Part ⅠListening Comprehension  (40  min)

In Sections A, B and C you will hear everything ONCE ONLY. Listen carefully a nd then answer the questions that follow. Mark the correct response to each ques tion on your Coloured Answer Sheet.

SECTION A TALK

Questions 1 to 5 refer to the talk in this section. At the end of the talk you w ill be given 15 seconds to answer each of the following five questions. Now list en to the talk.

1. Changes in the size of the World Bank’s operations refer to ___.

A. the expansion of its loan programme

B. the inclusion of its hard loans

C. the inclusion of its soft loans  

D. the previous lending policies

2. What actually made the Bank change its overall lending strategy?

A. Reluctance of people in poor countries to have small families.

B. Lack of basic health services and inequality in income distribution.

C. The discovery that a low fertility rate would lead to economic development.

D. Poor nutrition and low literacy in many poor countries of the world.

3. The change in emphasis of the Bank’s lending policies meant that the Bank would ___.

A. be more involved in big infrastructure projects

B. adopt similar investment strategies in poor and rich countries

C. embark upon a review of the investment in huge dams and steel mills

in projects that would benefit the low-income sector of society

4. Which of the following is NOT a criticism of the bank?

A. Colossal travel expenses of its staff.  

B. Fixed annual loans to certain countries.

C. Limited impact of the Bank’s projects.  

D. Role as a financial deal maker.

5. Throughout the talk, the speaker is ___ while introducing the Wor ld Bank.

A. biased     

B. unfriendly     

C. objective     

D. sensational

SECTION B CONVERSATION

  Questions 6 to 10 are based on a conversation. At the end of the conversation yo u will be given 15 seconds to answer the question. Now listen to the conversatio n.

6. The man sounds surprised at the fact that ___.

A. many Australians are taking time off to travel

B. the woman worked for some time in New Zealand

C. the woman raised enough money for travel

D. Australians prefer to work in New Zealand

7. We learn that the woman liked Singapore mainly because of its  ___.

A. cleanness              

B. multi-ethnicity

C. modern characteristics        

D. shopping opportunities

8. From the conversation we can infer that Kaifeng and Yinchuan impressed the woman with their ___.

A. respective locations     

B. historic interests      

C. ancient tombs                

D. Jewish descendants

9. Which of the following words can best describe the woman’s feelings a bout Tibet?

A. Amusement.      

B. Disbelief. 

C. Ecstasy.  

D. Delig ht

10. According to the conversation, it was       that made the woman ready to stop traveling.

A. the unsettledness of travel

B. the difficulties of trekking

C. the loneliness of travel

D. the unfamiliar environment

SECTION C NEWS BROADCAST

  Questions 11 and 12 are based on the following news. At the end of the news item , you will be given 30 seconds to answer the questions. Now listen to the news.

11. Mike Tyson was put in prison last August because he  ___.

A. violated the traffic law

B. illegally attacked a boxer

C. attacked sb. after a traffic accident

D. failed to finish his contract

12. The license granted to Tyson to fight will be terminated ___.

A. by the end of the year        

B. in over a year

C. in August                        

D. in a few weeks

Question 13 is based on the following news. At the end of the news item, you wil l be given 15 seconds to answer the question. Now listen to the news.

13. The Russian documents are expected to draw great attention because  ___.

A. they cover the whole story of the former US president

B. the assassin used to live in the former Soviet Union

C. they are the only official documents released about Kennedy

D. they solved the mystery surrounding Kennedy’s assassination

Question 14 and 15 are based on the following news. At the end of the news item,

you will be   given 30 seconds to answer the questions. New listen to the news.

14. In the recent three months, Hong Kong’s unemployment rate has ___.

A. increased slowly          

B. decreased gradually

C. stayed steady                

D. become unpredictable

15. According to the news, which of the following statements is TRUE?

A. Business conditions have worsened in the past three months.

B. The past three months have seen a declining trend in job offers.

C. The rise of unemployment rate in some sectors equals the fall in others.

D. The unemployment rate in all sectors of the economy remains unchanged.

SECTION D NOTE-TAKING AND GAP-FILLING

Fill each of gaps with ONE word. You may refer to your notes. Make sure the word you fill in is both grammatically and semantically acceptable.

