Part Reading ComprehensionReading in Depth25 minutes

Section A

Directions:In this section,there is a passage with ten blanks.You are required to select one word for each blank from a list of choices given in a word bank following the passage.Read the passage through carefully before making your choices.Each choice in the bank is identified by a letter.Please mark the corresponding letter for each item on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre.You may not use any of the words in the bank more than once.

Questions 47 to 56 are based on the following passage.

What is it about Americans and food? We love to eat, but we feel47 about it afterward. We say we want only the best, but we strangely enjoy junk food. We're48 with health and weight loss but face an unprecedented epidemic of obesity֣. Perhaps the 49 to this ambivalenceìᣩ lies in our history. The first Europeans came to this continent searching for new spices but went in vain. The first cash crop wasn't eaten but smoked. Then there was Prohibition, intended to prohibit drinking but actually encouraging more 50 ways of doing it.

The immigrant experience, too, has been one of inharmony. Do as Romans do means eating what real Americans eat, but our nation's food has come to be

51 by importspizza, say, or hot dogs. And some of the country's most treasured cooking comes from people who arrived here in shackles.

Perhaps it should come as no surprise then that food has been a medium for the nation's defining struggles, whether at the Boston Tea Party or the sitins at southern lunch counters. It is integral to our concepts of health and even morality whether one refrains from alcohol for religious reasons or evades meat for political 52 .

But strong opinions have not brought 53 . Americans are ambivalent about what they put in their mouths. We have become54 of our foods, especially as we learn more about what they contain.

The 55 in food is still prosperous in the American consciousness. It's no coincidence, then, that the first Thanksgiving holds the American imagination in such bondage. It's what we eatand how we 56 it with friends, family, and strangersthat help define America as a community today.

A. answerB. resultC. shareD. guiltyE. constant

F. definedG. vanishH. adaptedI. creativeJ. belief

K. suspiciousL. certaintyM. obsessedN. identifyO. ideals

Section B

Directions:There are 2 passages in this section.Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements.For each of them there are four choices marked A,B,C and D .You should decide on the best choice and mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre.
Passage OneQuestions 57 to 61 are based on the following passage.Resources can be said to be scarce in both an absolute and relative sense: the surface of the Earth is finite, imposing absolute scarcity; but the scarcity that concerns economists is the relative scarcity of resources in different uses. Materials used for one purpose cannot at the same time be used for other purposes; if the quantity of an input is limited, the increased use of it in one manufacturing process must cause it to become less available for other uses.

The cost of a product in terms of money may not measure its true cost to society. The true cost of, say, the construction of a supersonic jet is the value of the schools and refrigerators that will never be built as a result. Every act of production uses up some of society's available resources; it means the foregoing of an opportunity to produce something else. In deciding how to use resources most effectively to satisfy the wants of the community, this opportunity cost must ultimately be taken into account.

In a market economy the price of a good and the quantity supplied depend on the cost of making it, and that cost, ultimately, is the cost of not making other goods. The market mechanism enforces this relationship. The cost of, say, a pair of shoes is the price of the leather, the labor, the fuel, and other elements used up in producing them. But the price of these inputs, in turn, depends on what they can produce elsewhereif the leather can be used to produce handbags that are valued highly by consumers, the prices of leather will be bid up correspondingly.

57. What does this passage mainly discuss?

A The scarcity of manufactured goods.
B The value of scarce materials.
C The manufacturing of scarce goods.
D The cost of producing shoes.

58. According to the passage, what are the opportunity costs of an item?

A The amount of time and money spent in producing it.
B The opportunities a person has to buy it.
C The value of what could have been produced instead.
D The value of the resources used in its production.

59. According to the passage, what is the relationship between production and resources?

A Available resources stimulate production.
B Resources are totally independent of production.
C Production increases as resources increase.
D Production lessens the amount of available resources.

60. What determines the price of a good in a market economy?

A The cost of all elements in production.
B The cost of not making other goods.
C The efficiency of the manufacturing process.
D The quantity of materials supplied.

61. Which of the following examples BEST reflects a cost to society as defined in the passage?

A A family buying a dog.
B Eating in a restaurant instead of at home.
C Using land for a house instead of a park.
D Staying at home instead of going to school.