PART III  READING COMPREHENSION [40 MIN]

SECTION A  READING COMPREHENSION [30 MIN]

In this section there are four reading passages followed by a total of fifteen multiple-choice questions. Read the passages and then mark answers on your Answer Sheet.ª¤

TEXT A

 ¡°Twenty years ago, Blackpool turned its back on the sea and tried to make itself into an entertainment centre. ¡± say Robin Wood, a local official. ¡°Now t he thinking is that we should try, to refocus on the sea and make Blackpool a family destination again.¡± To say that Blackpool neglected the sea is to put it mildly. In 1976 the European Community, as it then was called, instructed member nations to make their beaches conform to certain minimum standards of cleanliness within ten years. Britain, rather than complying, took the novel strategy of contending that many of its most popular beaches were not swimming beaches at all. Be cause of Britain¡¯s climate the sea-bathing season is short, and most people don¡¯t go in above their knees anyway-and hence can¡¯t really be said to be swimming. By averaging out the number of people actually swimming across 365 days of the y ear, the government was able to persuade itself, if no one else, that Britain ha d hardly any real swimming beaches.

As one environmentalist put it to me: ¡°You had the ludicrous situation in which Luxembourg had mere listed public bathing beaches than the whole of the United Kingdom. It was preposterous.¡±

Meanwhile, Blackpool continued to discharge raw sewage straight into the se a. Finally after much pressure from both environmental groups and the European Union, the local water authority built a new waste-treatment facility for the who le of Blackpool and neighbouring communities. The facility came online in June 1 996. For the first time since the industrial revolution Blackpool¡¯ s waters are safe to swim in.ª¥

That done, the town is now turning its attention to making the sea-front me re visually attractive. The promenade, once a rather elegant place to stroll, ha d become increasingly tatty and neglected. ¡°It was built in Victorian times and needed a thorough overhaul anyway, ¡±says Wood, ¡°so we decided to make aesthetic improvements at the same time, to try to draw people back to it.¡± Blackpool recently spent about .4 million building new kiosks for vendors and improving seating around the Central Pier and plans to spend a further $ 15 million on various amenity projects.ª¥

The most striking thing about Blackpool these days compared with 20 years a go is how empty its beaches are. When the tide is out, Blackpool¡¯s beaches are a vast plain of beckoning sand. They look spacious enough to accommodate comfortably the entire populace of northern England. Ken Welsby remembers days when, as he puts it,¡° you couldn¡¯t lay down a handkerchief on this beach, it was that crowded.¡±

     Welsby comes from Preston, 20 miles down the road, and has been visiting Blackpool all his life. Now retired, he had come for the day with his wife, Kitty, and their three young grandchildren who were gravely absorbed in building a sandcastle. ¡°Two hundred thousand people they¡¯d have on this beach sometimes.¡± Welsby said. ¡°You can¡¯t imagine it now, can you?¡±

     Indeed I could not. Though it was a bright sunny day in the middle of summer. I counted just 13 people scattered along a half mile or so of open sand. Except for those rare times when hot weather and a public holiday coincide, it is like this nearly always now.ª¥

     ¡°You can¡¯t imagine how exciting it was to come here for the day when we were young.¡± Kitty said. ¡°Even from Preston, it was a big treat. Now children don ¡¯t want the beach. They want arcade games and rides in helicopters and goodness knows what else.¡± She stared out over the glittery water. ¡°We¡¯ll never see those days again. It¡¯s sad really.ª¥

     ¡°But your grandchildren seem to be enjoying it,¡± I pointed out.

     ¡°For the moment,¡± Ken said. ¡°For the moment.¡±

    Afterward I went for a long walk along the empty beach, then went back to the town centre and treated myself to a large portion of fish-and-chips wrapped in paper. The way they cook it in Blackpool, it isn¡¯t so much a meal as an invitation to a heart attack, but it was delicious. Far out over the sea the sun was setting with such splendor that I would almost have sworn I could hear the water h iss where it touched.ª¥

     Behind me the lights of Blackpool Tower were just twinkling on, and the streets were beginning to fill with happy evening throngs. In the purply light of dusk the town looked peaceful and happy ¡ª enchanting even ¡ª and there was an engaging air of expectancy, of fun about to happen. Somewhat to my surprise, I realized that this place was beginning to grow on me.ª¤

