Work is a very important part of life in the United States. When the early Prote

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Work is a very important part of life in the United States. When the early Protestant immigrants(新教徒移民) came to this country, they brought the idea that work was the way to God and heaven. This attitude, the Protestant Work Ethic(道德规范), still influences America today. Work is not only important for economic benefits, the salary, but also for social and psychological needs, the feeling of doing something for the good of the society. Americans spend most of their lives working, being productive. For most Americans, their work defines(给…下定义) them: they are what they do. What happens then, when a person can no longer work? Almost all Americans stop working at age sixty-five or seventy and retire. Because work is such an important part of life in this culture, retirement can be very difficult. Retirees often feel that they are useless and unproductive. Of course, some people are happy to retire; but leaving one’s job, whatever it is, is a difficult change, even for those who look forward to retiring. Many retirees do not know how to use their time or they feel lost without their jobs. Retirements can also bring financial problems. Many people rely on Social Security checks every month. During their working years, employees contribute a certain percentage of their salaries to the government. Each employer also gives a certain percentage to the government. When people retire, they receive this money as income. These checks do not provide enough money to live on, however, because prices are increasing very rapidly. Senior citizens, those over sixty-five, have to have savings in the bank or other retirement plans to make ends meet. The rate of inflation(通货膨胀) is forcing prices higher each year; Social Security checks alone cannot cover these growing expenses. The government offers some assistance(补助), Medicare(health care)and welfare(general assistance), but many senior citizens have to change their life styles after retirement. They have to spend carefully to be sure that they can afford to buy food, fuel and other necessities.
Of course, many senior citizens are happy with retirement. They have time to spend with their families or enjoy their hobbies. Some continue to work part time, others do volunteer(志愿) work. Some, like those in the Retired Business Executives Association, even help young, people to get started in new business. Many retired citizens also belong to “Golden Age” groups. These organizations plan trips and social events. There are many chances for retirees.
American society is only beginning to be concerned about the special physical and emotional needs of its senior citizens. The government is taking steps to ease the problem of limited income. They are building new housing, offering discounts(折扣) in stores and museums and on buses, and providing other services such as free courses, food service, and help with housework. Retired citizens are a rapidly growing percentage of the population. This part of the population is very important and we must meet their needs. After all, every citizen will be a senior citizen some day.
小题1:The author believes that work first became important to Americans because of _______.

A．religion

B．economy

C．psychology

D．family

小题2:The passage is mainly about _______.

A．money and check	B．senior and junior
C．work and retirement	D．Protestants and Americans

小题3:When Americans stop work, it’s difficult for them to _______.

A．get Social Security checks	B．feel productive
C．enjoy themselves	D．be religious

小题4:The author mentions _______ examples of the government" steps to ease the problem of limited income.

A．two

B．four

C．five

D．three

答案

小题1:A
小题2:C
小题3:B
小题4:D

解析

本文介绍了美国人退休前对工作的热爱和退休后所碰到的种种困难及政府对此所采取的措施。
小题1:细节题。根据When the early Protestant immigrants came to this country, they brought the idea that work was the way to God and heaven 可知工作与宗教有关，故选A。
小题2:主旨题。阅读全文得知本文讲述了人们对工作的热爱和退休时人们的各种态度，故选 C。
小题3:细节题。根据Retirees often feel that they are useless and unproductive 可知退休者的感受是无用和无法再产出，故选B。
小题4:细节题。根据最后一段 The government is taking steps to ease the problem of limited income. They are building new housing, offering discounts in stores and museums and on buses, and providing other services such as free courses, food service, and help with housework 可知作者列举了 3 个例子，故选 D。

