Which of the following is NOT true

Seeking to build support among black families for its education reform law, the Bush administration paid a prominent black pundit $240,000 to promote the law on his nationally syndicated television show and to urge other black journalists to do the same. The campaign, part of an effort to promote No Child Left Behind (NCLB), required commentator Armstrong Williams "to regularly comment on NCLB during the course of his broadcasts," and to interview Education Secretary Rod Paige for TV and radio spots that were aired during the show in 2004. Williams said Thursday he understands that critics could find the arrangement unethical, but "I wanted to do it because it’’s something I believe in." The top Democrat on the House Education Committee, Rep. George Miller of California, called the contract "a very questionable use of taxpayers’’ money" that is "probably illegal". The contract, detailed in documents obtained by USA TODAY through a Freedom of Information Act request, also shows that the Education Department, through the Ketchum public relations firm, arranged with Williams to use contacts with America’’s Black Forum, a group of black broadcast journalists," to encourage the producers to periodically address" NCLB. He persuaded radio and TV personality Steve Harvey to invite Paige onto his show twice. Harvey’’s manager, Rushion McDonald, confirmed the appearances. We know from this passage that Mr. Armstrong Williams was, at the time when the story went public, all the following EXCEPT________.

A．column writer
B．business owner
C．TV commentator
D．government official

Congress makes the laws in the United States. It has two parts, which are more or less equal in power. They are known as the House of Representatives and the Senate. The House of Representatives is larger than the Senate whose 100 members (two from each state) serve for six years. The 435 members of the House are elected every two years, and the number from each state is determined by the population of the state. For example, California, which has a large population, has 43 representatives, while the State of Nevada has only one. The House and Senate are divided into small groups which take care of special matters such as education or foreign affairs. The most important work of Congress is often done in these groups, which are called subcommittees. According to the Constitution of the United States, a senator must be at least 30 years old and he must have been a citizen of the United States for nine years at the time of his election. To be elected to the House a person must be 25 years old and must have been a United States citizen for seven years. At the present time, members of Congress include businessmen, farmers, teachers, and especially lawyers. In general, senators are better known than representatives because they are fewer in number and serve for a longer time. Many American presidents served in Congress before they became president. In the U.S. Congress, the House of Representatives and the Senate are________.

A．not equal. The House is more powerful
B．almost equal in power
C．not equal. The Senate is far more powerful
D．different. The House is more important

单项选择题

Every group has a culture, however uncivilized it may seem to us. To the professional anthropologist, there is no intrinsic superiority of one culture over another, just as to the professional linguist, there is no intrinsic hierarchy among languages. People once thought of the languages of backward groups as undeveloped. While it is possible that language in general began as a series of grunts and groans, it is a fact established by the study of "backward" languages that no spoken tongue answers that description today. Most languages of uncivilized groups are, by our most severe standards, extremely complex. They differ from Western languages not in their sound patterns or grammatical structures, which usually are fully adequate for all language needs, but only in their vocabularies, which reflect the objects and activities known to their speakers. Even in this aspect, two things are to be noted. First, all languages seem to possess the machinery for vocabulary expansion, either by putting together words already in existence or by borrowing them from other languages and adapting them to their own system. Second, the objects and activities requiring names and distinctions in "backward" languages, while different from the West, are often surprisingly numerous and complicated. A Western language distinguishes merely between two degrees of remoteness ("this" and "that"). But some languages of the American Indians distinguish between what is close to the speaker, or to the person addressed, or removed from both, or out of sight, or in the past, or in the future. Every group of human beings has________.

A．its own set of ideas, beliefs and ways of life
B．an extremely complex and delicate language
C．its own elegant music, literature, and other arts
D．the process of growing crops or raising animals

单项选择题

This is offered as a textbook illustration of the principle that voters are far shrewder than most politicians believe. This case study highlighting Washington’’s inability to fool anyone is based on a recent survey of the attitudes of people on Medicare about their new prescription-drug benefit. Last fall, when Congress added prescription-drug coverage to Medicare, the new law was hailed as a political masterpiece. Congressional Democrats, who overwhelmingly opposed the bill, thundered that they, too, were eager to provide a drug benefit under Medicare, but they championed alternative legislation that offered a larger drug subsidy and smaller incentives to health insurers to participate. Liberals such as Sen. Edward Kennedy were confident that the drug bill, with plenty of holes in its benefit formulas, would inevitably be expanded around the time it took effect. Not many in Congress seemed troubled that the federal budget was deep in deficit, the nation was saddled with future expenditures for the Iraq war and virtually no health care expert believed that the legislation would fit into its projected $400-billion-over-10-years cost framework. The new law was a cynical bargain that had more to do with the 2004 election than a rational approach to the prescription-drug needs of the nation’’s elderly. The prescription-drug legislation seems a compromise between competing ideologies inserted into a fixed congressional budget. Put another way, it was sausage-stuffing in the guise of lawmaking. And, what no one anticipated was the reaction of the elderly, a group that votes in disproportionate numbers. The passage you are reading is the beginning part of a report in the original. Then, what is "This", the first word, most probably referring to

A．An offered illustration.
B．Part of a textbook on politics.
C．What the author is going to write.
D．The principle that voters are shrewder than most politicians believe.

单项选择题

"What does the middleman do but add to the price of goods in the shops" Such remarks are aimed at the intermediate operations between manufacturers and final customers. This practice usually attracts a lot of attention from the public and the press and the operation most talked about is what is often called wholesaling. The wholesaler buys goods in large quantities from the manufacturers and sells them in smaller parcels to retailers, and for this service his selling price to the retailer is raised several percent higher. But his job is made more difficult by retail demand not necessarily running level with manufacturers’’ production. Because he adjusts or regulates the flow of goods by holding stock until required, he frees the manufacturer, to some extent, from the effect on production of changing demand and having to bear the whole risk. The manufacturer can then keep up a steady production flow, and the retailer has no need to hold heavy stocks, who can call on the wholesaler for supplies any time. This wholesale function is like that of a valve in a water pipe. The middleman also bears part of the risk that would otherwise fall on the manufacturer and also the retailer. The wholesaler provides a purely commercial service, for which he is too well rewarded. But the point that is missed by many people is that the wholesaler is not just someone adding to the cost of goods. It is true one could eliminate the wholesaler but one would still be left with his function: that of making sure that goods find their way to the people who want them. Middleman in the passage almost equals to all the following in meaning EXCEPT

A．go-between
B．intermediary
C．manufacturer
D．wholesaler

单项选择题

The Frugal Gourmet Cooks American by Jeff Smith Our real American foods have come from our soil and have been used by many groups — those who already lived here and those who have come here to live. The Native Americans already had developed an interesting cuisine using the abundant foods that were so prevalent. The influence that the English had upon our national eating habits is easy to see. They were a tough lot, those English, and they ate in a tough manner. They wiped their mouths on the tablecloth, if there happened to be one, and they ate until you would expect them to burst. European travelers to this country in those days were most often shocked by American eating habits, which included too much fat and too much salt and too much liquor. Not much has changed! And, the Revolutionists refused to use the fork since it marked them as Europeans. The fork was not absolutely common on the American dinner table until about the time of the Civil War, the 1860s. Those English were a tough lot. Other immigrant groups added their own touches to the preparation of our New World food products. The groups that came still have a special sense of self-identity through their ancestral heritage, but they see themselves as Americans. This special self-identity through your ancestors who came from other lands was supposed to disappear in this country. The term melting pot was first used in reference to America in the late 1700s, so this belief that we would all become the same has been with us for a long time. Thank goodness it has never worked. The various immigrant groups continue to add flavor to the pot, all right, but you can pick out the individual flavors easily. The largest ancestry group in America is the English. There are more people in America who claim to have come from English blood than there are in England. But is their food English Thanks be to God, it is not! It is American. The second largest group is the Germans, then the Irish, the Afro-Americans, the French, the Italians, the Scottish, and the Polish. The Mexican and American Indian groups are all smaller than any of the above, though they were the original cooks in this country. Which of the following statements is nearly identical in meaning with the sentence "they ate until you would expect them to burst" in the second paragraph

A．You bet they would never stop to eat till they are full.
B．What you can expect is that they would not stop eating unless there was no more food.
C．The only thing you would expect is that they wouldn’t stop eating till they had had enough of the food.
D．the only thing is that they wouldn’t stop eating till they felt sick.

单项选择题

Congress makes the laws in the United States. It has two parts, which are more or less equal in power. They are known as the House of Representatives and the Senate. The House of Representatives is larger than the Senate whose 100 members (two from each state) serve for six years. The 435 members of the House are elected every two years, and the number from each state is determined by the population of the state. For example, California, which has a large population, has 43 representatives, while the State of Nevada has only one. The House and Senate are divided into small groups which take care of special matters such as education or foreign affairs. The most important work of Congress is often done in these groups, which are called subcommittees. According to the Constitution of the United States, a senator must be at least 30 years old and he must have been a citizen of the United States for nine years at the time of his election. To be elected to the House a person must be 25 years old and must have been a United States citizen for seven years. At the present time, members of Congress include businessmen, farmers, teachers, and especially lawyers. In general, senators are better known than representatives because they are fewer in number and serve for a longer time. Many American presidents served in Congress before they became president. The members of the Senate are elected for________years.

A．two
B．three
C．four
D．six

单项选择题

Seeking to build support among black families for its education reform law, the Bush administration paid a prominent black pundit $240,000 to promote the law on his nationally syndicated television show and to urge other black journalists to do the same. The campaign, part of an effort to promote No Child Left Behind (NCLB), required commentator Armstrong Williams "to regularly comment on NCLB during the course of his broadcasts," and to interview Education Secretary Rod Paige for TV and radio spots that were aired during the show in 2004. Williams said Thursday he understands that critics could find the arrangement unethical, but "I wanted to do it because it’’s something I believe in." The top Democrat on the House Education Committee, Rep. George Miller of California, called the contract "a very questionable use of taxpayers’’ money" that is "probably illegal". The contract, detailed in documents obtained by USA TODAY through a Freedom of Information Act request, also shows that the Education Department, through the Ketchum public relations firm, arranged with Williams to use contacts with America’’s Black Forum, a group of black broadcast journalists," to encourage the producers to periodically address" NCLB. He persuaded radio and TV personality Steve Harvey to invite Paige onto his show twice. Harvey’’s manager, Rushion McDonald, confirmed the appearances. From the context, the word "pundit" in Paragraph 1 is probably similar to all the following terms EXCEPT________.