The Press Conference

The press conference has certain advantages. The first advantage lies with the

(1)___ nature of the event itself; public officials are supposed to  1.___

submit to scrutiny by responding to various questions at a press conference.

Secondly, statements previously made at a press conference can be used as a

(2)___ in judging following statements or policies. Moreover, in case  2.___

of important events, press conferences are an effective way to break the news

to groups of reporters.

However, from the point of view of (3)___, the press conference  3.___

possesses some disadvantages, mainly in its(4)___ and news source.  4.___

The provider virtually determines the manner in which a press conference

proceeds. This, sometimes, puts news reporters at a(n)(5)___ , as can  5.___

be seen on live broadcasts of news conferences.

Factors in getting valuable information preparation: a need to keep up to date on journalistic subject matter;

—(6)___ of the news source:  6.___

1 ) news source’s (7)___ to  7.___

   provide information;

2)news-gathering methods.

Conditions under which news reporters cannot trust the information

provided by a news source

—not knowing the required information;

—knowing and willing to share the information, but without

       (8)___ skills;  8.___

—knowing the information, but unwilling to share;

—willing to share, but unable to recall.

(9)___ of questions asked  9.___

Ways of improving the questions:

       no words with double meanings;

       no long questions;

—specific time, place, etc.;

—(10)      questions;  10.___

—clear alternatives, or no alternatives in answers.

Part ⅡProofreading and Error Correction  (15  min)

  The following passage contains TEN errors. Each line contains a maximum of ONE error. In each case, only ONE word is involved. You should proofread the passage and correct it in the following way. For a wrong word,      underline the wrong word and wri te the correct one in the blank provided at the end of the line. For a missing word,         mark the position of the missing word with a “∧”sign and write the word you believe to be missing in the blank provided at the end of the line. For an unnecessary word      cross out the unnecessary word with a slash “/’ and put the word in the blank provided at the end of the line.

Example

When∧art museum wants a new exhibit,          (1) an it never／  buys things in finished form and hangs        (2) never them on the wall. When a natural history museum      wants an exhibition, it must often build it.             (3) exhibit

     During the early years of this century, wheat was seen as the

very lifeblood of Western Canada. People on city streets watched

the yields and the price of wheat in almost as much feeling as if  1.___

they were growers. The marketing of wheat became an increasing  2.___

favorite topic of conversation.

     War set the stage for the most dramatic events in marketing

the western crop. For years, farmers mistrusted speculative grain

selling as carried on through the Winnipeg Grain Exchange.

Wheat prices were generally low in the autumn, so farmers could  3.___

not wait for markets to improve. It had happened too often that

they sold their wheat soon shortly after harvest when farm debts  4.___

were coming due, just to see prices rising and speculators getting rich.  5.___

On various occasions, producer groups, asked firmer control,  6.___

but the government had no wish to become involving, at  7.___

least not until wartime when wheat prices threatened to run

wild.

     Anxious to check inflation and rising life costs, the federal  8.___

government appointed a board of grain supervisors to deal with

deliveries from the crops of 1917 and 1918. Grain Exchange

trading was suspended, and farmers sold at prices fixed by the

board. To handle with the crop of 1919, the government  9.___

appointed the first Canadian Wheat Board, with total authority to  10.___

buy, sell, and set prices.

Part ⅢReading 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 Coloured Answer Sheet.

   TEXT A

     “Twenty years ago, Blackpool turned its back on the sea and tried to make i tself 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 fami ly destination again.” To say that Blackpool neglected the sea is to put it mil d ly. In 1976 the European Community, as it then was called, instructed member nati ons to make their beaches conform to certain minimum standards of cleanliness wi thin ten years. Britain, rather than complying, took the novel strategy of conte nding 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 w hich Luxembourg had mere listed public bathing beaches than the whole of the Uni ted 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 U nion, 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.