举一反三

Though England was on the whole prosperous and hopeful, though by comparison with her neighbors she enjoyed internal peace, she could not evade the fact that the world of which she formed a part was torn by hatred and strife as fierce as any in human history. Men were still for from recognizing that two religions could exist side by side in the same society; they believed that the toleration of another religion different from their own. And hence necessarily false, must inevitably destroy such a society and bring the souls of all its members into danger of hell. So the struggle went on with increasing fury within each nation to impose a single creed upon every subject, and within the general society of Christendom to impose it upon every nation. In England the Reformers, or Protestants, aided by the power of the Crown, had at this stage triumphed, but over Europe as a whole Rome was beginning to recover some of the ground it had lost after Martin Luther’s revolt in the earlier part of the century. It did this in two ways, by the activities of its missionaries, as in parts of Germany, or by the military might of the Catholic Powers, as in the Low Countries, where the Dutch provinces were sometimes near their last extremity under the pressure of Spanish arms. Against England, the most important of all the Protestant nations to reconquer, military might was not yet possible because the Catholic Powers were too occupied and divided: and so, in the 1570’s Rome bent her efforts, as she had done a thousand years before in the days of Saint Augustine, to win England back by means of her missionaries.
These were young Englishmen who had either never given up the old faith, or having done so, had returned to it and felt called to become priests. There being, of course, no Catholic seminaries left in England, they went abroad, at first quite easily, later with difficulty and danger, to study in the English colleges at Douai or Rome: the former established for the training of ordinary or secular clergy, the other for the member of the Society of Jesus, commonly known as Jesuits, a new Order established by St, Ignatius Loyola same thirty years before. The seculars came first; they achieved a success which even the most eager could hardly have expected. Cool-minded and well-informed men, like Cecil, had long surmised that the conversion of the English people to Protestantism was for from complete; many—Cecil thought even the majority—had conformed out of fear, self-interest or—possibly the commonest reason of all—sheer bewilderment at the rapid changes in doctrine and forms of worship imposed on them in so short a time. Thus it happened that the missionaries found a welcome, not only with the families who had secretly offered them hospitality if they came, but with many others whom their first hosts invited to meet them or passed them on to. They would land at the ports in disguise, as merchants, courtiers or what not, professing some plausible business in the country, and make by devious may for their first house of refuge. There they would administer the Sacraments and preach to the house holds and to such of the neighbors as their hosts trusted and presently go on to some other locality to which they were directed or from which they received a call.
小题1: The main idea of this passage is
[A]. The continuity of the religious struggle in Britain in new ways.
[B]. The conversion of religion in Britain.
[C]. The victory of the New religion in Britain.
[D]. England became prosperous.
小题2: What was Martin Luther’s religions?
[A]. Buddhism. [B]. Protestantism. [C]. Catholicism. [D]. Orthodox.
小题3: Through what way did the Rome recover some of the lost land?
[A]. Civil and military ways. [B]. Propaganda and attack.
[C]. Persuasion and criticism. [D]. Religious and military ways.
小题4:What did the second paragraph mainly describe?
[A]. The activities of missionaries in Britain.
[B]. The conversion of English people to Protestantism was far from complete.
[C]. The young in Britain began to convert to Catholicism
[D]. Most families offered hospitality to missionaries.