A．bandit
B．journalist
C．anchorman
D．commentator

单项选择题

"What does the middleman do but add to the price of goods in the shops" Such remarks are aimed at the intermediate operations between manufacturers and final customers. This practice usually attracts a lot of attention from the public and the press and the operation most talked about is what is often called wholesaling. The wholesaler buys goods in large quantities from the manufacturers and sells them in smaller parcels to retailers, and for this service his selling price to the retailer is raised several percent higher. But his job is made more difficult by retail demand not necessarily running level with manufacturers’’ production. Because he adjusts or regulates the flow of goods by holding stock until required, he frees the manufacturer, to some extent, from the effect on production of changing demand and having to bear the whole risk. The manufacturer can then keep up a steady production flow, and the retailer has no need to hold heavy stocks, who can call on the wholesaler for supplies any time. This wholesale function is like that of a valve in a water pipe. The middleman also bears part of the risk that would otherwise fall on the manufacturer and also the retailer. The wholesaler provides a purely commercial service, for which he is too well rewarded. But the point that is missed by many people is that the wholesaler is not just someone adding to the cost of goods. It is true one could eliminate the wholesaler but one would still be left with his function: that of making sure that goods find their way to the people who want them. This practice in Paragraph 1 most probably refers to the fact that the middleman

A．increases the prices in the shops
B．buys from you and sells to me
C．aims remarks at manufacturers
D．interferes with end user customers

单项选择题

Every group has a culture, however uncivilized it may seem to us. To the professional anthropologist, there is no intrinsic superiority of one culture over another, just as to the professional linguist, there is no intrinsic hierarchy among languages. People once thought of the languages of backward groups as undeveloped. While it is possible that language in general began as a series of grunts and groans, it is a fact established by the study of "backward" languages that no spoken tongue answers that description today. Most languages of uncivilized groups are, by our most severe standards, extremely complex. They differ from Western languages not in their sound patterns or grammatical structures, which usually are fully adequate for all language needs, but only in their vocabularies, which reflect the objects and activities known to their speakers. Even in this aspect, two things are to be noted. First, all languages seem to possess the machinery for vocabulary expansion, either by putting together words already in existence or by borrowing them from other languages and adapting them to their own system. Second, the objects and activities requiring names and distinctions in "backward" languages, while different from the West, are often surprisingly numerous and complicated. A Western language distinguishes merely between two degrees of remoteness ("this" and "that"). But some languages of the American Indians distinguish between what is close to the speaker, or to the person addressed, or removed from both, or out of sight, or in the past, or in the future. To the professional linguists,________.

A．there is no intrinsic superiority of cultures
B．there is no intrinsic hierarchy of languages
C．all languages came from grunts and groans
D．all languages are most severe and standard

单项选择题

The Frugal Gourmet Cooks American by Jeff Smith Our real American foods have come from our soil and have been used by many groups — those who already lived here and those who have come here to live. The Native Americans already had developed an interesting cuisine using the abundant foods that were so prevalent. The influence that the English had upon our national eating habits is easy to see. They were a tough lot, those English, and they ate in a tough manner. They wiped their mouths on the tablecloth, if there happened to be one, and they ate until you would expect them to burst. European travelers to this country in those days were most often shocked by American eating habits, which included too much fat and too much salt and too much liquor. Not much has changed! And, the Revolutionists refused to use the fork since it marked them as Europeans. The fork was not absolutely common on the American dinner table until about the time of the Civil War, the 1860s. Those English were a tough lot. Other immigrant groups added their own touches to the preparation of our New World food products. The groups that came still have a special sense of self-identity through their ancestral heritage, but they see themselves as Americans. This special self-identity through your ancestors who came from other lands was supposed to disappear in this country. The term melting pot was first used in reference to America in the late 1700s, so this belief that we would all become the same has been with us for a long time. Thank goodness it has never worked. The various immigrant groups continue to add flavor to the pot, all right, but you can pick out the individual flavors easily. The largest ancestry group in America is the English. There are more people in America who claim to have come from English blood than there are in England. But is their food English Thanks be to God, it is not! It is American. The second largest group is the Germans, then the Irish, the Afro-Americans, the French, the Italians, the Scottish, and the Polish. The Mexican and American Indian groups are all smaller than any of the above, though they were the original cooks in this country. Which of the following statements is Not true

A．English people had bad table manners.
B．American food was exclusively unique in its flavors and varieties.
C．American diet contained a lot of fat, salt and liquor.
D．Europeans were not at all accustomed to the American way of eating.

单项选择题

Congress makes the laws in the United States. It has two parts, which are more or less equal in power. They are known as the House of Representatives and the Senate. The House of Representatives is larger than the Senate whose 100 members (two from each state) serve for six years. The 435 members of the House are elected every two years, and the number from each state is determined by the population of the state. For example, California, which has a large population, has 43 representatives, while the State of Nevada has only one. The House and Senate are divided into small groups which take care of special matters such as education or foreign affairs. The most important work of Congress is often done in these groups, which are called subcommittees. According to the Constitution of the United States, a senator must be at least 30 years old and he must have been a citizen of the United States for nine years at the time of his election. To be elected to the House a person must be 25 years old and must have been a United States citizen for seven years. At the present time, members of Congress include businessmen, farmers, teachers, and especially lawyers. In general, senators are better known than representatives because they are fewer in number and serve for a longer time. Many American presidents served in Congress before they became president. The number of the members in the House from each state________.

A．is fixed, two from each state
B．depends on how many people the state has
C．depends on the size of the state
D．depends on the location of the state

单项选择题

Seeking to build support among black families for its education reform law, the Bush administration paid a prominent black pundit $240,000 to promote the law on his nationally syndicated television show and to urge other black journalists to do the same. The campaign, part of an effort to promote No Child Left Behind (NCLB), required commentator Armstrong Williams "to regularly comment on NCLB during the course of his broadcasts," and to interview Education Secretary Rod Paige for TV and radio spots that were aired during the show in 2004. Williams said Thursday he understands that critics could find the arrangement unethical, but "I wanted to do it because it’’s something I believe in." The top Democrat on the House Education Committee, Rep. George Miller of California, called the contract "a very questionable use of taxpayers’’ money" that is "probably illegal". The contract, detailed in documents obtained by USA TODAY through a Freedom of Information Act request, also shows that the Education Department, through the Ketchum public relations firm, arranged with Williams to use contacts with America’’s Black Forum, a group of black broadcast journalists," to encourage the producers to periodically address" NCLB. He persuaded radio and TV personality Steve Harvey to invite Paige onto his show twice. Harvey’’s manager, Rushion McDonald, confirmed the appearances. A "nationally syndicated television show" in Paragraph 1 is most possibly a TV show that________.

A．can be organized like a national game
B．can be aired in many towns in the USA
C．might be somehow eradicated someday
D．must be shown everywhere across the country

单项选择题

"What does the middleman do but add to the price of goods in the shops" Such remarks are aimed at the intermediate operations between manufacturers and final customers. This practice usually attracts a lot of attention from the public and the press and the operation most talked about is what is often called wholesaling. The wholesaler buys goods in large quantities from the manufacturers and sells them in smaller parcels to retailers, and for this service his selling price to the retailer is raised several percent higher. But his job is made more difficult by retail demand not necessarily running level with manufacturers’’ production. Because he adjusts or regulates the flow of goods by holding stock until required, he frees the manufacturer, to some extent, from the effect on production of changing demand and having to bear the whole risk. The manufacturer can then keep up a steady production flow, and the retailer has no need to hold heavy stocks, who can call on the wholesaler for supplies any time. This wholesale function is like that of a valve in a water pipe. The middleman also bears part of the risk that would otherwise fall on the manufacturer and also the retailer. The wholesaler provides a purely commercial service, for which he is too well rewarded. But the point that is missed by many people is that the wholesaler is not just someone adding to the cost of goods. It is true one could eliminate the wholesaler but one would still be left with his function: that of making sure that goods find their way to the people who want them. The wholesaler obtains higher selling prices for________.

A．small parcels he sells
B．goods he buys in bulk
C．the service he provides
D．the information he offers

单项选择题

This is offered as a textbook illustration of the principle that voters are far shrewder than most politicians believe. This case study highlighting Washington’’s inability to fool anyone is based on a recent survey of the attitudes of people on Medicare about their new prescription-drug benefit. Last fall, when Congress added prescription-drug coverage to Medicare, the new law was hailed as a political masterpiece. Congressional Democrats, who overwhelmingly opposed the bill, thundered that they, too, were eager to provide a drug benefit under Medicare, but they championed alternative legislation that offered a larger drug subsidy and smaller incentives to health insurers to participate. Liberals such as Sen. Edward Kennedy were confident that the drug bill, with plenty of holes in its benefit formulas, would inevitably be expanded around the time it took effect. Not many in Congress seemed troubled that the federal budget was deep in deficit, the nation was saddled with future expenditures for the Iraq war and virtually no health care expert believed that the legislation would fit into its projected $400-billion-over-10-years cost framework. The new law was a cynical bargain that had more to do with the 2004 election than a rational approach to the prescription-drug needs of the nation’’s elderly. The prescription-drug legislation seems a compromise between competing ideologies inserted into a fixed congressional budget. Put another way, it was sausage-stuffing in the guise of lawmaking. And, what no one anticipated was the reaction of the elderly, a group that votes in disproportionate numbers. Also found in Paragraph 1, what does "this case study" probably refer to

A．A case study the writer is to talk about.
B．Part of a textbook on politics.
C．What the author is going to write.
D．Washington’s inability to fool anyone.