16. At the beginning, the passage seems to suggest that Blackpool

A. will continue to remain as an entertainment center.ª¤

B. complied with EC¡¯s standards of clearliness.ª¤

C. had no swimming beaches all along.ª¤

D. is planning to revive its former attraction.ª¤

17. We can learn from the passage that Blackpool used to

A. have as many beaches as Luxumbourg.ª¤

B. have seriously polluted drinking water.ª¤

C. boast some imposing seafront sights.ª¤

D. attract few domestic holiday makers.ª¤

18. What Blackpool¡¯s beaches strike visitors most is their

A. emptiness.    

B. cleanliness.    

C. modernity.    

D. monotony.

TEXT B

Pundits who want to sound judicious are fond of warning against generalizing. Each country is different, they say, and no one story fits all of Asia. This is, of course, silly: all of these economies plunged into economic crisis within a few months of each other, so they must have had something in common.ª¥

     In fact, the logic of catastrophe was pretty much the same in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and South Korea. (Japan is a very different story.) In each ca se investors¡ª¡ªmainly, but not entirely, foreign banks who had made short-term loans¡ª¡ªall tried to pull their money out at the same time. The result was a combined banking and currency crisis: a banking crisis because no bank can convert all its assets into cash on short notice; a currency crisis because panicked investors were trying not only to convert long-term assets into cash, but to convert baht or rupiah into dollars. In the face of the stampede, governments had no good options. If they let their currencies plunge inflation would soar and companies that had borrowed in dollars would go bankrupt; if they tried to support their currencies by pushing up interest rates, the same firms would probably go bust from the combination of debt burden and recession. In practice, countries¡¯ split the difference ¡ª and paid a heavy price regardless.

     Was the crisis a punishment for bad economic management? Like most cliches, the catchphrase¡° crony capitalism¡± has prospered because it gets at something real: excessively cozy relationships between government and business really did lead to a lot of bad investments. The still primitive financial structure of Asia n business also made the economies peculiarly vulnerable to a loss of confidence. But the punishment was surely disproportionate to the crime, and many investments that look foolish in retrospect seemed sensible at the time.ª¥

     Given that there were no good policy options, was the policy response mainly on the fight track? There was frantic blame shifting when everything in Asia seemed to be going wrong: now there is a race to claim credit when some things have started to go right. The international Monetary Fund points to Korea¡¯s recovery¡ª¡ª and more generally to the fact that the sky didn¡¯t fall after all ¡ª¡ª as proof that its policy recommendations were right. Never mind that other IMF clients have done far worse, and that the economy of Malaysia ¡ª¡ª which refused IM F help, and horrified respectable opinion by imposing capital controls ¡ª¡ªalso seems to be on the mend. Malaysia¡¯s prime Minister, by contrast, claims full credit for any good news¡ª¡ªeven though neighbouring economies also seem to have bottomed out.ª¥

      The truth is that an observer without any ax to grind would probably conclude that none of the policies adopted either on or in defiance of the IMF¡¯s advice made much difference either way. Budget policies, interest rate policies, ban king reform ¡ª¡ª whatever countries tried, just about all the capital that could  flee, did. And when there was no mere money to run, the natural recuperative powers of the economies finally began to prevail. At best, the money doctors who purported to offer cures provided a helpful bedside manner; at worst, they were like medieval physicians who prescribed bleeding as a remedy for all ills.ª¥

      Will the patients stage a full recovery? It depends on exactly what you mean by ¡°full¡±. South Korea¡¯s industrial production is already above its pre-crisis level; but in the spring of 1997 anyone who had predicted zero growth in Korea n industry over the next two years would have been regarded as a reckless doomsayer. So if by recovery you mean not just a return to growth, but one that brings the region¡¯s performance back to something like what people used to regard as the Asian norm, they have a long way to go.ª¤

19. According to the passage, which of the following is NOT the writer¡¯s opinion?ª¤

A. Countries paid a heavy price for whichever measure taken.ª¤

B. Countries all found themselves in an economic dilemma.ª¤

C. Withdrawal of foreign capital resulted in the crisis.ª¤

D. Most governments chose one of the two options.ª¤

20. The writer thinks that those Asian countries

A. well deserved the punishment.ª¤

B. invested in a senseless way at the time.ª¤

C. were unduly punished in the crisis.ª¤

D. had bad relationships between government and business.ª¤

21. It can be inferred from the passage that IMF policy recommendations

A. were far from a panacea in all cases.ª¤

B. were feasible in their recipient countries.ª¤

C. failed to work in their recipient countries.ª¤

D. were rejected unanimously by Asian countries.ª¤

22. At the end of the passage, the writer seems to think that a full recovery of the Asian economy isª¤

A. due.   

B. remote.   

C. imaginative.   

D. unpredictable .

TEXT C

Human migration: the term is vague. What people usually think of is the permanent movement of people from one home to another. More broadly, though, migration means all the ways ¡ª from the seasonal drift of agricultural workers within a country to the relocation of refugees from one country to another.ª¥

     Migration is big, dangerous, compelling. It is 60 million Europeans leaving home from the 16th to the 20th centuries. It is some 15 million Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims swept up in a tumultuous shuffle of citizens between India and Pakis tan after the partition of the subcontinent in 1947.ª¥

