Directions:
¡¡Each of the passages below is followed by some questions. For each question there are four answer to each of the questions.Then mark your answer on ANSWER SHEET I by blackening the corresponding letter in the brackets with a pencil.(40 points)

passage 1

¡¡¡° I would almost rather see you dead,¡±Robert S. Cassatt,a leading banker(ÒøÐмÒ)of Philadelphia,shouted when his twenty-year-old eldest daughter announced that she wanted to become an artist.In the 19th century, playing at drawing or painting on dishes was all right for a young lady, but serious work in art was net.And when the young lady¡®s family ranked among(¼·ÉíÓÚ)the best of Philadelphoa¡¯s social(Éç½»½çµÄ)families,such an idea could not even be considered.
¡¡That was how Mary Cassatt,born 1844,began her struggle as an aritist. She did not tremble before her father¡®s anger.Instead, she opposed(¿¹¾Ü)him with courage and at last made him change his mind.Mary Cassatt gave up her social position (Éç»áµØλ)and all thought of a husband and a family,which in those times was unthinkable for a young dady.In the end,after long years of hard work and perseverance(¼á³Ö),she became Americ¡¯s most important woman artist and the internationally recognized leading woman painter of the time.

passage 2

¡¡ O.Henry was a pen name used by an Americna writer of short stories. His real name was William Sydney Porter.He was born in North Carolia in 1862.As a young boy he lived an exciting life. Hw did not go to school for very ling ,but he mnaged to teach hmeself everything he needed to know.When he was about 20 years old , O.Henry went to Texas,where he tried different jobs.He first worked on a newspaper,and then had a job in a bank. When some money went missing from the bank, O.Henry was believed to have stolen it. Because of that , he ws sent to prison. During the three years in prison,he lerned to write short stories.After he got out of prison,he went to New York and continued writing.Hw wrote mostly aout New York and the life of the poor there.People liked his stories,because simple as the tales were, they would finidh with a sudden change at the end,to the readers¡® surprise.

passage 3

¡¡Historians may well look back on the 1980s in the United States as a time of rising affluence sideª²byª²side with rising poverty. The growth in affluence is attributable to an increase in professional and technical jobs, along with more twoª²career couples whose combined incomes provide a ¡°comfortable living¡±.Yet simultaneously, the nation¡®s poverty rate rose between 1973 and 1983 from 11.1 percent of the population to 15.2,or by well over a third. Although the poverty rate declined somewhat after 1983, it was still held at 13.5 percent in 1987, comprising a population of 32.5 million Americans.¡¡
The definition of poverty is a matter of debate. In 1795, a group of English magistrates decided that a minimum income should be ¡°the cost of a gallon loaf of bread, multiplied by three, plus an allowance for each dependent¡±.Today the Census Bureau defines the threshold of poverty in the United States as the minimum amount of money that families need to purchase a nutritionally adequate diet, assuming they use oneª²third of their income for food. Using this definition, roughly half the American population was poor in the aftermath of the Great Depression of the 1930s. By 1950, the proportion of the poor had fallen to 30 percent and by 1964, to 20 percent. With the adoption of the Johnson administration¡¯s antipoverty programs, the poverty rate dropped to 12 percent in 1969.But since then, it has stopped falling. Liberals contend that the poverty line is too low because it fails to take into account changes in the standard of living. Conservatives say that it is too high because the poor receive other forms of public assistance, including food stamps, public housing subsidies, and health care.

passage 4

¡¡The more women and minorities make their way into the ranks of management, the more they seem to want to talk about things formerly judged to be best left unsaid.The newcomers also tend to see office matters with a fresh eye, in the process sometimes coming up with critical analyses of the forces that shape everyone¡®s expenience in the organization.
¡¡Consider the novel views of Harvey Coleman of Atlanta on the subjest of getting ahead. Coleman is black. He spent 11 years with IBM, half of them working in management development, and now serves as a consultant to the likes of AT & T, Coca ª²Cola, Prudential, and Merch. Coleman says that based on what he¡¯s seen at big companies, he weighs the different elements that make for longª²term career success as follows: performance counts a mere 10%; image,30%; and exposure, a full 60%. Coleman concludes that excellent job performance is so common these days that while doing your work well may win you pay increases,it won¡®t secure you the big promotion.
¡¡He finds that advancement more often depends on how many people know you and your work, and how high up they are.
¡¡Ridiculous beliefs? Not to many people, especially many women and members of minority races who, like Coleman, feel that the scales have dropped from their eyes. ¡°Women and blacks in organizations work under false beliefs,¡±says Kaleel Jamison, a New Yorkª²based management consultant who helps corporations deal with these issues. ¡°They think that if you work hard, you¡¯ll get ahead that soneone in authority will reach down and give you a promotion.¡± She added, ¡°Most women and blacks are so fightened that people will think they¡®ve gotten ahead because of their sex or color that they play down their visibility.¡± Her advice to those folks: learn the ways that white males have traditionally used to find their way into the spotlight.

passage 5

¡¡I came to live here where I am now between Wounded Knee Creek and Grass Creek. Others came too, and we made there little gray houses of logs that you see, and they are square. It is a bad way to live, for there can be no power in a square.
¡¡You have noticed that everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the Power of the World always works in circles, and everything tries to be round. In the old days when we were a strong and happy people, all our power came to us from the sacred hoop of the nation, and so long as the hoop was unbroken, the people flourished.The flowering tree was the living center of the hoop, and the circle of the four quarters nourished it .The east gave peace and light, the south gave warmth, the west gave rain, and the north with its cold and mighty wind gave strength and endurance. This knowledge came to us from the outer world with our religion.
¡¡Everything the Power of the World does is done in a circle. The sky is round, and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball, and so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power, whirls. Birds make their nests in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours. The sun comes forth and goes down again in a circle. The moon does the same, and both are round. Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves. Our tepees were round like the nests of birds, and these were always set in a circle, the nation¡¯s hoop, a nest of many nests,where the Great Spirit meant for us to hatch our children.
¡¡But the Wasichus have put us in these square boxes. Our power is gone and we are dying, for the power is not in us any more. You can look at our boys and see how it is with us. When we were living by the power of the circle in the way we should, boys were men at twelve or thirteen years of age. But now it takes them very much longer to mature.