单项选择题

Every group has a culture, however uncivilized it may seem to us. To the professional anthropologist, there is no intrinsic superiority of one culture over another, just as to the professional linguist, there is no intrinsic hierarchy among languages. People once thought of the languages of backward groups as undeveloped. While it is possible that language in general began as a series of grunts and groans, it is a fact established by the study of "backward" languages that no spoken tongue answers that description today. Most languages of uncivilized groups are, by our most severe standards, extremely complex. They differ from Western languages not in their sound patterns or grammatical structures, which usually are fully adequate for all language needs, but only in their vocabularies, which reflect the objects and activities known to their speakers. Even in this aspect, two things are to be noted. First, all languages seem to possess the machinery for vocabulary expansion, either by putting together words already in existence or by borrowing them from other languages and adapting them to their own system. Second, the objects and activities requiring names and distinctions in "backward" languages, while different from the West, are often surprisingly numerous and complicated. A Western language distinguishes merely between two degrees of remoteness ("this" and "that"). But some languages of the American Indians distinguish between what is close to the speaker, or to the person addressed, or removed from both, or out of sight, or in the past, or in the future. Most languages of uncivilized groups are________.

A．adequate
B．numerous
C．ingenious
D．ingenuous

单项选择题

Seeking to build support among black families for its education reform law, the Bush administration paid a prominent black pundit $240,000 to promote the law on his nationally syndicated television show and to urge other black journalists to do the same. The campaign, part of an effort to promote No Child Left Behind (NCLB), required commentator Armstrong Williams "to regularly comment on NCLB during the course of his broadcasts," and to interview Education Secretary Rod Paige for TV and radio spots that were aired during the show in 2004. Williams said Thursday he understands that critics could find the arrangement unethical, but "I wanted to do it because it’’s something I believe in." The top Democrat on the House Education Committee, Rep. George Miller of California, called the contract "a very questionable use of taxpayers’’ money" that is "probably illegal". The contract, detailed in documents obtained by USA TODAY through a Freedom of Information Act request, also shows that the Education Department, through the Ketchum public relations firm, arranged with Williams to use contacts with America’’s Black Forum, a group of black broadcast journalists," to encourage the producers to periodically address" NCLB. He persuaded radio and TV personality Steve Harvey to invite Paige onto his show twice. Harvey’’s manager, Rushion McDonald, confirmed the appearances. As mentioned in the passage, Rod Paige was certainly________.

A．a secretary in charge of education in the NCLB program
B．a secretary in charge of TV Education for American children
C．one of the many men interviewed on radio in 2004
D．the man in charge of the Education Ministry of the United States

单项选择题

Congress makes the laws in the United States. It has two parts, which are more or less equal in power. They are known as the House of Representatives and the Senate. The House of Representatives is larger than the Senate whose 100 members (two from each state) serve for six years. The 435 members of the House are elected every two years, and the number from each state is determined by the population of the state. For example, California, which has a large population, has 43 representatives, while the State of Nevada has only one. The House and Senate are divided into small groups which take care of special matters such as education or foreign affairs. The most important work of Congress is often done in these groups, which are called subcommittees. According to the Constitution of the United States, a senator must be at least 30 years old and he must have been a citizen of the United States for nine years at the time of his election. To be elected to the House a person must be 25 years old and must have been a United States citizen for seven years. At the present time, members of Congress include businessmen, farmers, teachers, and especially lawyers. In general, senators are better known than representatives because they are fewer in number and serve for a longer time. Many American presidents served in Congress before they became president. To be elected to the Senate a person must________.

A．be at least 25 years old
B．be at least 30 years old
C．have been a citizen for seven years
D．be a lawyer

单项选择题

The Frugal Gourmet Cooks American by Jeff Smith Our real American foods have come from our soil and have been used by many groups — those who already lived here and those who have come here to live. The Native Americans already had developed an interesting cuisine using the abundant foods that were so prevalent. The influence that the English had upon our national eating habits is easy to see. They were a tough lot, those English, and they ate in a tough manner. They wiped their mouths on the tablecloth, if there happened to be one, and they ate until you would expect them to burst. European travelers to this country in those days were most often shocked by American eating habits, which included too much fat and too much salt and too much liquor. Not much has changed! And, the Revolutionists refused to use the fork since it marked them as Europeans. The fork was not absolutely common on the American dinner table until about the time of the Civil War, the 1860s. Those English were a tough lot. Other immigrant groups added their own touches to the preparation of our New World food products. The groups that came still have a special sense of self-identity through their ancestral heritage, but they see themselves as Americans. This special self-identity through your ancestors who came from other lands was supposed to disappear in this country. The term melting pot was first used in reference to America in the late 1700s, so this belief that we would all become the same has been with us for a long time. Thank goodness it has never worked. The various immigrant groups continue to add flavor to the pot, all right, but you can pick out the individual flavors easily. The largest ancestry group in America is the English. There are more people in America who claim to have come from English blood than there are in England. But is their food English Thanks be to God, it is not! It is American. The second largest group is the Germans, then the Irish, the Afro-Americans, the French, the Italians, the Scottish, and the Polish. The Mexican and American Indian groups are all smaller than any of the above, though they were the original cooks in this country. The author’s attitude towards American food is that

A．American food is better than foods from other countries.
B．American food is superior to European food.
C．European food had helped enrich the flavors and varieties of American food.
D．people from other countries could still identify from the American foods the foods that were unique to their countries.

单项选择题

The fact that most Americans live in urban areas does not mean that they reside in the center of large cities. In fact, more Americans live in the suburbs of large metropolitan areas than in the cities themselves. The Bureau of the Census regards any area with more than 2,500 people as an urban area, and does not consider boundaries of cities and suburbs. According to the Bureau, the political boundaries are less significant than the social and economic relationships and the transportation and communication systems mat integrate a locale. The term used by the Bureau for an integrated metropolis is an MSA, which stands for Metropolitan Statistical Area. In general, an MSA is any area that contains a city and its surrounding suburbs and has a total population of 50,000 or more. At the present time, the Bureau reports more than 280 MSAs, which together account for 75 percent of the US population. In addition, the Bureau recognizes 18 megapolises, that is, continuous adjacent metropolitan areas. One of the most obvious megapolises includes a chain of hundreds of cities and suburbs across 10 states on the East Coast from Massachusetts to Virginia, including Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C. In the Eastern Corridor, as it is called, a population of 45 million inhabitants is concentrated. Another megapolis that is growing rapidly is the California coast from San Francisco through Los Angeles to San Diego. Which of the following is the best title for the passage

A．Metropolitan Statistical Areas
B．Types of Population Centers
C．The Bureau of the Census
D．Megapolises

单项选择题

This is offered as a textbook illustration of the principle that voters are far shrewder than most politicians believe. This case study highlighting Washington’’s inability to fool anyone is based on a recent survey of the attitudes of people on Medicare about their new prescription-drug benefit. Last fall, when Congress added prescription-drug coverage to Medicare, the new law was hailed as a political masterpiece. Congressional Democrats, who overwhelmingly opposed the bill, thundered that they, too, were eager to provide a drug benefit under Medicare, but they championed alternative legislation that offered a larger drug subsidy and smaller incentives to health insurers to participate. Liberals such as Sen. Edward Kennedy were confident that the drug bill, with plenty of holes in its benefit formulas, would inevitably be expanded around the time it took effect. Not many in Congress seemed troubled that the federal budget was deep in deficit, the nation was saddled with future expenditures for the Iraq war and virtually no health care expert believed that the legislation would fit into its projected $400-billion-over-10-years cost framework. The new law was a cynical bargain that had more to do with the 2004 election than a rational approach to the prescription-drug needs of the nation’’s elderly. The prescription-drug legislation seems a compromise between competing ideologies inserted into a fixed congressional budget. Put another way, it was sausage-stuffing in the guise of lawmaking. And, what no one anticipated was the reaction of the elderly, a group that votes in disproportionate numbers. Based on a recent survey of the attitudes of people on Medicare is________.

A．the capital city of the United States of America
B．a textbook on American politics
C．what the author is going to write
D．a statement that the American government cannot fool its people

单项选择题

Seeking to build support among black families for its education reform law, the Bush administration paid a prominent black pundit $240,000 to promote the law on his nationally syndicated television show and to urge other black journalists to do the same. The campaign, part of an effort to promote No Child Left Behind (NCLB), required commentator Armstrong Williams "to regularly comment on NCLB during the course of his broadcasts," and to interview Education Secretary Rod Paige for TV and radio spots that were aired during the show in 2004. Williams said Thursday he understands that critics could find the arrangement unethical, but "I wanted to do it because it’’s something I believe in." The top Democrat on the House Education Committee, Rep. George Miller of California, called the contract "a very questionable use of taxpayers’’ money" that is "probably illegal". The contract, detailed in documents obtained by USA TODAY through a Freedom of Information Act request, also shows that the Education Department, through the Ketchum public relations firm, arranged with Williams to use contacts with America’’s Black Forum, a group of black broadcast journalists," to encourage the producers to periodically address" NCLB. He persuaded radio and TV personality Steve Harvey to invite Paige onto his show twice. Harvey’’s manager, Rushion McDonald, confirmed the appearances. Obviously, the word "arrangement" in the third paragraph refers to the fact that

A．he was arranged to speak about his involvement
B．a campaign was under way to promote the administration
C．he was paid for speaking on NCLB developments
D．some critics made an arrangement to criticize him

单项选择题

Every group has a culture, however uncivilized it may seem to us. To the professional anthropologist, there is no intrinsic superiority of one culture over another, just as to the professional linguist, there is no intrinsic hierarchy among languages. People once thought of the languages of backward groups as undeveloped. While it is possible that language in general began as a series of grunts and groans, it is a fact established by the study of "backward" languages that no spoken tongue answers that description today. Most languages of uncivilized groups are, by our most severe standards, extremely complex. They differ from Western languages not in their sound patterns or grammatical structures, which usually are fully adequate for all language needs, but only in their vocabularies, which reflect the objects and activities known to their speakers. Even in this aspect, two things are to be noted. First, all languages seem to possess the machinery for vocabulary expansion, either by putting together words already in existence or by borrowing them from other languages and adapting them to their own system. Second, the objects and activities requiring names and distinctions in "backward" languages, while different from the West, are often surprisingly numerous and complicated. A Western language distinguishes merely between two degrees of remoteness ("this" and "that"). But some languages of the American Indians distinguish between what is close to the speaker, or to the person addressed, or removed from both, or out of sight, or in the past, or in the future. Backward languages fall behind Western languages in________.

