1、专业八级-481 及答案解析(总分：100.00，做题时间：90 分钟)一、READING COMPREHENSIO(总题数：5，分数：100.00)Mucky roads, unpredictable weather, and wet ground that sags beneath your feet. It must be springtime in New England. Come March, receding snow transforms the landscape into a soft, sloppy mess. New Englanders call this metam
2、orphosis “mud season“, the period of recovery between the long, brutal winter and the warm summer ahead. But with no banner activity to accompany itthink leaf-peeping in the fall or skiing in wintermud season brings a serious lull in tourism. A group of inns and hotels say that“s the perfect excuse
3、to design a vacation package. The result? Getaways that focus on food, drink, and activities inspired by mud season. Add greater room availability and discount prices, and all that muck seems a little more bearable. For guests who are hungry after a winter in hibernation, the Inn at Crystal Lake, a
4、12-room bed-and-breakfast in the tiny town of Eaton, offers “Swine in the Mud“, smoky, thick pork chops topped with honey-chipotle barbecue sauce. To round out the meal, co-owner and bartender Tim Ostendorf whips up a “Here“s Mud in Your Eye“, vodka shaken with Kahlua liqueur and Hershey“s syrup. Cr
5、ystal Lake isn“t the only establishment with a mud-themed menu. The Inn by the Sea in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, serves warm raspberry scones drizzled with “Maine Mud“ chocolate sauce for breakfast. Devising such recipes can be taxing, says owner Maureen McQuade. “You think that putting together a promo
6、tion like this is a snap,“ she says. “You have to drink a lot of chocolate martinis.“ But someone has to do it. Visits to the region between ski season and summertime drop sharply, as statistics from the New Hampshire tourism office bear out. In the White Mountains, where Eaton is located, tourists
7、spent around $176 million in the winter of 2002. That spring they spent just $77 million. In the Lakes Region, popular for boating and fishing, visitors spent almost $276 million in summer 2001. That spring, spending was around $65 million. “We don“t have the crowds like we have in fall or summer,“
8、says Ostendorf. “It“s a quieter time.“ Some inns use the relative calm as a selling point. For vacationers in need of post-winter rejuvenation, the Wayside Inn in Bethlehem, N.H., includes a mud wrapwith a choice of three kinds of mudin its mud season package. “You tend to want a quiet weekend, not
9、to do much, get away from the hustle,“ says Wayside co-owner Kathe Hofmann. Lower prices are another incentive. For participating inns, costs for a two-night stay with some meals and activities included range from $295 to $899, down as much as $200 compared with peak season. For those who like a lit
10、tle testosterone mixed in with their dirt, the Equinox Resort the banking sector is stronger and the financial markets have been able to respond the enormous trading volume. “It is not the Fed“s job to manage the stock market,“ says Mr. Kretzmer. But the Fed will keep a close watch on Wall Street. I
11、f the market were to shave another 1,500 points off the Dow by the end of September, “then the Fed would think about lowering interest rates,“ says Mr. Gramley. In his view, the Fed“s main concern will be the impact of a sliding market on consumer confidence; since 40 percent of the nation has inves
12、tments in the stock market, any prolonged slide might make individuals feel less wealthy. They would cut back on vacations and “splurge“ purchases. He expects the central bank to watch the next consumer confidence surveys and housing statistics closely.（分数：20.00）(1).Mr. Kretzmer believes that the Fe
13、d needn“t intervene NOT because of -|_|-.（分数：5.00）A.steady financial marketsB.increasing strength of the backs sectorC.inaccurate information the market showsD.its influence on other continents(2).The relationship between the fifth and sixth paragraphs is that -|_|-.（分数：5.00）A.both state the emergen
14、ce of economic recessionB.the latter is the logical result of the formerC.both present the reasons of non-interferenceD.the former generalizes and the latter gives examples(3).What does this passage mainly talk about?（分数：5.00）A.Threat of Deflation in US.B.The Tendency of US Economy.C.Economic Situat
15、ion in US.D.The Sign of Recession in US Economy.(4).What did President Clinton try to do during his trip to Moscow?（分数：5.00）The recession came home to Price Waterhouse“s consultancy practice in the middle of 1990. Annual growth rate of 25%-30% started to dive, and the practice began reorganizing to
16、survive the slump. Management consultancies, ironically, have complex and disparate bodies to manage. PW is an international outfit run by partners through a network of offices. Like most professions, management consultants tend to be content to let others take the lead in office technology and put
17、off any major investment to another day. In 1990, PW“s UK consultancy practice could muster only one personal computer for every three or four staff. The solution PW chose was remarkable on two fronts. It involved a form of technology that remains foreign, if not downright outlandish, to most big co