     Migration is the dynamic undertow of population change: everyone¡¯s solution, everyone¡¯s conflict. As the century turns, migration, with its inevitable economic and political turmoil, has been called¡° one of the greatest challenges of the coming century.¡±                           

     But it is much more than that. It is, as has always been, the great adventure of human life. Migration helped create humans, drove us to conquer the planet, shaped our societies, and promises to reshape them again.ª¥

     ¡°You have a history book written in your genes,¡± said Spencer Wells. The book he¡¯s trying to read goes back to long before even the first word was written, and it is a story of migration.ª¥

     Wells, a tall, blond geneticist at Stanford University, spent the summer of 1998 exploring remote parts of Transcaucasia and Central Asia with three colleagues in a Land Rover, looking for drops of blood. In the blood, donated by the people he met, he will search for the story that genetic markers can tell of the long paths human life has taken across the Earth. Genetic studies are the latest technique in a long effort of modern humans t o find out where they have come from. But however the paths are traced, the basic story is simple: people have been moving since they were people. If early humans hadn¡¯t moved and intermingled as much as they did, they probably would have continued to evolve into different species. From beginnings in Africa, most researchers agree, groups of hunter-gatherers spread out, driven to the ends of the Earth.ª¥

     To demographer Kingsley Davis, two things made migration happen. First, hum an beings, with their tools and language, could adapt to different conditions without having to wait for evolution to make them suitable for a new niche. Second, as populations grew, cultures began to differ, and inequalities developed between groups. The first factor gave us the keys to the door of any room on the planet; the other gave us reasons to use them.ª¥

     Over the centuries, as agriculture spread across the planet, people moved toward places where metal was found and worked and to centres of commerce that then became cities. Those places were, in turn, invaded and overrun by people later generations called barbarians.ª¥

     In between these storm surges were steadier but similarly profound fides in which people moved out to colonize or were captured and brought in as slaves. For a while the population of Athens, that city of legendary enlightenment was as much as 35 percent slaves.ª¥

¡°What strikes me is how important migration is as a cause and effect in the great world events.¡± Mark Miller, co-author of The Age of Migration and a professor of political science at the University of Delaware, told me recently.ª¥

     It is difficult to think of any great events that did not involve migration. Religions spawned pilgrims or settlers; wars drove refugees before them and ma de new land available for the conquerors; political upheavals displaced thousand s or millions; economic innovations drew workers and entrepreneurs like magnets; environmental disasters like famine or disease pushed their bedraggled survivor s anywhere they could replant hope. ¡°It¡¯s part of our nature, this movement,¡±  Miller said, ¡°It¡¯s just a fact of  the human condition.¡±

23. Which of the following statements is INCORRECT?

A. Migration exerts a great impact on population change.ª¤

B. Migration contributes to Mankind¡¯s progress.ª¤

C. Migration brings about desirable and undesirable effects.ª¤

D. Migration may not be accompanied by human conflicts.ª¤

24. According to Kingsley Davis, migration occurs as a result of the following reasons EXCEPF

A. human adaptability.               

B. human evolution.ª¤

C. cultural differences.               

D. inter-group inequalities.

25. Which of the following groups is NOT mentioned as migrants in the pas sage?

A. Farmers.     

B. Workers.  

C. Settlers.     

D. Colonizers.ª¤

26. There seems to be a (n) ___ relationship between great events and migration.ª¤

A. loose       

B. indefinite     

C. causal        

D. remoteª¤

TEXT D

How is communication actually achieved? It depends, of course, either on a common language or on known conventions, or at least on the beginnings of these.  If the common language and the conventions exist, the contributor, for example, the creative artist, the performer, or the reporter, tries to use them as well as he can. But often, especially with original artists and thinkers, the problem is in one way that of creating a language, or creating a convention, or at leas t of developing the language and conventions to the point where they are capable of bearing his precise meaning. In literature, in music, in the visual arts, in the sciences, in social thinking, in philosophy, this kind of development has occurred again and again. It often takes a long time to get through, and for many people it will remain difficult. But we need never think that it is impossible; creative energy is much more powerful than we sometimes suppose. While a man is engaged in this struggle to say new things in new ways, he is usually more than ever concentrated on the actual work, and not on its possible audience. Many artists and scientists share this fundamental unconcern about the ways in which their work will be received. They may be glad if it is understood and appreciated, hurt if it is not, but while the work is being done there can be no argument. T he thing has to come out as the man himself sees it.ª¥