A．structures
B．vocabularies
C．written forms
D．sound patterns

单项选择题

Congress makes the laws in the United States. It has two parts, which are more or less equal in power. They are known as the House of Representatives and the Senate. The House of Representatives is larger than the Senate whose 100 members (two from each state) serve for six years. The 435 members of the House are elected every two years, and the number from each state is determined by the population of the state. For example, California, which has a large population, has 43 representatives, while the State of Nevada has only one. The House and Senate are divided into small groups which take care of special matters such as education or foreign affairs. The most important work of Congress is often done in these groups, which are called subcommittees. According to the Constitution of the United States, a senator must be at least 30 years old and he must have been a citizen of the United States for nine years at the time of his election. To be elected to the House a person must be 25 years old and must have been a United States citizen for seven years. At the present time, members of Congress include businessmen, farmers, teachers, and especially lawyers. In general, senators are better known than representatives because they are fewer in number and serve for a longer time. Many American presidents served in Congress before they became president. Which of the following is true

A．A representative serves for two years.
B．To become a senator is easier than to become a representative.
C．A senator performs his duties for a shorter time than a representative.
D．All presidents were representatives and then senators before becoming president of the United States.

单项选择题

"What does the middleman do but add to the price of goods in the shops" Such remarks are aimed at the intermediate operations between manufacturers and final customers. This practice usually attracts a lot of attention from the public and the press and the operation most talked about is what is often called wholesaling. The wholesaler buys goods in large quantities from the manufacturers and sells them in smaller parcels to retailers, and for this service his selling price to the retailer is raised several percent higher. But his job is made more difficult by retail demand not necessarily running level with manufacturers’’ production. Because he adjusts or regulates the flow of goods by holding stock until required, he frees the manufacturer, to some extent, from the effect on production of changing demand and having to bear the whole risk. The manufacturer can then keep up a steady production flow, and the retailer has no need to hold heavy stocks, who can call on the wholesaler for supplies any time. This wholesale function is like that of a valve in a water pipe. The middleman also bears part of the risk that would otherwise fall on the manufacturer and also the retailer. The wholesaler provides a purely commercial service, for which he is too well rewarded. But the point that is missed by many people is that the wholesaler is not just someone adding to the cost of goods. It is true one could eliminate the wholesaler but one would still be left with his function: that of making sure that goods find their way to the people who want them. A middleman’s work may become difficult because________.

A．manufacturers run their production on a much higher level
B．market demand may not be the same as industrial production
C．retailers are not necessary in running their retailing business
D．retailers demand lower levels than those demanded by manufacturers

单项选择题

This is offered as a textbook illustration of the principle that voters are far shrewder than most politicians believe. This case study highlighting Washington’’s inability to fool anyone is based on a recent survey of the attitudes of people on Medicare about their new prescription-drug benefit. Last fall, when Congress added prescription-drug coverage to Medicare, the new law was hailed as a political masterpiece. Congressional Democrats, who overwhelmingly opposed the bill, thundered that they, too, were eager to provide a drug benefit under Medicare, but they championed alternative legislation that offered a larger drug subsidy and smaller incentives to health insurers to participate. Liberals such as Sen. Edward Kennedy were confident that the drug bill, with plenty of holes in its benefit formulas, would inevitably be expanded around the time it took effect. Not many in Congress seemed troubled that the federal budget was deep in deficit, the nation was saddled with future expenditures for the Iraq war and virtually no health care expert believed that the legislation would fit into its projected $400-billion-over-10-years cost framework. The new law was a cynical bargain that had more to do with the 2004 election than a rational approach to the prescription-drug needs of the nation’’s elderly. The prescription-drug legislation seems a compromise between competing ideologies inserted into a fixed congressional budget. Put another way, it was sausage-stuffing in the guise of lawmaking. And, what no one anticipated was the reaction of the elderly, a group that votes in disproportionate numbers. Congress added prescription-drug coverage to Medicare most probably means that the Congress of the USA decided to ________.

A．add prescription-drugs to the Medicare program
B．allow the Medicare program to provide refunding subsidies to selected medicines to be purchased by Medicare members
C．increase payment to Medicare for refunding Americans buying prescription medicines
D．provide insurance to prescription drugs purchased by Medicare participants

单项选择题

The Frugal Gourmet Cooks American by Jeff Smith Our real American foods have come from our soil and have been used by many groups — those who already lived here and those who have come here to live. The Native Americans already had developed an interesting cuisine using the abundant foods that were so prevalent. The influence that the English had upon our national eating habits is easy to see. They were a tough lot, those English, and they ate in a tough manner. They wiped their mouths on the tablecloth, if there happened to be one, and they ate until you would expect them to burst. European travelers to this country in those days were most often shocked by American eating habits, which included too much fat and too much salt and too much liquor. Not much has changed! And, the Revolutionists refused to use the fork since it marked them as Europeans. The fork was not absolutely common on the American dinner table until about the time of the Civil War, the 1860s. Those English were a tough lot. Other immigrant groups added their own touches to the preparation of our New World food products. The groups that came still have a special sense of self-identity through their ancestral heritage, but they see themselves as Americans. This special self-identity through your ancestors who came from other lands was supposed to disappear in this country. The term melting pot was first used in reference to America in the late 1700s, so this belief that we would all become the same has been with us for a long time. Thank goodness it has never worked. The various immigrant groups continue to add flavor to the pot, all right, but you can pick out the individual flavors easily. The largest ancestry group in America is the English. There are more people in America who claim to have come from English blood than there are in England. But is their food English Thanks be to God, it is not! It is American. The second largest group is the Germans, then the Irish, the Afro-Americans, the French, the Italians, the Scottish, and the Polish. The Mexican and American Indian groups are all smaller than any of the above, though they were the original cooks in this country. Immigrant groups, when they got. settled down in the United States, still have had their own sense of self-identity because

A．their foods are easily identified among all the foods Americans eat.
B．their foods stand out in sharp contrast to foods of other countries.
C．they know pretty well what elements of American food are of their own countries’ origin.
D．they know pretty well how their foods contribute to American cuisine.

单项选择题

Seeking to build support among black families for its education reform law, the Bush administration paid a prominent black pundit $240,000 to promote the law on his nationally syndicated television show and to urge other black journalists to do the same. The campaign, part of an effort to promote No Child Left Behind (NCLB), required commentator Armstrong Williams "to regularly comment on NCLB during the course of his broadcasts," and to interview Education Secretary Rod Paige for TV and radio spots that were aired during the show in 2004. Williams said Thursday he understands that critics could find the arrangement unethical, but "I wanted to do it because it’’s something I believe in." The top Democrat on the House Education Committee, Rep. George Miller of California, called the contract "a very questionable use of taxpayers’’ money" that is "probably illegal". The contract, detailed in documents obtained by USA TODAY through a Freedom of Information Act request, also shows that the Education Department, through the Ketchum public relations firm, arranged with Williams to use contacts with America’’s Black Forum, a group of black broadcast journalists," to encourage the producers to periodically address" NCLB. He persuaded radio and TV personality Steve Harvey to invite Paige onto his show twice. Harvey’’s manager, Rushion McDonald, confirmed the appearances. The top Democrat on the House Education Committee, Rep. George Miller of California means that Mr. George Miller is________.

单项选择题

Every group has a culture, however uncivilized it may seem to us. To the professional anthropologist, there is no intrinsic superiority of one culture over another, just as to the professional linguist, there is no intrinsic hierarchy among languages. People once thought of the languages of backward groups as undeveloped. While it is possible that language in general began as a series of grunts and groans, it is a fact established by the study of "backward" languages that no spoken tongue answers that description today. Most languages of uncivilized groups are, by our most severe standards, extremely complex. They differ from Western languages not in their sound patterns or grammatical structures, which usually are fully adequate for all language needs, but only in their vocabularies, which reflect the objects and activities known to their speakers. Even in this aspect, two things are to be noted. First, all languages seem to possess the machinery for vocabulary expansion, either by putting together words already in existence or by borrowing them from other languages and adapting them to their own system. Second, the objects and activities requiring names and distinctions in "backward" languages, while different from the West, are often surprisingly numerous and complicated. A Western language distinguishes merely between two degrees of remoteness ("this" and "that"). But some languages of the American Indians distinguish between what is close to the speaker, or to the person addressed, or removed from both, or out of sight, or in the past, or in the future. All languages, whether civilized or not, have their own________.

A．ways to transfer ideas
B．forms to satisfy needs
C．abilities to answer description
D．systems to expand vocabulary

单项选择题

The fact that most Americans live in urban areas does not mean that they reside in the center of large cities. In fact, more Americans live in the suburbs of large metropolitan areas than in the cities themselves. The Bureau of the Census regards any area with more than 2,500 people as an urban area, and does not consider boundaries of cities and suburbs. According to the Bureau, the political boundaries are less significant than the social and economic relationships and the transportation and communication systems mat integrate a locale. The term used by the Bureau for an integrated metropolis is an MSA, which stands for Metropolitan Statistical Area. In general, an MSA is any area that contains a city and its surrounding suburbs and has a total population of 50,000 or more. At the present time, the Bureau reports more than 280 MSAs, which together account for 75 percent of the US population. In addition, the Bureau recognizes 18 megapolises, that is, continuous adjacent metropolitan areas. One of the most obvious megapolises includes a chain of hundreds of cities and suburbs across 10 states on the East Coast from Massachusetts to Virginia, including Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C. In the Eastern Corridor, as it is called, a population of 45 million inhabitants is concentrated. Another megapolis that is growing rapidly is the California coast from San Francisco through Los Angeles to San Diego. According to the passage, where do most Americans live

A．In the center of cities.
B．In the suburbs surrounding large cities.
C．In rural areas.
D．In small towns.