     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 aestheti c improvements at the same time, to try to draw people back to it.” Blackpool rec e ntly spent about .4 million building new kiosks for vendors and improving seat ing around the Central Pier and plans to spend a further $ 15 million on various amenity projects.

     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 comforta bly 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 c rowded.”

     Welsby comes from Preston, 20 miles down the road, and has been visiting Bl ackpool 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 san dcastle. “Two hundred thousand people they’d have on this beach sometimes.”W elsby said. “You can’t imagine it now, can you?”

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

     “You can’t imagine how exciting it was to come here for the day when we w er e 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 kn ows what else.”She stared out over the glittery water. “We’ll never see thos e days again. It’s sad really.”

     “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 th e 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 invita t ion to a heart attack, but it was delicious. Far out over the sea the sun was se tting with such splendor that I would almost have sworn I could hear the water h iss where it touched.

     Behind me the lights of Blackpool Tower were just twinkling on, and the str eets were beginning to fill with happy evening throngs. In the purply light of d usk the town looked peaceful and happy — enchanting even — and there was an engaging air of expectancy, of fun about to happen. Somewhat to my surprise, I r ealized that this place was beginning to grow on me.

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

A. will continue to remain as an entertainment centre

B. complied with EC’s standards of clearliness

C. had no swimming beaches all along

D. is planning to revive its former attraction

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

A. have as many beaches as Luxumbourg

B. have seriously polluted drinking water

C. boast some imposing seafront sights

D. attract few domestic holiday makers

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 generalizin g. 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.

     In fact, the logic of catastrophe was pretty much the same in Thailand, Mal aysia, Indonesia and South Korea. (Japan is a very different story. ) In each ca se investors——mainly, but not entirely, foreign banks who had made short-term loans——all tried to pull their money out at the same time. The result was a co mbined 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 in vestors were trying not only to convert long-term assets into cash, but to conve rt 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 compa nies that had borrowed in dollars would go bankrupt; if they tried to support th eir currencies by pushing up interest rates, the same firms would probably go bu st from the combination of debt burden and recession. In practice, countries’s plit the difference——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 r eal: excessively cozy relationships between government and business really did l ead 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 investme nts that look foolish in retrospect seemed sensible at the time.

     Given that there were no good policy options, was the policy response mainl y on the fight track? There was frantic blame-shifting when everything in Asia s eemed to be going wrong: now there is a race to claim credit when some things ha ve started to go right. The international Monetary Fund points to Korea’s recov e ry—— and more generally to the fact that the sky didn’t fall after all —— a s  proof that its policy recommendations were right. Never mind that other IMF cli ents have done far worse, and that the economy of Malaysia —— which refused IM F help, and horrified respectable opinion by imposing capital controls ——also seems to be on the mend. Malaysia’s prime Minister, by contrast, claims full cr e dit for any good news——even though neighbouring economies also seem to have bo ttomed out.

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

      Will the patients stage a full recovery? It depends on exactly what you me an by “full”. South Korea’s industrial production is already above its pre-cr isi s 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 doomsa yer. 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.

19. According to the passage, which of the following is NOT the writer’s opinion?

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

B. Countries all found themselves in an economic dilemma.

C. Withdrawal of foreign capital resulted in the crisis.

D. Most governments chose one of the two options.

20. The writer thinks that those Asian countries ___.

A. well deserved the punishment

B. invested in a senseless way at the time

C. were unduly punished in the crisis

D. had bad relationships between government and business

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

A. were far from a panacea in all cases

B. were feasible in their recipient countries

C. failed to work in their recipient countries

D. were rejected unanimously by Asian countries

22. At the end of the passage, the writer seems to think that a full reco very of the Asian economy is ___.

A. due   

B. remote   

C. imaginative   

D. unpredictable