18、mpanies; and the decision to embrace that technology was taken not as a result of a detailed cost justification, but as a simple “leap of faith“. Mark Austin, the UK partner leading the program of change, says: “On pure cost grounds we would never have gone ahead, but our American practice had found
19、 that there were enormous qualitative benefits. We are finding the same.“ Three years on, that leap is still difficult to qualify in hard business terms, but nobody within PW doubts the value of the move. The solution chosen by PW is groupware, which is likely to become the IT industry“s most hyped
20、product of the decade, or show its greatest contribution to business efficiency since the invention of the PC. There are several groupware products but the market is increasingly being dominated by Lotus Notes, which is used by PW and runs on a variety of desktop computers. Of the 20,000 Notes users
21、 worldwide, PW is one of the biggest groupware followers there is, but firms such as General Motors and Unilever are also investing heavily in the technology. The recession has left many big companies with leaner, overstretched management teams, often working at different locations, and with a fraye
22、d corporate culture. Groupware aims to be the glue that binds these threads together. The problem for groupware suppliers is that the software hopes to be all things to all men. The sets of discs that come out of the software box do very little on their own; it is how you tailor them that matters. P
23、W“s groupware operations are among the most sophisticated ever set up, but in operation they look deceptively simple and cover growing panoply of applications. For example, staffs fill in on-screen forms logging the potential clients they are talking to, the value of the contract under discussion, a
24、nd how they assess the likely outcome. Other applications cover the management of current jobs. The databases behind the groupware network then correlate the information input in different ways. Once the groupware application is created, updating happens automatically, unseen by the user. It could e
25、ven incorporate stories from electronic wire feeds, so a manager whose client is involved in a takeover bid can cull electronic “clippings“ about a subject simply by asking, once, for all stories on a subject to be “clipped“. One effect is that the workings of the firm become more open and the commo
26、n, corporate store of knowledge gained from previous jobs can be accessed easily. Subject to confidentiality considerations, people can see what others are doing and tap into that information. Thus, if a PW consultant in Aberdeen has a client who needs advice on something to do with the oil industry
27、 and program writing in a specific computer language, he can easily discover whether any other PW project has touched upon that area at any other office, even in Europe or America. If somebody is leaving the firm, the system will note the fact and, the day before he or she leaves, ask for the return
28、 of all outstanding confidential documents and the individual“s laptop computer.（分数：20.00）(1).The technology that PW chose -|_|-.（分数：5.00）A.had never been used by any other companyB.was believed to reduce the costsC.could help the company get out of troubleD.was rather new to most big companies(2).A
29、ccording to the passage, groupware is -|_|-.（分数：5.00）A.a set of hardware PW bought for self-protectionB.a kind of glue PW used for repairC.a technology that contributes to efficiencyD.a worker PW hired to examine the computer(3).The main purpose of the passage is to -|_|-.（分数：5.00）A.advertise for gr
30、oupwareB.publicize new business theoryC.tell readers an interesting storyD.present useful information(4).What does the word “slump“ in the first paragraph mean?（分数：5.00）Thirty-seven men have been elected President since 1789, and the American people have applied two different standards in evaluating
31、 their achievements. The first was formulated by Alexander Hamilton who test-drove the presidency in the Federalist papers. The difficulty of winning the job, he argued, virtually guaranteed it would be held by the best men. “Talents for low intrigue, and the little art of popularity“, could “elevat
32、e a man to the first honors in a single state“. But only “characters pre-eminent for ability and virtue“ could impress the nation as a whole. The first seven Presidents, who filled the job for almost a half-century, confirmed Hamilton“s prediction. George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson
33、were heroes of the American Revolution. James Madison was the prime mover in the push to write and ratify the Constitution. James Monroe and John Quincy Adams had signal triumphs: Monroe successfully fought against the English troops during the war in 1814, and Adams, as Monroe“s Secretary of State,