In this sense it is true that it is the duty of society to create condition s in which such men can live. For whatever the value of any individual contribution, the general body of work is of immense value to everyone. But of course things are not so formal, in reality. There is not society on the one hand and these individuals on the other. In ordinary living, and in his work, the contributor shares in the life of his society, which often affects him both in minor ways and in ways sometimes so deep that he is not even aware of them. His ability to make his work public depends on the actual communication system: the language its elf, or certain visual or musical or scientific conventions, and the institution s through which the communication will be passed. The effect of these on his actual work can be almost infinitely variable. For it is not only a communication system outside him; it is also, however original he may be, a communication system which is in fact part of himself. Many contributors make active use of this kind of internal communication system. It is to themselves, in a way, that they first show their conceptions, play their music, present their arguments. Not only as a way of getting these clear, in the process of almost endless testing that active composition involves. But also, whether consciously or not, as a way of putting the experience into a communicable form. If one mind has grasped it, then it may be open to other minds.

In this deep sense, the society is in some ways already present in the act of composition. This is always very difficult to understand, but often, when we have the advantage of looking back at a period, we can see, even if we cannot explain, how this was so. We can see how much even highly original individuals ha d in common, in their actual work, and in what is called their ¡°structure of feeling¡±, with other individual workers of the time, and with the society of that time to which they belonged. The historian is also continually struck by the fact that men of this kind felt isolated at the very time when in reality they were beginning to get through. This can also be noticed in our own time, when some of the most deeply influential men feel isolated and even rejected. The society an d the communication are there, but it is difficult to recognize them, difficult to be sure.ª¤

27. Creative artists and thinkers achieve communication by

A. depending on shared conventions.ª¤

B. fashioning their own conventions.ª¤

C. adjusting their personal feelings.ª¤

D. elaborating a common language.ª¤

28. A common characteristic of artists and scientists involved in creative work is that

A. they cave about the possible reaction to their work.ª¤

B. public response is one of the primary conceits.ª¤

C. they are keenly aware of public interest in their work.ª¤

D. they are indifferent toward response to their work.ª¤

29. According to the passage, which of the following statements is INCORRECT?ª¤

A. Individual contributions combined possess great significance to the public.ª¤

B. Good contributors don¡¯t neglect the use of internal communication system.ª¤

C. Everyone except those original people comes under the influence of society.ª¤

D. Knowing how to communicate is universal among human beings.ª¤

30. It is implied at the end of the passage that highly original individuals feel isolated because they

A. fail to acknowledge and use an acceptable form of communication.ª¤

B. actually differ from other individuals in the same period.ª¤

C. have little in common with the society of the time.ª¤

D. refuse to admit parallels between themselves and the society.

PAPER TWO

PART¢ô  TRANSLATION [60 MIN]

SECTION A  CHINESE TO ENGLISH

Translate the following underlined part of the text into English. Write your translation on ANSWER SHEET THREE.ª¤ª¥

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SECTION B ENGLISH TO CHINESE

Translate the following underlined part of the text into Chinese. Writer your translation on  ANSWER SHEET THREE.ª¥

Possession for its own sake or in competition with the rest of the neighborhood would have been Thoreau¡¯s idea of the low levels. The active discipline of heightening one¡¯s perception of what is enduring in nature would have been his idea of the high. What he saved from the low was time and effort he could spend on the high. Thoreau certainly disapproved of starvation, but he would put into feeding himself only as much effort as would keep him functioning for more important efforts.ª¥

      Effort is the gist of it. There is no happiness except as we take on life- engaging difficulties. Short of the impossible, as Yeats put it, the satisfaction we get from a lifetime depends on how high we choose our difficulties. Robert Frost was thinking in something like the same terms when he spoke of ¡°The pleas u re of taking pains¡±. The mortal flaw in the advertised version of happiness is in the fact that it purports to be effortless.ª¥

      We demand difficulty even in our games. We demand it because without difficulty there can be no game. A game is a way of making something hard for the fun of it. The rules of the game are an arbitrary imposition of difficulty. When someone ruins the fun, he always does so by refusing to play by the roles. It is easier to win at chess if you are free, at your pleasure, to change the wholly arbitrary roles, but the fun is in winning within the rules. No difficulty, no fun.

PART V  WRITING [60 MIN]

The Internet is about to take off in China. As many as 9 million people are online, a number that is estimated to hit 20 million by the end of 2000. It is predicted that this phenomenal growth will have great impact on our society and economy. Choose ONE aspect of our society or economy where you think the impact will be most strongly felt, and write an essay of about 300 words entitled.ª¤ª¤

THE IMPACT OF THE INTERNET ON ...ª¥

In the first part of your writing you should present your thesis statement, and in the second part you should support the thesis statement with appropriate details. In the last part you should bring what you have written to a natural conclusion or a summary.ª¥

Marks will be awarded for content, organization, grammar and appropriacy. Failure to follow the above instructions may result in a loss of marks.ª¥

Write your composition on ANSWER SHEET FOUR.