user: Ques:The Norwegian government is doing its best to keep the oil industry under control. A new law limits exploration to an area south of the southern end of the long coastline; production limits have been laid down(though these have already been raised) ; and oil companies have not been allowed to employ more than a limited number of foreign workers. But the oil industry has a way of getting over such problems, and few people believe that the government will be able to hold things back for long.  Ever since the war, the government has been carrying out a program of development in the area north of the Arctic Circle. For the past few years this program has had a great deal of success: Torso has been built up into a local capital with a university, a large hospital and a healthy industry. But the oil industry has already started to draw people south, and within a few years the whole northern city could be in ruins.  The effects of the oil industry would not be limited to the north, however. With nearly 100 per cent employment, everyone can see a situation developing in which the service industries and the tourist industry will lose more of their workers to the oil industry. Some smaller industries might even disappear altogether when it becomes cheaper to buy goods from abroad.  The real argument over the oil industry is its effects on the Norwegian way of life. Farmers and fishermen do not make up most of the population, but they are an important part of it because Norwegians see in them many of the qualities that they regard with pride as real Norwegians. And it is the farmers and the fishermen who are most against the oil industry because of the damage that it might cause to the sea and to the countryside and to the whole country.  One Norwegian politician said last week, "We will soon be changed beyond all recognition." According to the passage, the oil industry might lead to   _   in northern Norway. A) the development of industry B) a growth in population C) the failure of the development program D) the development of new towns

Ans:C
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Ques:Recently I had a conversation in Beijing with an adult Chinese friend who was complaining how difficult it was to study English. No surprises there. It is a difficult language to master, just like Chinese. I made a few suggestions based on my experience. One involved a very valuable fact which I learned from my high school Latin and Greek teacher, Dr. Smith.He is a gifted linguist  ,and has an amazing ability to remember things, like poetry, essays, speeches, etc.His advice to us students is that for memorization purposes, there is forty minutes each day in which our memory is more acceptable than it is during the other 23 hours and 20 minutes. This 40-minute "super memory" period is divided into two parts: the 20 minutes before we sleep, and the 20 minutes after we first awake. The theory supporting this is pretty simple. First, the last information we input into our brain before bed has a better chance of taking root than information gained during the noisy daytime; and second, our mind is free of disturbance  when we first awake in the morningso more receptive to inputs, like a blank slate . I took the advice to heart and it served me well in my school years. In my university days, our Chinese teacher would assign us 200 new vocabulary words each day, on which we would be quizzed the following day. Without the "magic" 40-minute technique, there's no way I would have passed those daily quizzes. As far as language study goes, it's not only useful for memorizing vocabulary. It's also a very useful window of time to listen to the language we're studying even with background noise, and even if it's at a level we find difficult to understand. It might be audio language study, aids, or just radio, TV or whatever. Beyond our years of formal  education, memory skills are hugely important in any career. How many times have we heard a speaker read their speech from a prepared text, or read the word-by-word content of a PowerPoint presentation as they present each slide ? These are annoying, boring, and less effective... The author's teacher suggested the 40-minute"super memory" period partly because  _  . A) it is less noisy in the forty minutes than in the daytime B) we are always more peaceful when we awake in the morning C) our brain is more active in the forty minutes than the other time D) the last information gained before bed is more likely to remain

Ans:D
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Ques:While still in its early stages, welfare reform has already been judged a great success in many states--at least in getting people off welfare.It's estimated that more than 2 million people have left the list since 1994. In the past four years, welfare list in Athens County have been cut in half.But 70 percent of the people who left in the past two years took jobs that paid less than $ 6 an hour.The result: The Athens County poverty rate still remains at more than 30 percent --twice the national average.For advocates  for the poor, that's an indication that much more needs to be done. "More people are getting jobs, but it's not making their lives any better," says Kathy Lairn, a policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington.A center analysis of US Census data   nationwide found that between 1995 and 1996, a greater percentage of single, female-headed families were earning money on their own, but that average income for these families actually went down. But for many, the fact that poor people are able to support themselves almost as well without government aid as they did with it is in itself a huge victory."Welfare was a poison.It was a poisonous substance that was poisoning the family," says Robert Rector, a welfare-reform policy analyst."The reform is changing the moral climate in low-income communities.It's beginning to rebuild the work ethic  , which is much more important." Mr.Rector and others argued that once "the habit of dependency is cracked," then the country can make other policy changes aimed at improving living standards. According to the passage,  _   before the welfare reform was carried out. A) the poverty rate was lower B) average living standards were higher C) the average worker was paid higher-wages D) the poor used to rely on government aid

Ans:D
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Ques:A month after Hurricane Katrina, I returned home in New Orleans. There lay my house, reduced to waist-high rains, smelly and dirty. Before the trip, I'd had my car fixed. When the office employee of the garage was writing up the bill, she noticed my Louisiana license plate. "You from New Orleans?" she asked. I said I was, "No charge." She said, and firmly shook her head when I reached for my wallet. The next day I went for a haircut, and the same thing happened. As my wife was studying in Florida, we decided to move there and tried to find a rental house that we could afford while also paying off a mortgage  on our ruined house. We looked at many places, but none was satisfactory. We'd began to accept that we'd have to live in extremely reduced circumstances for a while, when I got a very curious e-mail from a James Kemmedy in California. He'd read some pieces I'd written about our sufferings for state, the online magazine and wanted to give us ("no conditions attached") a new house across the lake from New Orleans. It sounded a good to her return, but I replied, thinking him for his exceptional generosity, then we to go back. Then the University of Florida offered to let him house to me. While he want to England on his one year, paid leave. The rent was rather reasonable. I mentioned the poet's offer to James Kemdedy, and the next day he sent a check covering our entire rent for eight months. Throughout this painful experience, the kindness of strangers has done much to bring back my faith in humanity. It's almost worth losing you wordy possessions to be reminded that people really when given had a channel. The garage employee's attitude toward the author was that of_. A) unconcern B) sympathy C) doubt D) tolerance

Ans:

assistant: B
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