34、 conceived the Monroe Doctrine, which waved Europe off the western hemisphere. Andrew Jackson, the frontier warrior, beat the Creek Indians in the old Southwest and the British in New Orleans. It was not until the eighth President, Martin Van Buren, that America aimed lower. Van Buren was a smooth s
35、elf-made man from upstate New York who clambered to leadership first in his state, then in the Democratic Party nationwide. He was a wire puller and wheeler-dealer. Former President John Quincy Adams praised his “calmness“, “gentleness“ and “discretion“, though not his “profound dissimulation“ and “
36、fawning servility“. Van Buren was a pol, first, last and always. He showed that intrigue and the art of popularity were now enough to win the White House. Since 1841, most successful presidential candidates have passed the Van Buren test. The electorate wants leaders who have played the game, even i
37、f they haven“t been All-Stars. It“s a low but sensible hurdle; Obama qualifies by that standard. Voters also don“t take kindly to non-politicians: two businessmen, Wendell Willkie and Ross Perot, made serious runs for the White House, although neither came close. Americans will elect a political neo
38、phyte only if he passes the Hamilton test of pre-eminent ability. Ulysses S. Grant and Dwight Eisenhower had never held elective office, but they won their wars. Some Presidents pass both tests: Theodore Roosevelt fought well in the Spanish-American War and in New York State politics. Among the pros
39、pective 2008 candidates, only one has shown pre-eminent ability: Rudy Giuliani, in solving the crime problem in the nation“s largest city and in his response to 9/11. But is pre-eminent ability a reliable predictor of success? It doesn“t guarantee victory at the polls. Henry Clay was master of legis
40、lative finesse who helped broker the Missouri Compromises of 1820-1821, a deal between slave states and free states that kept the two sides from each other“s throats for 30 years. Yet he failed to become President in three tries. Great achievements don“t guarantee great presidencies even when the pr
41、e-eminent man wins. The Eisenhower Administration, scorned by eggheads of the left and right while it was going on, has been revised upward by later scholars, and a similar process is lifting Grant“s presidency from the cellar to which an unholy alliance of neo-Confederates and genteel reformers had
42、 consigned it. But neither man will ever be considered as great in peace as he was in war. There have also been ordinary-seeming politicians who became epoch-making Presidents. After the 1932 Democratic Convention picked New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt, journalist H. L. Mencken described him
43、 as a man “whose competence was plainly in doubt.“ The Republican nomination of one-term Illinois Congressman Abraham Lincoln in 1860 brought this sneer from diarist George Templeton Strong: “He cut a great many rails, and worked on a flatboat in early youth; all which is somehow presumptive evidenc
44、e of his statesmanship.“ Statesmanship is an art, which means there is always room for inspiration, and for grace. We are right to look for a record of pre-eminent ability when we can find it. But the basic doctrine of republican government, that all men are created equal, can be a surprise bonus fo
45、r some leaders, as well as a guarantee of rights for all of us. Sometimes greatness appears in unlikely places, even in ordinary pols from Illinois.（分数：20.00）(1).In Hamilton“s view, “the best men“ include all the following EXCEPT -|_|-.（分数：5.00）A.those who are capable and noble-mindedB.those who hav
46、e the art of popularityC.those who confirmed Hamilton“s predictionD.John Adams who made great achievements(2).Van Buren could win the presidency NOT because -|_|-.（分数：5.00）A.of his intrigue and the art of popularityB.he was a self-made man from upstate New YorkC.of his “profound dissimulation“ and “
47、fawning servility“D.the Americans changed their standards(3).What does the passage mainly talk about?（分数：5.00）A.Obama will probably become President according to the American history.B.All the presidential candidates should pass both the two mentioned tests.C.Who will be the next U.S. President is s
48、till not clear before election.D.Any presidential candidate would break the Hamilton and van Buren“s tests.(4).What does the word “finesse“ in the fourth paragraph mean?（分数：5.00）What makes a great communicator? A willingness to share that driving sense of mission and a burning faith that others will
49、 embrace, too. As an entrepreneur, you have an extraordinary story to tell. But whether you“re pitching or promoting a service, product, company, or cause, how you craft and deliver your message could mean the difference between making the sale or being shown the door. Some people are simply better than others at articulating their message. Raising the bar. My work takes me across the country and exposes me to spokespeople in a variety of industries. But the goals are always the same: T