单项选择题

"What does the middleman do but add to the price of goods in the shops" Such remarks are aimed at the intermediate operations between manufacturers and final customers. This practice usually attracts a lot of attention from the public and the press and the operation most talked about is what is often called wholesaling. The wholesaler buys goods in large quantities from the manufacturers and sells them in smaller parcels to retailers, and for this service his selling price to the retailer is raised several percent higher. But his job is made more difficult by retail demand not necessarily running level with manufacturers’’ production. Because he adjusts or regulates the flow of goods by holding stock until required, he frees the manufacturer, to some extent, from the effect on production of changing demand and having to bear the whole risk. The manufacturer can then keep up a steady production flow, and the retailer has no need to hold heavy stocks, who can call on the wholesaler for supplies any time. This wholesale function is like that of a valve in a water pipe. The middleman also bears part of the risk that would otherwise fall on the manufacturer and also the retailer. The wholesaler provides a purely commercial service, for which he is too well rewarded. But the point that is missed by many people is that the wholesaler is not just someone adding to the cost of goods. It is true one could eliminate the wholesaler but one would still be left with his function: that of making sure that goods find their way to the people who want them. The wholesaler regulates the flow of goods by________.

A．running level with manufacturers’ production
B．holding down stock of commodities
C．keeping stock for stronger demand
D．adjusting the prices of goods in time

单项选择题

Every group has a culture, however uncivilized it may seem to us. To the professional anthropologist, there is no intrinsic superiority of one culture over another, just as to the professional linguist, there is no intrinsic hierarchy among languages. People once thought of the languages of backward groups as undeveloped. While it is possible that language in general began as a series of grunts and groans, it is a fact established by the study of "backward" languages that no spoken tongue answers that description today. Most languages of uncivilized groups are, by our most severe standards, extremely complex. They differ from Western languages not in their sound patterns or grammatical structures, which usually are fully adequate for all language needs, but only in their vocabularies, which reflect the objects and activities known to their speakers. Even in this aspect, two things are to be noted. First, all languages seem to possess the machinery for vocabulary expansion, either by putting together words already in existence or by borrowing them from other languages and adapting them to their own system. Second, the objects and activities requiring names and distinctions in "backward" languages, while different from the West, are often surprisingly numerous and complicated. A Western language distinguishes merely between two degrees of remoteness ("this" and "that"). But some languages of the American Indians distinguish between what is close to the speaker, or to the person addressed, or removed from both, or out of sight, or in the past, or in the future. Which of the following statements is implied in the passage

A．Anthropologists have nothing to do with linguists.
B．Linguists have nothing to do with anthropologists.
C．The study of languages casts light upon the study of cultures.
D．The study of cultures casts no light upon the study of languages.

单项选择题

This is offered as a textbook illustration of the principle that voters are far shrewder than most politicians believe. This case study highlighting Washington’’s inability to fool anyone is based on a recent survey of the attitudes of people on Medicare about their new prescription-drug benefit. Last fall, when Congress added prescription-drug coverage to Medicare, the new law was hailed as a political masterpiece. Congressional Democrats, who overwhelmingly opposed the bill, thundered that they, too, were eager to provide a drug benefit under Medicare, but they championed alternative legislation that offered a larger drug subsidy and smaller incentives to health insurers to participate. Liberals such as Sen. Edward Kennedy were confident that the drug bill, with plenty of holes in its benefit formulas, would inevitably be expanded around the time it took effect. Not many in Congress seemed troubled that the federal budget was deep in deficit, the nation was saddled with future expenditures for the Iraq war and virtually no health care expert believed that the legislation would fit into its projected $400-billion-over-10-years cost framework. The new law was a cynical bargain that had more to do with the 2004 election than a rational approach to the prescription-drug needs of the nation’’s elderly. The prescription-drug legislation seems a compromise between competing ideologies inserted into a fixed congressional budget. Put another way, it was sausage-stuffing in the guise of lawmaking. And, what no one anticipated was the reaction of the elderly, a group that votes in disproportionate numbers. Below are four groups of terms that are found in the passage. Which group contains at least one term that does not refer to the same thing as the other terms within the group

A．the new law, the bill, the drug bill, the prescription-drug legislation, the legislation
B．prescription-drug coverage, the new law, the drug bill, the prescription- drug legislation, the legislation
C．the drug bill, the bill, Medicare with prescription-drug coverage added, the prescription-drug legislation, the legislation
D．the new law, the bill, the drug bill, Medicare with additions including prescription-drug coverage, the prescription-drug legislation

单项选择题

The Frugal Gourmet Cooks American by Jeff Smith Our real American foods have come from our soil and have been used by many groups — those who already lived here and those who have come here to live. The Native Americans already had developed an interesting cuisine using the abundant foods that were so prevalent. The influence that the English had upon our national eating habits is easy to see. They were a tough lot, those English, and they ate in a tough manner. They wiped their mouths on the tablecloth, if there happened to be one, and they ate until you would expect them to burst. European travelers to this country in those days were most often shocked by American eating habits, which included too much fat and too much salt and too much liquor. Not much has changed! And, the Revolutionists refused to use the fork since it marked them as Europeans. The fork was not absolutely common on the American dinner table until about the time of the Civil War, the 1860s. Those English were a tough lot. Other immigrant groups added their own touches to the preparation of our New World food products. The groups that came still have a special sense of self-identity through their ancestral heritage, but they see themselves as Americans. This special self-identity through your ancestors who came from other lands was supposed to disappear in this country. The term melting pot was first used in reference to America in the late 1700s, so this belief that we would all become the same has been with us for a long time. Thank goodness it has never worked. The various immigrant groups continue to add flavor to the pot, all right, but you can pick out the individual flavors easily. The largest ancestry group in America is the English. There are more people in America who claim to have come from English blood than there are in England. But is their food English Thanks be to God, it is not! It is American. The second largest group is the Germans, then the Irish, the Afro-Americans, the French, the Italians, the Scottish, and the Polish. The Mexican and American Indian groups are all smaller than any of the above, though they were the original cooks in this country. Which of the following statements is true

A．People from other cultures or nations start to lose their self-identity once they get settled down in America.
B．The "melting pot" is supposed to melt all the foods but in reality it doesn’t.
C．The special sense of self-identity of people from other countries can’t be maintained once they become Americans.
D．The "melting pot" finds it capable of melting all the food traditions into the American tradition.

单项选择题

"What does the middleman do but add to the price of goods in the shops" Such remarks are aimed at the intermediate operations between manufacturers and final customers. This practice usually attracts a lot of attention from the public and the press and the operation most talked about is what is often called wholesaling. The wholesaler buys goods in large quantities from the manufacturers and sells them in smaller parcels to retailers, and for this service his selling price to the retailer is raised several percent higher. But his job is made more difficult by retail demand not necessarily running level with manufacturers’’ production. Because he adjusts or regulates the flow of goods by holding stock until required, he frees the manufacturer, to some extent, from the effect on production of changing demand and having to bear the whole risk. The manufacturer can then keep up a steady production flow, and the retailer has no need to hold heavy stocks, who can call on the wholesaler for supplies any time. This wholesale function is like that of a valve in a water pipe. The middleman also bears part of the risk that would otherwise fall on the manufacturer and also the retailer. The wholesaler provides a purely commercial service, for which he is too well rewarded. But the point that is missed by many people is that the wholesaler is not just someone adding to the cost of goods. It is true one could eliminate the wholesaler but one would still be left with his function: that of making sure that goods find their way to the people who want them. The middleman relieves the producer of________.

A．fluctuating market demand and staying at risk
B．the production of commodities for the retail market
C．some extent of production of changing demand
D．storing goods in a warehouse until they are needed

单项选择题

The fact that most Americans live in urban areas does not mean that they reside in the center of large cities. In fact, more Americans live in the suburbs of large metropolitan areas than in the cities themselves. The Bureau of the Census regards any area with more than 2,500 people as an urban area, and does not consider boundaries of cities and suburbs. According to the Bureau, the political boundaries are less significant than the social and economic relationships and the transportation and communication systems mat integrate a locale. The term used by the Bureau for an integrated metropolis is an MSA, which stands for Metropolitan Statistical Area. In general, an MSA is any area that contains a city and its surrounding suburbs and has a total population of 50,000 or more. At the present time, the Bureau reports more than 280 MSAs, which together account for 75 percent of the US population. In addition, the Bureau recognizes 18 megapolises, that is, continuous adjacent metropolitan areas. One of the most obvious megapolises includes a chain of hundreds of cities and suburbs across 10 states on the East Coast from Massachusetts to Virginia, including Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C. In the Eastern Corridor, as it is called, a population of 45 million inhabitants is concentrated. Another megapolis that is growing rapidly is the California coast from San Francisco through Los Angeles to San Diego. The word "reside" in Paragraph 1 is closest in meaning to________.

A．fill
B．decide
C．occupy
D．live

单项选择题

Seeking to build support among black families for its education reform law, the Bush administration paid a prominent black pundit $240,000 to promote the law on his nationally syndicated television show and to urge other black journalists to do the same. The campaign, part of an effort to promote No Child Left Behind (NCLB), required commentator Armstrong Williams "to regularly comment on NCLB during the course of his broadcasts," and to interview Education Secretary Rod Paige for TV and radio spots that were aired during the show in 2004. Williams said Thursday he understands that critics could find the arrangement unethical, but "I wanted to do it because it’’s something I believe in." The top Democrat on the House Education Committee, Rep. George Miller of California, called the contract "a very questionable use of taxpayers’’ money" that is "probably illegal". The contract, detailed in documents obtained by USA TODAY through a Freedom of Information Act request, also shows that the Education Department, through the Ketchum public relations firm, arranged with Williams to use contacts with America’’s Black Forum, a group of black broadcast journalists," to encourage the producers to periodically address" NCLB. He persuaded radio and TV personality Steve Harvey to invite Paige onto his show twice. Harvey’’s manager, Rushion McDonald, confirmed the appearances. According to the passage, "No Child Left Behind (NCLB)" was most possibly a new________.