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Social circumstances in Early Modern England mostly served to repress women’s voices. Patriarchal culture and institutions constructed them as chaste, silent, obedient, and subordinate. At the beginning of the 17th century, the ideology of patriarchy, political absolutism, and gender hierarchy were reaffirmed powerfully by King James in The Trew Law of Free Monarchie and the Basilikon Doron; by that ideology the absolute power of God the supreme patriarch was seen to be imaged in the absolute monarch of the state and in the husband and father of a family. Accordingly, a woman’s subjection, first to her father and then to her husband, imaged the subjection of English people to their monarch, and of all Christians to God. Also, the period saw an outpouring of repressive or overtly misogynist sermons, tracts, and plays, detailing women’s physical and mental defects, spiritual evils, rebelliousness, shrewish ness, and natural inferiority to men.
Yet some social and cultural conditions served to empower women. During the Elizabethan era (1558—1603) the culture was dominated by a powerful Queen, who provided an impressive female example though she left scant cultural space for other women. Elizabethan women writers began to produce original texts but were occupied chiefly with translation. In the 17th century, however, various circumstances enabled women to write original texts in some numbers. For one thing, some counterweight to patriarchy was provided by female communities—mothers and daughters, extended kinship networks, close female friends, the separate court of Queen Anne (King James’ consort) and her often oppositional masques and political activities. For another, most of these women had a reasonably good education (modern languages, history, literature, religion, music, occasionally Latin) and some apparently found in romances and histories more expansive terms for imagining women’s lives. Also, representation of vigorous and rebellious female characters in literature and especially on the stage no doubt helped to undermine any monolithic social construct of women’s mature and role.
Most important, perhaps, was the radical potential inherent in the Protestant insistence on every Christian’s immediate relationship with God and primary responsibility to follow his or her individual conscience. There is plenty of support in St Paul’s epistles and elsewhere in the Bible for patriarchy and a wife’s subjection to her husband, but some texts (notably Galatians 3:28) inscribe a very different politics, promoting women’s spiritual equality: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Jesus Christ.” Such texts encouraged some women to claim the support of God the supreme patriarch against the various earthly patriarchs who claimed to stand toward them in his stead.
There is also the gap or slippage between ideology and common experience. English women throughout the 17th century exercised a good deal of accrual power: as managers of estates in their husbands’ absences at court or on military and diplomatic missions; as members of guilds; as wives and mothers who apex during the English Civil War and Interregnum (1640-60) as the execution of the King and the attendant disruption of social hierarchies led many women to seize new roles—as preachers, as prophetesses, as deputies for exiled royalist husbands, as writers of religious and political tracts.
小题1:     What is the best title for this passage?
[A]. Women’s Position in the 17th Century.
[B]. Women’s Subjection to Patriarchy.
[C]. Social Circumstances in the 17th Century.
[D]. Women’s objection in the 17th Century.
小题2:     What did the Queen Elizabeth do for the women in culture?
[A]. She set an impressive female example to follow.
[B]. She dominated the culture.
[C]. She did little.
[D]. She allowed women to translate something.
小题3:Which of the following is Not mention as a reason to enable women to original texts?
[A].Female communities provided some counterweight to patriarchy.
[B]. Queen Anne’s political activities.
[C]. Most women had a good education.
[D]. Queen Elizabeth’s political activities.
小题4:     What did the religion so for the women?
[A]. It did nothing.
[B]. It too asked women to be obedient except some texts.
[C]. It supported women.
[D]. It appealed to the God.

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The U.S. Department of Labor statistics(统计) show that there is an oversupply of college trained workers and that this oversupply is increasing. Already there have been more than enough teachers, engineers, physicists, aerospace experts, and other specialists. Yet colleges and graduate schools continue every year to turn out highly trained people to compete for jobs that aren’t there. The result is that graduates cannot enter the professions for which they were trained and must take temporary jobs which do not require a college degree.
On the other hand, there is a great need for skilled workers of all sorts: carpenters, electricians, mechanics, plumbers, TV repairmen. These people have more work than they can deal with, and their annual incomes are often higher than those of college graduates. The old gap that white —collar workers make a better living than blue collar workers no longer holds true. The law of supply and demand now favors the skilled workmen.
The reason for this situation is the traditional myth that college degree is a passport to a prosperous future. A large part of American society matches success in life equally with a college degree. Parents begin indoctrinating(灌输) their children with this myth before they are out of grade school. High school teachers play their part by acting as if high school education were a preparation for college rather than for life. Under this pressure the kids fall in line. Whether they want to go to college or not doesn’t matter. Everybody should go to college, so of course they must go. And every year college enrollments(入学) go up and up, and more and more graduates are overeducated for the kinds of jobs available to them.
One result of this emphasis on a college education is that many people go to college who do not belong there. Of the sixty percent of high school graduates who enter college, half of them do not graduate with their class. Many of them drop out within the first year. Some struggle on for two or three years and then give up.
小题1:It’s implied but not stated in the passage that _______.

