People had bought these houses under the ______ that their value would just keep on rising

第1题

听力原文：When cars first started appearing on the streets of the world, few people took th

听力原文： When cars first started appearing on the streets of the world, few people took them seriously. They were toys--playthings for grown men who didn't have much to do. No one thought that the automobile would become the world's most popular means of transportation.

When Henry Ford started selling his Model T in 1908, he changed all that. Ford believed that a car should be low-cost transportation that everyone could afford. So he decided to make such a car. First, he wanted a dependable automobile that wouldn't break down easily. Then he wanted a simple engine that almost anyone could fix.

Ford wanted to sell the car at a low price, so he had to make it at a low cost. Thus he made only one model and designed one color--black.

In 1932, the Duesenberg brothers produced a car that many people think it was the most luxurious automobile ever made--the Duesenberg SJ. Every Duesenberg car was custom-made, so each one was different. But it usually weighed about 7,000 pounds and had a very wide wheelbase--150 inches. It also had a 400 horsepower engine that could drive the huge car from zero to 100 miles per hour in 17 seconds.

The inside was very luxurious, too. It had the best silk, leather, silver and wood. A Dusenberg car was definitely expensive but rich people often felt that they had to own one. Unfortunately, the car cost so much to produce that the company lost money. In 1937, after making only 500 of them, the Duesenbergs stopped producing this kind of cars forever.

(33)

A．The two models of cars.

B．The history of car industry.

C．The development of cars in America.

D．The structure of Duesenberg cars.

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第2题

Job or money？ Would you quit your job if you didn’t need the money？In a 1990 poll by t

Job or money？

Would you quit your job if you didn’t need the money？In a 1990 poll by the Gallop Organization，many people said quitting work was an imprtant reason to be rich．Yet researchers find that work is one of life’s chief satisfactions for people．

Consider W．Berry Fowler．In 1979，Fowler started a tutoring company that became so successful he was able to sell out and retire in 1978一a multimillionaire at 40． He bought a 50-foot cabin cruiser（可住宿的游艇）and a house in Hawaii，and busied himself vacationing．

But after five years of perpetual vacation，nower began to miss the challenges of work．So in 1992，he bought a fitness chain for children and now spends 75 hours a week immersed in balance sheets and staff meetings．“My best days on the golf course weren’t half as much fun as a good day at the office．”he says．

A job，studies show，is more than a paycheck．Doing something Well can increase confidence and self—worth．When sociologist H．Ray Kaplan surveyed 139 lottery（彩票）millionaires，he discovered 60 percent continued working at least a year after they’d won．

If jobs are so important，wouldn’t salary size be a gauge（标准尺）of job satisfaction？Americans think so．A survey conducted last year by Roper Starch Worldwide，Inc．，found that almost 70 percent of the respondents said they would be happier if their families had twice as much household income．Yet studies show that job satisfaction comes less from how much people earn than from the challenge of their jobs and the control they are able to exert．work that doesn’t engage a person will never seem rewarding，no matter how lucative（有理可图的）it becomes．

第 8 题 The Gallop poll shows many people want to be rich in order not to work．

A．Right

B．Wrong

C．Not mentioned

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第3题

He bought an expensive coat _______ he had no job.A．unlessB．sinceC．althoughD．till

He bought an expensive coat _______ he had no job.

A．unless

B．since

C．although

D．till

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第4题

A history of long and effortless success can be a dreadful handicap, but, if properly hand

led, it may become a driving force. When the United States entered just such a glowing period after the end of the Second World War, it had a market eight times larger than any competitor, giving its industries unparalleled economies of scale. Its scientists were the world's best, its workers the most skilled. America and Americans were prosperous beyond the dreams of the Europeans and Asians whose economies the war had destroyed.