A．law recently passed
B．campaign at large
C．Bush government plan
D．broadcast program

单项选择题

Every group has a culture, however uncivilized it may seem to us. To the professional anthropologist, there is no intrinsic superiority of one culture over another, just as to the professional linguist, there is no intrinsic hierarchy among languages. People once thought of the languages of backward groups as undeveloped. While it is possible that language in general began as a series of grunts and groans, it is a fact established by the study of "backward" languages that no spoken tongue answers that description today. Most languages of uncivilized groups are, by our most severe standards, extremely complex. They differ from Western languages not in their sound patterns or grammatical structures, which usually are fully adequate for all language needs, but only in their vocabularies, which reflect the objects and activities known to their speakers. Even in this aspect, two things are to be noted. First, all languages seem to possess the machinery for vocabulary expansion, either by putting together words already in existence or by borrowing them from other languages and adapting them to their own system. Second, the objects and activities requiring names and distinctions in "backward" languages, while different from the West, are often surprisingly numerous and complicated. A Western language distinguishes merely between two degrees of remoteness ("this" and "that"). But some languages of the American Indians distinguish between what is close to the speaker, or to the person addressed, or removed from both, or out of sight, or in the past, or in the future. It is implied that all cultures have to be viewed________.

A．profoundly
B．intrinsically
C．independently
D．professionally

单项选择题

This is offered as a textbook illustration of the principle that voters are far shrewder than most politicians believe. This case study highlighting Washington’’s inability to fool anyone is based on a recent survey of the attitudes of people on Medicare about their new prescription-drug benefit. Last fall, when Congress added prescription-drug coverage to Medicare, the new law was hailed as a political masterpiece. Congressional Democrats, who overwhelmingly opposed the bill, thundered that they, too, were eager to provide a drug benefit under Medicare, but they championed alternative legislation that offered a larger drug subsidy and smaller incentives to health insurers to participate. Liberals such as Sen. Edward Kennedy were confident that the drug bill, with plenty of holes in its benefit formulas, would inevitably be expanded around the time it took effect. Not many in Congress seemed troubled that the federal budget was deep in deficit, the nation was saddled with future expenditures for the Iraq war and virtually no health care expert believed that the legislation would fit into its projected $400-billion-over-10-years cost framework. The new law was a cynical bargain that had more to do with the 2004 election than a rational approach to the prescription-drug needs of the nation’’s elderly. The prescription-drug legislation seems a compromise between competing ideologies inserted into a fixed congressional budget. Put another way, it was sausage-stuffing in the guise of lawmaking. And, what no one anticipated was the reaction of the elderly, a group that votes in disproportionate numbers. Democratic Congressmen suggested that the government should________.

A．be enthusiastic in providing a drug benefit to the people
B．oppose the new legislation with thundering protests
C．give more money, so to speak, to medicine makers and retailers
D．provide financial assistance to people wanting to buy life insurance

单项选择题

Seeking to build support among black families for its education reform law, the Bush administration paid a prominent black pundit $240,000 to promote the law on his nationally syndicated television show and to urge other black journalists to do the same. The campaign, part of an effort to promote No Child Left Behind (NCLB), required commentator Armstrong Williams "to regularly comment on NCLB during the course of his broadcasts," and to interview Education Secretary Rod Paige for TV and radio spots that were aired during the show in 2004. Williams said Thursday he understands that critics could find the arrangement unethical, but "I wanted to do it because it’’s something I believe in." The top Democrat on the House Education Committee, Rep. George Miller of California, called the contract "a very questionable use of taxpayers’’ money" that is "probably illegal". The contract, detailed in documents obtained by USA TODAY through a Freedom of Information Act request, also shows that the Education Department, through the Ketchum public relations firm, arranged with Williams to use contacts with America’’s Black Forum, a group of black broadcast journalists," to encourage the producers to periodically address" NCLB. He persuaded radio and TV personality Steve Harvey to invite Paige onto his show twice. Harvey’’s manager, Rushion McDonald, confirmed the appearances. The "contract" appearing in Paragraph 4 is quite likely referring to________.

A．an arrangement between USA TODAY and the "Freedom of Information Act"
B．a commercial agreement between the Bush administration and Mr. Armstrong Williams
C．an arrangement between the Education Department and the Ketchum public relations company
D．a volunteer agreement between Mr. Armstrong Williams and the No Child Left Behind effort

单项选择题

Every group has a culture, however uncivilized it may seem to us. To the professional anthropologist, there is no intrinsic superiority of one culture over another, just as to the professional linguist, there is no intrinsic hierarchy among languages. People once thought of the languages of backward groups as undeveloped. While it is possible that language in general began as a series of grunts and groans, it is a fact established by the study of "backward" languages that no spoken tongue answers that description today. Most languages of uncivilized groups are, by our most severe standards, extremely complex. They differ from Western languages not in their sound patterns or grammatical structures, which usually are fully adequate for all language needs, but only in their vocabularies, which reflect the objects and activities known to their speakers. Even in this aspect, two things are to be noted. First, all languages seem to possess the machinery for vocabulary expansion, either by putting together words already in existence or by borrowing them from other languages and adapting them to their own system. Second, the objects and activities requiring names and distinctions in "backward" languages, while different from the West, are often surprisingly numerous and complicated. A Western language distinguishes merely between two degrees of remoteness ("this" and "that"). But some languages of the American Indians distinguish between what is close to the speaker, or to the person addressed, or removed from both, or out of sight, or in the past, or in the future. According to this passage, to learn a foreign language would require one to________.

A．do more activities
B．learn about a new culture
C．meet more people
D．need more names

单项选择题

This is offered as a textbook illustration of the principle that voters are far shrewder than most politicians believe. This case study highlighting Washington’’s inability to fool anyone is based on a recent survey of the attitudes of people on Medicare about their new prescription-drug benefit. Last fall, when Congress added prescription-drug coverage to Medicare, the new law was hailed as a political masterpiece. Congressional Democrats, who overwhelmingly opposed the bill, thundered that they, too, were eager to provide a drug benefit under Medicare, but they championed alternative legislation that offered a larger drug subsidy and smaller incentives to health insurers to participate. Liberals such as Sen. Edward Kennedy were confident that the drug bill, with plenty of holes in its benefit formulas, would inevitably be expanded around the time it took effect. Not many in Congress seemed troubled that the federal budget was deep in deficit, the nation was saddled with future expenditures for the Iraq war and virtually no health care expert believed that the legislation would fit into its projected $400-billion-over-10-years cost framework. The new law was a cynical bargain that had more to do with the 2004 election than a rational approach to the prescription-drug needs of the nation’’s elderly. The prescription-drug legislation seems a compromise between competing ideologies inserted into a fixed congressional budget. Put another way, it was sausage-stuffing in the guise of lawmaking. And, what no one anticipated was the reaction of the elderly, a group that votes in disproportionate numbers. Paragraph 3 reflects basically the views and comments of________.

A．Congressional Democrats
B．many other Liberals in the Congress
C．Sen. Edward Kennedy
D．the author of the passage

单项选择题

The fact that most Americans live in urban areas does not mean that they reside in the center of large cities. In fact, more Americans live in the suburbs of large metropolitan areas than in the cities themselves. The Bureau of the Census regards any area with more than 2,500 people as an urban area, and does not consider boundaries of cities and suburbs. According to the Bureau, the political boundaries are less significant than the social and economic relationships and the transportation and communication systems mat integrate a locale. The term used by the Bureau for an integrated metropolis is an MSA, which stands for Metropolitan Statistical Area. In general, an MSA is any area that contains a city and its surrounding suburbs and has a total population of 50,000 or more. At the present time, the Bureau reports more than 280 MSAs, which together account for 75 percent of the US population. In addition, the Bureau recognizes 18 megapolises, that is, continuous adjacent metropolitan areas. One of the most obvious megapolises includes a chain of hundreds of cities and suburbs across 10 states on the East Coast from Massachusetts to Virginia, including Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C. In the Eastern Corridor, as it is called, a population of 45 million inhabitants is concentrated. Another megapolis that is growing rapidly is the California coast from San Francisco through Los Angeles to San Diego. According to the Bureau of the Census, what is an urban area

A．A chain of adjacent cities.
B．An area with at least 50,000 people.
C．The 18 largest cities.
D．An area with 2,500 people or more.

单项选择题

"What does the middleman do but add to the price of goods in the shops" Such remarks are aimed at the intermediate operations between manufacturers and final customers. This practice usually attracts a lot of attention from the public and the press and the operation most talked about is what is often called wholesaling. The wholesaler buys goods in large quantities from the manufacturers and sells them in smaller parcels to retailers, and for this service his selling price to the retailer is raised several percent higher. But his job is made more difficult by retail demand not necessarily running level with manufacturers’’ production. Because he adjusts or regulates the flow of goods by holding stock until required, he frees the manufacturer, to some extent, from the effect on production of changing demand and having to bear the whole risk. The manufacturer can then keep up a steady production flow, and the retailer has no need to hold heavy stocks, who can call on the wholesaler for supplies any time. This wholesale function is like that of a valve in a water pipe. The middleman also bears part of the risk that would otherwise fall on the manufacturer and also the retailer. The wholesaler provides a purely commercial service, for which he is too well rewarded. But the point that is missed by many people is that the wholesaler is not just someone adding to the cost of goods. It is true one could eliminate the wholesaler but one would still be left with his function: that of making sure that goods find their way to the people who want them. What function of the wholesaler is compared to a valve

A．Controlling the flow of goods.
B．Pushing up demand from retailers.
C．Bearing part of the risk for manufacturers.
D．Selling goods to retailers.

单项选择题

Seeking to build support among black families for its education reform law, the Bush administration paid a prominent black pundit $240,000 to promote the law on his nationally syndicated television show and to urge other black journalists to do the same. The campaign, part of an effort to promote No Child Left Behind (NCLB), required commentator Armstrong Williams "to regularly comment on NCLB during the course of his broadcasts," and to interview Education Secretary Rod Paige for TV and radio spots that were aired during the show in 2004. Williams said Thursday he understands that critics could find the arrangement unethical, but "I wanted to do it because it’’s something I believe in." The top Democrat on the House Education Committee, Rep. George Miller of California, called the contract "a very questionable use of taxpayers’’ money" that is "probably illegal". The contract, detailed in documents obtained by USA TODAY through a Freedom of Information Act request, also shows that the Education Department, through the Ketchum public relations firm, arranged with Williams to use contacts with America’’s Black Forum, a group of black broadcast journalists," to encourage the producers to periodically address" NCLB. He persuaded radio and TV personality Steve Harvey to invite Paige onto his show twice. Harvey’’s manager, Rushion McDonald, confirmed the appearances. The reason that this story was made known to the public was the fact that________.