A．many other countries are facing the same problem

B．white-collar workers in the US used to make more money than blue-collar workers

C．fewer students will prefer to go to college in the future

D．the law of supply and demand has a strong effect on American higher education

小题2:Which of the following is NOT a reason why college enrollments go up every year？

A．Many people believe that the only way to success is a college education.

B．Many parents want their children to go to college.

C．High school teachers urge their students to go to college.

D．Every young man and woman wants to go to college.

小题3:By saying that “many people go to college who do not belong there”, the author means that _______.

A．many people who are not fit for college education go to college

B．many people who do not have enough money go to college

C．many people who go to college drop out within the first year

D．many people who go to college have their hopes destroyed

小题4:We can infer from the passage that the author believes that _______.

A．every young man and woman should go to college

B．college education is a bad thing

C．people with a college education should receive higher pay

D．fewer people should go to college while more should be trained for skilled jobs

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The striving of countries in Central Europe to enter the European Union may offer an unprecedented chance to the continent’s Gypsies (or Roman) to be recognized as a nation, albeit one without a defined territory. And if they were to achieve that they might even seek some kind of formal place—at least a total population outnumbers that of many of the Union’s present and future countries. Some experts put the figure at 4m-plus; some proponents of Gypsy rights go as high as 15m.
Unlike Jews, Gypsies have had no known ancestral land to hark back to. Though their language is related to Hindi, their territorial origins are misty. Romanian peasants held them to be born on the moon. Other Europeans (wrongly) thought them migrant Egyptians, hence the derivative Gypsy. Most probably they were itinerant metal workers and entertainers who drifted west from India in the 7th century.
However, since communism in Central Europe collapsed a decade ago, the notion of Romanestan as a landless nation founded on Gypsy culture has gained ground. The International Romany Union, which says it stands for 10m Gypsies in more than 30 countries, is fostering the idea of “self-rallying”. It is trying to promote a standard and written form of the language; it waves a Gypsy flag (green with a wheel) when it lobbies in such places as the United Bations; and in July it held a congress in Prague, The Czech capital. Where President Vaclav Havel said that Gypsies in his own country and elsewhere should have a better deal.
At the congress a Slovak-born lawyer, Emil Scuka, was elected president of the International Tomany Union. Later this month a group of elected Gypsy politicians, including members of parliament, mayors and local councilors from all over Europe (OSCE), to discuss how to persuade more Gypsies to get involved in politics.
The International Romany Union is probably the most representative of the outfits that speak for Gypsies, but that is not saying a lot. Of the several hundred delegates who gathered at its congress, few were democratically elected; oddly, none came from Hungary, whose Gypsies are perhaps the world’s best organized, with some 450 Gypsy bodies advising local councils there. The union did, however, announce its ambition to set up a parliament, but how it would actually be elected was left undecided.