It was inevitable that this primacy should have narrowed as other countries grew richer. Just as inevitably, the retreat from predominance proved painful. By the mid-1980s Americans had found themselves at a loss over their fading industrial competitiveness. Some huge American industries, such as consumer electronics, had shrunk or vanished in the face of foreign competition. By 1987 there was only one American television maker left, Zenith. (Now there is none: Zenith was bought by South Korea's LG Electronics. ) Foreign-made cars and textiles were sweeping into the domestic market. America's machine-tool industry was on the ropes. For a while it looked as though the making of semiconductors, which America had sat at the heart of the new computer age, was going to be the next casualty.

All of this caused a crisis of confidence. Americans stopped taking prosperity for granted. They began to believe that their way of doing business was failing, and that their incomes would therefore shortly begin to fail as well. The mid-1980s brought one inquiry after another into the causes of America's industrial decline. Their sometimes sensational findings were filled with warnings about the growing competition from overseas.

How things have changed! In 1995 the United States can look back on five years of solid growth while Japan has been straggling. Few Americans attribute this solely to such obvious causes as a devalued dollar or the turning of the business cycle. Self-doubt has yielded to blind pride. "American industry has changed its structure, has gone on a diet, has learnt to be more quick-witted," according to Richard Cavanagh, executive dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "It makes me proud to be an American just to see how our businesses are improving their productivity," says Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute, a think-tank in Washington, D. C. And William Sahlman of the Harvard Business School believes, that people will look back on this period as "a golden age of business management in the United States".

Which of the following statements is TRUE about US economic predominance after World War Ⅱ？

A．The unparalleled size of its workforce had given an impetus to its economy.

B．The war had destroyed the economies of most potential competitors.

C．Its domestic market was eight times larger than before.

D．It had made painstaking efforts towards this goal.

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第5题

Over the past decade,many companies had perfected the art of creating automatic behaviors-

Over the past decade, many companies had perfected the art of creating automatic behaviors-habits-among consumers. These habits have helped companies earn billions of dollars when customers eat snacks or wipe counters almost without thinking, often in response to a carefully designed set of daily cues.

"There are fundamental public health problems, like dirty hands instead of a soap habit, that remain killers only because we can't figure out how to change people's habit," said Dr. Curtis, the director the Hygiene Center at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. " We wanted to learn from private industry how to create new behaviors that happen automatically. "

The companies that Dr. Curtis turned to-Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive and Unilever-had invested hundreds of millions of dollars finding the subtle cues in consumers' lives that corporations could use to introduce new routines.

If you look hard enough, you'll find that many of the products we use every day-chewing gums, skin moisturizers, disinfecting wipes, air fresheners, water purifiers, health snacks, teeth whiteners, fabric softeners, vitamins are results of manufactured habits. A century ago, few people regularly brushed their teeth multiple times a day. Today, because of shrewd advertising and public health campaigns, many Americans habitually give their pearly whites a cavity- preventing scrub twice a day, often with Colgate, Crest or one of the other brands.

A few decades ago, many people didn't drink water outside of a meal. Then beverage companies started bottling the production of far-off springs, and now office workers unthinkingly sip bottled water all day long. Chewing gum, once bought primarily by adolescent boys, is now featured in commercials as a breath freshener and teeth cleanser for use after a meal. Skin moisturizers are advertised as part of morning beauty rituals, slipped in between hair brushing and putting on makeup.

"Our products succeed when they become part of daily or weekly patterns", said Carol Berning, a consumer psychologist who recently retired from Procter & Gamble, the company that sold $76 billion of Tide, Crest and other products last year. "Creating positive habit is a huge part of improving our consumers' lives, and it's essential to making new products commercially viable. "

Through experiments and observation, social scientists like Dr. Berning have learned that there is power in tying certain behaviors to habitual cues through ruthless advertising. As this new science of habit has emerged, controversies have erupted when the tactics have been used to sell questionable beauty creams or unhealthy foods.

According to Dr. Curtis, habits like hand washing with soap______.

A．should be further cultivated

B．should be changed gradually

C．are deeply rooted in history

D．arc basically private concern

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第6题