A．USA TODAY requested Freedom of Information Act to act on its behalf
B．Freedom of Information Act requested USA TODAY to act on its behalf
C．USA TODAY managed to obtain copies of the documents that contained the contract
D．Freedom of Information Act so stated that USA TODAY was able to obtain the documents

单项选择题

Every group has a culture, however uncivilized it may seem to us. To the professional anthropologist, there is no intrinsic superiority of one culture over another, just as to the professional linguist, there is no intrinsic hierarchy among languages. People once thought of the languages of backward groups as undeveloped. While it is possible that language in general began as a series of grunts and groans, it is a fact established by the study of "backward" languages that no spoken tongue answers that description today. Most languages of uncivilized groups are, by our most severe standards, extremely complex. They differ from Western languages not in their sound patterns or grammatical structures, which usually are fully adequate for all language needs, but only in their vocabularies, which reflect the objects and activities known to their speakers. Even in this aspect, two things are to be noted. First, all languages seem to possess the machinery for vocabulary expansion, either by putting together words already in existence or by borrowing them from other languages and adapting them to their own system. Second, the objects and activities requiring names and distinctions in "backward" languages, while different from the West, are often surprisingly numerous and complicated. A Western language distinguishes merely between two degrees of remoteness ("this" and "that"). But some languages of the American Indians distinguish between what is close to the speaker, or to the person addressed, or removed from both, or out of sight, or in the past, or in the future. The author’s attitude shown in this passage toward "backward" languages is________.

A．restrained
B．subjective
C．objective
D．resolute

单项选择题

Every group has a culture, however uncivilized it may seem to us. To the professional anthropologist, there is no intrinsic superiority of one culture over another, just as to the professional linguist, there is no intrinsic hierarchy among languages. People once thought of the languages of backward groups as undeveloped. While it is possible that language in general began as a series of grunts and groans, it is a fact established by the study of "backward" languages that no spoken tongue answers that description today. Most languages of uncivilized groups are, by our most severe standards, extremely complex. They differ from Western languages not in their sound patterns or grammatical structures, which usually are fully adequate for all language needs, but only in their vocabularies, which reflect the objects and activities known to their speakers. Even in this aspect, two things are to be noted. First, all languages seem to possess the machinery for vocabulary expansion, either by putting together words already in existence or by borrowing them from other languages and adapting them to their own system. Second, the objects and activities requiring names and distinctions in "backward" languages, while different from the West, are often surprisingly numerous and complicated. A Western language distinguishes merely between two degrees of remoteness ("this" and "that"). But some languages of the American Indians distinguish between what is close to the speaker, or to the person addressed, or removed from both, or out of sight, or in the past, or in the future. This passage is on the whole________.

A．narrative
B．instructive
C．prescriptive
D．argumentative

单项选择题

Seeking to build support among black families for its education reform law, the Bush administration paid a prominent black pundit $240,000 to promote the law on his nationally syndicated television show and to urge other black journalists to do the same. The campaign, part of an effort to promote No Child Left Behind (NCLB), required commentator Armstrong Williams "to regularly comment on NCLB during the course of his broadcasts," and to interview Education Secretary Rod Paige for TV and radio spots that were aired during the show in 2004. Williams said Thursday he understands that critics could find the arrangement unethical, but "I wanted to do it because it’’s something I believe in." The top Democrat on the House Education Committee, Rep. George Miller of California, called the contract "a very questionable use of taxpayers’’ money" that is "probably illegal". The contract, detailed in documents obtained by USA TODAY through a Freedom of Information Act request, also shows that the Education Department, through the Ketchum public relations firm, arranged with Williams to use contacts with America’’s Black Forum, a group of black broadcast journalists," to encourage the producers to periodically address" NCLB. He persuaded radio and TV personality Steve Harvey to invite Paige onto his show twice. Harvey’’s manager, Rushion McDonald, confirmed the appearances. The "appearances" at the end of the passage refer to________.

A．a group of black broadcast journalists
B．producers periodically address NCLB
C．Rod Paige had interviews in a TV show
D．Rushion McDonald saw Steve Harvey

单项选择题

The fact that most Americans live in urban areas does not mean that they reside in the center of large cities. In fact, more Americans live in the suburbs of large metropolitan areas than in the cities themselves. The Bureau of the Census regards any area with more than 2,500 people as an urban area, and does not consider boundaries of cities and suburbs. According to the Bureau, the political boundaries are less significant than the social and economic relationships and the transportation and communication systems mat integrate a locale. The term used by the Bureau for an integrated metropolis is an MSA, which stands for Metropolitan Statistical Area. In general, an MSA is any area that contains a city and its surrounding suburbs and has a total population of 50,000 or more. At the present time, the Bureau reports more than 280 MSAs, which together account for 75 percent of the US population. In addition, the Bureau recognizes 18 megapolises, that is, continuous adjacent metropolitan areas. One of the most obvious megapolises includes a chain of hundreds of cities and suburbs across 10 states on the East Coast from Massachusetts to Virginia, including Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C. In the Eastern Corridor, as it is called, a population of 45 million inhabitants is concentrated. Another megapolis that is growing rapidly is the California coast from San Francisco through Los Angeles to San Diego. Which of the following are NOT considered important in defining an urban area

A．Political boundaries.
B．Transportation networks.
C．Social relationships.
D．Economic systems.

单项选择题

This is offered as a textbook illustration of the principle that voters are far shrewder than most politicians believe. This case study highlighting Washington’’s inability to fool anyone is based on a recent survey of the attitudes of people on Medicare about their new prescription-drug benefit. Last fall, when Congress added prescription-drug coverage to Medicare, the new law was hailed as a political masterpiece. Congressional Democrats, who overwhelmingly opposed the bill, thundered that they, too, were eager to provide a drug benefit under Medicare, but they championed alternative legislation that offered a larger drug subsidy and smaller incentives to health insurers to participate. Liberals such as Sen. Edward Kennedy were confident that the drug bill, with plenty of holes in its benefit formulas, would inevitably be expanded around the time it took effect. Not many in Congress seemed troubled that the federal budget was deep in deficit, the nation was saddled with future expenditures for the Iraq war and virtually no health care expert believed that the legislation would fit into its projected $400-billion-over-10-years cost framework. The new law was a cynical bargain that had more to do with the 2004 election than a rational approach to the prescription-drug needs of the nation’’s elderly. The prescription-drug legislation seems a compromise between competing ideologies inserted into a fixed congressional budget. Put another way, it was sausage-stuffing in the guise of lawmaking. And, what no one anticipated was the reaction of the elderly, a group that votes in disproportionate numbers. According to the text, some health care experts believed that .

A．the new law had a 10-year budget of about $400 billion but little was expected for the prescription-drug coverage
B．the new law will have to wait another 10 years and cost about $400 billion before it is able to take effect
C．the framework of the new legislation would be fit for a project that was to cost $400 billion over the next 10 years
D．the projected $400-billion-over-10-years cost framework was planned to be the budget for the current Iraq war

单项选择题

"What does the middleman do but add to the price of goods in the shops" Such remarks are aimed at the intermediate operations between manufacturers and final customers. This practice usually attracts a lot of attention from the public and the press and the operation most talked about is what is often called wholesaling. The wholesaler buys goods in large quantities from the manufacturers and sells them in smaller parcels to retailers, and for this service his selling price to the retailer is raised several percent higher. But his job is made more difficult by retail demand not necessarily running level with manufacturers’’ production. Because he adjusts or regulates the flow of goods by holding stock until required, he frees the manufacturer, to some extent, from the effect on production of changing demand and having to bear the whole risk. The manufacturer can then keep up a steady production flow, and the retailer has no need to hold heavy stocks, who can call on the wholesaler for supplies any time. This wholesale function is like that of a valve in a water pipe. The middleman also bears part of the risk that would otherwise fall on the manufacturer and also the retailer. The wholesaler provides a purely commercial service, for which he is too well rewarded. But the point that is missed by many people is that the wholesaler is not just someone adding to the cost of goods. It is true one could eliminate the wholesaler but one would still be left with his function: that of making sure that goods find their way to the people who want them. Which of the following statements is true

A．People cannot do without the wholesaler’s function.
B．The function of the wholesaler does not add to the cost of goods.
C．The wholesaler helps to reduce the price of goods in shops.
D．The wholesaler is well paid for his commercial service.

单项选择题

This is offered as a textbook illustration of the principle that voters are far shrewder than most politicians believe. This case study highlighting Washington’’s inability to fool anyone is based on a recent survey of the attitudes of people on Medicare about their new prescription-drug benefit. Last fall, when Congress added prescription-drug coverage to Medicare, the new law was hailed as a political masterpiece. Congressional Democrats, who overwhelmingly opposed the bill, thundered that they, too, were eager to provide a drug benefit under Medicare, but they championed alternative legislation that offered a larger drug subsidy and smaller incentives to health insurers to participate. Liberals such as Sen. Edward Kennedy were confident that the drug bill, with plenty of holes in its benefit formulas, would inevitably be expanded around the time it took effect. Not many in Congress seemed troubled that the federal budget was deep in deficit, the nation was saddled with future expenditures for the Iraq war and virtually no health care expert believed that the legislation would fit into its projected $400-billion-over-10-years cost framework. The new law was a cynical bargain that had more to do with the 2004 election than a rational approach to the prescription-drug needs of the nation’’s elderly. The prescription-drug legislation seems a compromise between competing ideologies inserted into a fixed congressional budget. Put another way, it was sausage-stuffing in the guise of lawmaking. And, what no one anticipated was the reaction of the elderly, a group that votes in disproportionate numbers. Referring to the elderly as summarized in the passage, we can assume that they are________.