So far, the European Commission is wary of encouraging Gypsies to present themselves as a nation. The might, it is feared, open a Pandora’s box already containing Basques, Corsicans and other awkward peoples. Besides, acknowledging Gypsies as a nation might backfire, just when several countries, particularly Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, are beginning to treat them better, in order to qualify for EU membership. “The EU’s whole premise is to overcome differences, not to highlight them,” says a nervous Eurocrat.
But the idea that the Gypsies should win some kind of special recognition as Europe’s largest continent wide minority, and one with a terrible history of persecution, is catching on . Gypsies have suffered many pogroms over the centuries. In Romania, the country that still has the largest number of them (more than 1m), in the 19th century they were actually enslaved. Hitler tried to wipe them out, along with the Jews.
“Gypsies deserve some space within European structures,” says Jan Marinus Wiersma, a Dutchman in the European Parliament who suggests that one of the current commissioners should be responsible for Gypsy affairs. Some prominent Gypsies say they should be more directly represented, perhaps with a quota in the European Parliament. That, they argue, might give them a boost. There are moves afoot to help them to get money for, among other things, a Gypsy university.
One big snag is that Europe’s Gypsies are, in fact, extremely heterogeneous. They belong to many different, and often antagonistic, clans and tribes, with no common language or religion, Their self-proclaimed leaders have often proved quarrelsome and corrupt. Still, says, Dimitrina Petrova, head of the European Roma Rights Center in Budapest, Gypsies’ shared experience of suffering entitles them to talk of one nation; their potential unity, she says, stems from “being regarded as sub-human by most majorities in Europe.”
And they have begun to be a bit more pragmatic. In Slovakia and Bulgaria, for instance, Gypsy political parties are trying to form electoral blocks that could win seats in parliament. In Macedonia, a Gypsy party already has some—and even runs a municipality. Nicholas Gheorge, an expert on Gypsy affairs at the OSCE, reckons that, spread over Central Europe, there are now about 20 Gypsy MPS and mayors, 400-odd local councilors, and a growing number of businessmen and intellectuals.
That is far from saying that they have the people or the cash to forge a nation. But, with the Gypsy question on the EU’s agenda in Central Europe, they are making ground.
1.    The Best Title of this passage is
[A]. Gypsies Want to Form a Nation.         [B]. Are They a Nation.
[C]. EU Is Afraid of Their Growth.           [C]. They Are a Tribe
2.    Where are the most probable Gypsy territory origins?
[A]. Most probably they drifted west from India in the 7th century.
[B]. They are scattered everywhere in the world.
[C]. Probably, they stemmed from Central Europe.
[D]. They probably came from the International Romany Union.
3.    What does the International Romany lobby for?
[A]. It lobbies for a demand to be accepted by such international organizations as EU and UN.
[B]. It lobbies for a post in any international Romany Union.
[C]. It lobbies for the right as a nation.
[D]. It lobbies for a place in such international organizations as the EU or UN.
4.    Why is the Europe Commission wary of encouraging Gypsies to present themselves as a nation?
[A]. It may open a Pandora’s Box.
[B]. Encouragement may lead to some unexpected results.
[C]. It fears that the Basgnes, Corsicans and other nations seeking separation may raise the same demand.
[D]. Gyspsies’ demand may highlight the difference in the EU.
5.    The big problem lies in the fact that
[A]. Gypsies belong to different and antagonistic clans and tribes without a common language or religion.
[B]. Their leaders prove corrupt.
[C]. Their potential unity stems from “being regarded as sub-human”.
[D]. They are a bit more pragmatic.

