would be easy to dismiss, were it for the uncomfortable fact that these visions are the result of rigorous scientific analysis by some of the worlds most distinguished criminologists. As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change points out in its recent Climate Change 2001 report, global warming is likely to trigger a cascade of unpleasant effects: elderly people will suffer and die in smoggy, polluted cities; crops will fail; and wildlife and livestock will perish on the planet.
That report was the combined work of several thousand of the worlds leading meteorological experts and scientists whose views George Bush has now dismissed as “questionable” and whose work in creating the Kyoto protocol has been utterly undone. The U.S. decision to pull out of the international accord on climate change has caused predictable international alarm, though it is important to note it will have no direct effect on levels of carbon dioxide now circulating in the atmosphere. Kyoto merely pledged developed countries to restrict their industrial output. “It was an excellent first step towards reversing climate change, ” according to Southampton Universitys professor.
Kyoto was a statement of intent. The industrial nations, which had, after all, initiated the problem of global warming, would show their commitment by making the first crucial, selfsacrificing moves. Then the third World could be drawn in, and the first decreases in carbondioxide emissions aGREed over the next few years. “Bush has now made the attainment of these next crucial steps much more difficult, ”says Arielle. In fact most experts believe he has made them impossible. If the West wont act, why should the rest of the world? If no action is taken, the consequences are likely to be calamitous. Before the industrial revolution, the atmosphere was made up of 250 parts per million of carbon dioxide. Now that figure has reached 366 and is already producing meteorological effects. And that is just the start.
1. From the first paragraph we know that
A. in the year 2050, the whole world will be confronted with a horrific hurricane.
B. most parts of Alaska have been covered by the quagmire.
C. residents in Africa have to leave their motherland and the cities will be deserted.
D. fifty years later, there may be no Bangladesh on the earth any longer.
2. According to the passage, the main course of climate disaster is
A. the sharp growth of the population in the world.
B. the serious air pollution and water pollution.
C. the rapid increasing amount of carbon dioxide in the air.
D. the global warming.
3. George Bush thinks that the Climate Change 2001 reports
A. is reasonable and the experts and scientists views are seasonable warns to those counties.
B. is dubious and he takes no serious consideration to it.
C. is suspicious and he is going to make some investigation by himself.
D. is quite all right and he will take some effective steps.
4. From the passage we know the Kyoto protocol
A. is a contract among developing countries.
B. is a statement which expropriates the United States rights.
C. is a contract which restricts developed countrys rights.
D. is a statement which tends to ameliorates the climate condition.
5. After reading this passage, we can infer that the last sentence indicates
A. as far as the calamitous consequences are concerned, the scientists are at the loss what to do.
B. united States should be condemned if the climate condition gets worse.
C. the terrible consequences which scientists have been informed are only the beginning of the disaster.
D. the climate disasters have been out of control.