A．great in number and most will vote
B．great in number but few tend to vote
C．few in number and few tend to vote
D．few in number but most will vote

单项选择题

"What does the middleman do but add to the price of goods in the shops" Such remarks are aimed at the intermediate operations between manufacturers and final customers. This practice usually attracts a lot of attention from the public and the press and the operation most talked about is what is often called wholesaling. The wholesaler buys goods in large quantities from the manufacturers and sells them in smaller parcels to retailers, and for this service his selling price to the retailer is raised several percent higher. But his job is made more difficult by retail demand not necessarily running level with manufacturers’’ production. Because he adjusts or regulates the flow of goods by holding stock until required, he frees the manufacturer, to some extent, from the effect on production of changing demand and having to bear the whole risk. The manufacturer can then keep up a steady production flow, and the retailer has no need to hold heavy stocks, who can call on the wholesaler for supplies any time. This wholesale function is like that of a valve in a water pipe. The middleman also bears part of the risk that would otherwise fall on the manufacturer and also the retailer. The wholesaler provides a purely commercial service, for which he is too well rewarded. But the point that is missed by many people is that the wholesaler is not just someone adding to the cost of goods. It is true one could eliminate the wholesaler but one would still be left with his function: that of making sure that goods find their way to the people who want them. The author quite possibly believes that the function of the wholesaler is________.

A．good but too costly
B．necessary but harmful
C．removable but necessary
D．acceptable but unnecessary

单项选择题

The fact that most Americans live in urban areas does not mean that they reside in the center of large cities. In fact, more Americans live in the suburbs of large metropolitan areas than in the cities themselves. The Bureau of the Census regards any area with more than 2,500 people as an urban area, and does not consider boundaries of cities and suburbs. According to the Bureau, the political boundaries are less significant than the social and economic relationships and the transportation and communication systems mat integrate a locale. The term used by the Bureau for an integrated metropolis is an MSA, which stands for Metropolitan Statistical Area. In general, an MSA is any area that contains a city and its surrounding suburbs and has a total population of 50,000 or more. At the present time, the Bureau reports more than 280 MSAs, which together account for 75 percent of the US population. In addition, the Bureau recognizes 18 megapolises, that is, continuous adjacent metropolitan areas. One of the most obvious megapolises includes a chain of hundreds of cities and suburbs across 10 states on the East Coast from Massachusetts to Virginia, including Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C. In the Eastern Corridor, as it is called, a population of 45 million inhabitants is concentrated. Another megapolis that is growing rapidly is the California coast from San Francisco through Los Angeles to San Diego. The word "integrate" in Paragraph 3 is closest in meaning to________.

A．benefit
B．define
C．unite
D．restrict

单项选择题

This is offered as a textbook illustration of the principle that voters are far shrewder than most politicians believe. This case study highlighting Washington’’s inability to fool anyone is based on a recent survey of the attitudes of people on Medicare about their new prescription-drug benefit. Last fall, when Congress added prescription-drug coverage to Medicare, the new law was hailed as a political masterpiece. Congressional Democrats, who overwhelmingly opposed the bill, thundered that they, too, were eager to provide a drug benefit under Medicare, but they championed alternative legislation that offered a larger drug subsidy and smaller incentives to health insurers to participate. Liberals such as Sen. Edward Kennedy were confident that the drug bill, with plenty of holes in its benefit formulas, would inevitably be expanded around the time it took effect. Not many in Congress seemed troubled that the federal budget was deep in deficit, the nation was saddled with future expenditures for the Iraq war and virtually no health care expert believed that the legislation would fit into its projected $400-billion-over-10-years cost framework. The new law was a cynical bargain that had more to do with the 2004 election than a rational approach to the prescription-drug needs of the nation’’s elderly. The prescription-drug legislation seems a compromise between competing ideologies inserted into a fixed congressional budget. Put another way, it was sausage-stuffing in the guise of lawmaking. And, what no one anticipated was the reaction of the elderly, a group that votes in disproportionate numbers. From the end of the passage we would expect the author to start his next paragraph most probably on ________.

A．how the senior citizens of the United States responded to the new legislation
B．the opinions of the few who anticipated what the reaction of the elderly was to be
C．what the legislators would consider doing to avoid further legislative digressions
D．major competing ideologies that differ on the coming congressional budget

单项选择题

The fact that most Americans live in urban areas does not mean that they reside in the center of large cities. In fact, more Americans live in the suburbs of large metropolitan areas than in the cities themselves. The Bureau of the Census regards any area with more than 2,500 people as an urban area, and does not consider boundaries of cities and suburbs. According to the Bureau, the political boundaries are less significant than the social and economic relationships and the transportation and communication systems mat integrate a locale. The term used by the Bureau for an integrated metropolis is an MSA, which stands for Metropolitan Statistical Area. In general, an MSA is any area that contains a city and its surrounding suburbs and has a total population of 50,000 or more. At the present time, the Bureau reports more than 280 MSAs, which together account for 75 percent of the US population. In addition, the Bureau recognizes 18 megapolises, that is, continuous adjacent metropolitan areas. One of the most obvious megapolises includes a chain of hundreds of cities and suburbs across 10 states on the East Coast from Massachusetts to Virginia, including Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C. In the Eastern Corridor, as it is called, a population of 45 million inhabitants is concentrated. Another megapolis that is growing rapidly is the California coast from San Francisco through Los Angeles to San Diego. Which of the following is NOT true

A．An integrated metropolis is an MSA.
B．MSA stands for Metropolitan Statistical Area.
C．A metropolis includes at least a metropolitan.
D．An MSA refers to city and its suburbs, with over 50,000 people.

单项选择题

"What does the middleman do but add to the price of goods in the shops" Such remarks are aimed at the intermediate operations between manufacturers and final customers. This practice usually attracts a lot of attention from the public and the press and the operation most talked about is what is often called wholesaling. The wholesaler buys goods in large quantities from the manufacturers and sells them in smaller parcels to retailers, and for this service his selling price to the retailer is raised several percent higher. But his job is made more difficult by retail demand not necessarily running level with manufacturers’’ production. Because he adjusts or regulates the flow of goods by holding stock until required, he frees the manufacturer, to some extent, from the effect on production of changing demand and having to bear the whole risk. The manufacturer can then keep up a steady production flow, and the retailer has no need to hold heavy stocks, who can call on the wholesaler for supplies any time. This wholesale function is like that of a valve in a water pipe. The middleman also bears part of the risk that would otherwise fall on the manufacturer and also the retailer. The wholesaler provides a purely commercial service, for which he is too well rewarded. But the point that is missed by many people is that the wholesaler is not just someone adding to the cost of goods. It is true one could eliminate the wholesaler but one would still be left with his function: that of making sure that goods find their way to the people who want them. Which of the following titles is most appropriate for this passage

A．The Greedy Wholesalers
B．The Wholesalers in the Public Eye
C．A Retail Market with Wholesalers
D．Can We Do without the Wholesaler

单项选择题

The fact that most Americans live in urban areas does not mean that they reside in the center of large cities. In fact, more Americans live in the suburbs of large metropolitan areas than in the cities themselves. The Bureau of the Census regards any area with more than 2,500 people as an urban area, and does not consider boundaries of cities and suburbs. According to the Bureau, the political boundaries are less significant than the social and economic relationships and the transportation and communication systems mat integrate a locale. The term used by the Bureau for an integrated metropolis is an MSA, which stands for Metropolitan Statistical Area. In general, an MSA is any area that contains a city and its surrounding suburbs and has a total population of 50,000 or more. At the present time, the Bureau reports more than 280 MSAs, which together account for 75 percent of the US population. In addition, the Bureau recognizes 18 megapolises, that is, continuous adjacent metropolitan areas. One of the most obvious megapolises includes a chain of hundreds of cities and suburbs across 10 states on the East Coast from Massachusetts to Virginia, including Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C. In the Eastern Corridor, as it is called, a population of 45 million inhabitants is concentrated. Another megapolis that is growing rapidly is the California coast from San Francisco through Los Angeles to San Diego. The word "adjacent" in the last paragraph is closest in meaning to________.

A．beside each other
B．growing very fast
C．the same size
D．densely populated

单项选择题

The fact that most Americans live in urban areas does not mean that they reside in the center of large cities. In fact, more Americans live in the suburbs of large metropolitan areas than in the cities themselves. The Bureau of the Census regards any area with more than 2,500 people as an urban area, and does not consider boundaries of cities and suburbs. According to the Bureau, the political boundaries are less significant than the social and economic relationships and the transportation and communication systems mat integrate a locale. The term used by the Bureau for an integrated metropolis is an MSA, which stands for Metropolitan Statistical Area. In general, an MSA is any area that contains a city and its surrounding suburbs and has a total population of 50,000 or more. At the present time, the Bureau reports more than 280 MSAs, which together account for 75 percent of the US population. In addition, the Bureau recognizes 18 megapolises, that is, continuous adjacent metropolitan areas. One of the most obvious megapolises includes a chain of hundreds of cities and suburbs across 10 states on the East Coast from Massachusetts to Virginia, including Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C. In the Eastern Corridor, as it is called, a population of 45 million inhabitants is concentrated. Another megapolis that is growing rapidly is the California coast from San Francisco through Los Angeles to San Diego. According to the passage, what is a megapolis

A．One of the 10 largest cities in the United States.
B．One of the 18 largest cities in the United States.
C．One of the l00 cities between Boston and Washington.
D．Any number of continuous adjacent cities and suburbs.

单项选择题

The fact that most Americans live in urban areas does not mean that they reside in the center of large cities. In fact, more Americans live in the suburbs of large metropolitan areas than in the cities themselves. The Bureau of the Census regards any area with more than 2,500 people as an urban area, and does not consider boundaries of cities and suburbs. According to the Bureau, the political boundaries are less significant than the social and economic relationships and the transportation and communication systems mat integrate a locale. The term used by the Bureau for an integrated metropolis is an MSA, which stands for Metropolitan Statistical Area. In general, an MSA is any area that contains a city and its surrounding suburbs and has a total population of 50,000 or more. At the present time, the Bureau reports more than 280 MSAs, which together account for 75 percent of the US population. In addition, the Bureau recognizes 18 megapolises, that is, continuous adjacent metropolitan areas. One of the most obvious megapolises includes a chain of hundreds of cities and suburbs across 10 states on the East Coast from Massachusetts to Virginia, including Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C. In the Eastern Corridor, as it is called, a population of 45 million inhabitants is concentrated. Another megapolis that is growing rapidly is the California coast from San Francisco through Los Angeles to San Diego. Why does the author mention the Eastern Corridor and the California coast in Paragraph 4

A．As examples of megapolises.
B．Because 75 percent of the population lives there.
C．To conclude the passage.
D．The Bureau of the Census is located there.

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