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On the 36th day after they had voted, Americans finally learned Wednesday who would be their next president: Governor George W. Bush of Texas.
Vice President Al Gore, his last realistic avenue for legal challenge closed by a U. S. Supreme Court decision late Tuesday, planned to end the contest formally in a televised evening speech of perhaps 10 minutes, advisers said.
They said that Senator Joseph Lieberman, his vice presidential running mate, would first make brief comments. The men would speak from a ceremonial chamber of the Old Executive office Building, to the west of the White House.
The dozens of political workers and lawyers who had helped lead Mr. Gore’s unprecedented fight to claw a come-from-behind electoral victory in the pivotal state of Florida were thanked Wednesday and asked to stand down.
“The vice president has directed the recount committee to suspend activities,” William Daley, the Gore campaign chairman, said in a written statement.
Mr. Gore authorized that statement after meeting with his wife, Tipper, and with top advisers including Mr. Daley.
He was expected to telephone Mr. Bush during the day. The Bush campaign kept a low profile and moved gingerly, as if to leave space for Mr. Gore to contemplate his next steps.
Yet, at the end of a trying and tumultuous process that had focused world attention on sleepless vote counters across Florida, and on courtrooms form Miami to Tallahassee to Atlanta to Washington the Texas governor was set to become the 43d U. S. president.
The news of Mr. Gore’s plans followed the longest and most rancorous dispute over a U. S. presidential election in more than a century, one certain to leave scars in a badly divided country.
It was a bitter ending for Mr. Gore, who had outpolled Mr. Bush nationwide by some 300000 votes, but, without Florida, fell short in the Electoral College by 271votes to 267—the narrowest Electoral College victory since the turbulent election of 1876.
Mr. Gore was said to be distressed by what he and many Democratic activists felt was a partisan decision from the nation’s highest court.
The 5-to –4 decision of the Supreme Court held, in essence, that while a vote recount in Florida could be conducted in legal and constitutional fashion, as Mr. Gore had sought, this could not be done by the Dec. 12 deadline for states to select their presidential electors.
James Baker 3rd, the former secretary of state who represented Mr. Bush in the Florida dispute, issued a short statement after the U. S. high court ruling, saying that the governor was “very pleased and gratified.”
Mr. Bush was planning a nationwide speech aimed at trying to begin to heal the country’s deep, aching and varied divisions. He then was expected to meet with congressional leaders, including Democrats. Dick Cheney, Mr. Bush’s ruing mate, was meeting with congressmen Wednesday in Washington.
When Mr. Bush, who is 54, is sworn into office on Jan.20, he will be only the second son of a president to follow his father to the White House, after John Adams and John Quincy Adams in the early 19th century.
Mr. Gore, in his speech, was expected to thank his supporters, defend his hive-week battle as an effort to ensure, as a matter of principle, that every vote be counted, and call for the nation to join behind the new president. He was described by an aide as “resolved and resigned.”
While some constitutional experts had said they believed states could present electors as late as Dec. 18, the U. S. high court made clear that it saw no such leeway.
The U.S. high court sent back “for revision” to the Florida court its order allowing recounts but made clear that for all practical purposes the election was over.
In its unsigned main opinion, the court declared, “The recount process, in its features here described, is inconsistent with the minimum procedures necessary to protect the fundamental right of each voter.”
That decision, by a court fractured along philosophical lines, left one liberal justice charging that the high court’s proceedings bore a political taint.
Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in an angry dissent:” Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year’s presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the law.”
But at the end of five seemingly endless weeks, during which the physical, legal and constitutional machines of the U. S. election were pressed and sorely tested in ways unseen in more than a century, the system finally produced a result, and one most Americans appeared to be willing at lease provisionally to support.
The Bush team welcomed the news with an outward show of restraint and aplomb. The governor’s hopes had risen and fallen so many times since Election night, and the legal warriors of each side suffered through so many dramatic reversals, that there was little energy left for celebration.
小题1:The main idea of this passage is
[A]. Bush’s victory in presidential election bore a political taint.
[B]. The process of the American presidential election.
[C]. The Supreme Court plays a very important part in the presidential election.
[D]. Gore is distressed.
小题2:     What does the sentence “as if to leave space for Mr. Gore to contemplate his next step” mean
[A]. Bush hopes Gore to join his administration.
[B]. Bush hopes Gore to concede defeat and to support him.
[C]. Bush hopes Gore to congraduate him.
[D]. Bush hopes Gore go on fighting with him.
小题3:     Why couldn’t Mr. Gore win the presidential election after he outpolled Mr. Bush in the popular vote? Because
[A]. the American president is decided by the supreme court’s decision.
[B]. people can’t directly elect their president.
[C]. the American president is elected by a slate of presidential electors.
[D]. the people of each state support Mr. Bush.
小题4:     What was the result of the 5—4 decision of the supreme court?
[A]. It was in fact for the vote recount.
[B]. It had nothing to do with the presidential election.
[C]. It decided the fate of the winner.
[D]. It was in essence against the vote recount.
小题5:     What did the “turbulent election of 1876” imply?
[A]. The process of presidential election of 2000 was the same as that.
[B]. There were great similarities between the two presidential elections (2000 and 1876).
[C]. It was compared to presidential election of 2000.
[D]. It was given an example.

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