39. In the sentence “One oddity about the DOJ’s strategy is that the experiment could conceivably sink its own case.”(para.4), the expression “sink its own case” most probably means that _________.
(A) counterattack the opposition

(B) lead to blocking of porn sites

(C) provide evidence to disprove the case

(D) give fullground to support the case


40. When Kurt Opsahl says that “They should be able to take advantage of the Internet without worrying about Big Brother looking over their shoulders.” (para.5), the expression “Big Brother” is used to refer to _________.
(A) a friend or relative showingmuch concern

(B) a colleague who ismuch more experienced

(C) a dominating and all-powerful ruling power

(D) a benevolent and democratic organization


Section 2Answering questions(20 points, 4 pointsforeach)
Directions: Read the following passages and then answer IN COMPLETE SENTENCES the questions following each passage.

Use only information from the passage you have just read and write your answer in the corresponding space in your ANSWER SHEET.


Passage 3
Millions of elderly Germans received a notice from the Health & Social Security Ministry earlier this month that struck a damaging blow to the welfare state. The statement informed them that their pensions were being cut. The reductions come as a stop-gap measure to control Germany’s ballooning pension crisis. Not surprisingly, it was an unwelcome change for senior citizens such as Sabine Wetzel, a 67-year-old retired bank teller, who was told her state pension would be cut by $12.30, or 1% to $1,156.20 a month. “It was a real shock,” she says. “My pension had always gone up inthe past.”
There’s more bad news on the way. On Mar. 11, Germany’s lower house of Parliament passed a bill gradually cutting state pensions --which have been rising steadily since World War II --from 53% of average wages now to 46% by 2020. And Germany is not alone. Governments across Western Europe are racing to curb pension benefits. In Italy, the government plans to raise the minimum retirement age from 57 to 60, while France will require that civil servants put in 40 years rather than 37.5 to qualify for a full pension. The reforms are coming despite tough opposition from unions, leftist politicians, and pensioners’groups.
The explanation is simple: Europeans are living longer and having fewer children. By 2030 there will only be two workers per pensioner, compared with four in 2000. With fewer young workers paying into the system, cuts are being made to cover a growing shortfall. The gap between money coming in and payments going out could top $10 billion this year in Germany alone. “In the future, a state pension alone will no longer be enough to maintain the living standards employees had before they retired,” says German Health & Social Security Minister Ulla Schmidt. Says Italian Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti: “The welfare state is producing too few cradles and toofew graves.”
Of course, those population trends have been forecast for years. Some countries, such as Britain and the Netherlands, have responded by making individuals and their employers assume more of the responsibility for pensions. But many Continental governments dragged their feet. Now,the rapid runup in costs is finally forcing them to act. State-funded pension payments make up around 12% of gross domestic product in Germany and France and 15% in Italy——two percentage points more than 20 years ago. Pensions account for an average 21% of government spending across the European Union. The

U.S. Social Security system, by contrast, consumes just 4.8% of GDP. The rising cost is having serious repercussions on key European nations’commitments to fiscal restraint. “Governments have no choice but to make pension reform a priority,” says Antonio Cabral, deputy director of the European Commission’s Directorate General for Economic & FinancialAffairs.
Just as worrisome is the toll being exacted on the private sector. Corporate contributions to state pension systems --which make up 19.5% of total gross pay in Germany --add to Europe’s already bloated labor costs. That, in turn, blunts manufacturers’ competitiveness and keeps unemployment rates high. According to the Institute of German Economics in Cologne, benefit costs reached a record 41.7% of gross wages in Germany last year, compared with 37.4% a decade before. French cement manufacturer Lafarge says pension cost of $121 million contributed to a 9% fall in operating profits lastyear.
To cope, Germany and most of its EU partners are using tax breaks to encourage employees to put money into private pensions schemes. But even if private pensions become more popular, European governments will have to increase minimum retirement ages and reduce public pensions. While today’s seniors complain about reduced benefits, the next generation of retirees may look back on their parents’ pension checks with envy.
41. Paraphrase Italian Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti’s statement “The welfare state is producing too few cradles and too few graves.” (para.3)

42. What is implied by the last sentence of the passage “While today’s seniors complain about reduced benefits, the next generation of retirees may look back on their parents’pensionchecks with envy.”?


Passage 4

In the old days, it was all done with cakes. For Marcel Proust, it was a visit to Mother’s for tea and madeleines that provided the access to “the vast structure of recollection” that was to become his masterpiece on memory and nostalgia, “Remembrance of Past Things.” These days, it’s not necessary to evoke the past: you can’t move withouttripping over it.
In an age zooming forward technologically, why all the backward glances? The Oxford English Dictionary’s first definition of nostalgia reads: “acute longing for familiar surroundings; severe homesickness.” With the speed of computers doubling every 18 months, and the net doubling in size in about half that, no wonder we’re aching for familiar surroundings. Since the cornerstone of the Information Age is change, anything enduring becomes precious. “People are looking for something authentic,” says McLaren. Trouble is, nostalgia has succumbed to trends in marketing, demographics and technology. “Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be,” says Michael J. Wolf, senior partner at Booz-Allen & Hamilton in New York. “These are the new good olddays.”
Baby boomers form the core of the nostalgia market. The boomers, defined by American demographers as those born between 1946 and 1964, are living long and prosperous lives. In both Europe andAmerica, they remain the Holy Grail for admen, and their past has become everyone’s present. In a study on “entertainment imprinting,” two American marketing professors, Robert Schindler and Morris Holbrook, asked people ranging in age from 16 to 86 which popular music from the past they liked best. People’s favorite songs, they found, tended to be those that were popular when they were about 24, with their affection for pop songs diminishing on either side of that age. Doubtless Microsoft knows about entertainment imprinting, or at least nostalgia. The company hawks its latest Explorer to the strains of Simon and Garfunkel’s “Homeward Bound,” just as it launched Windows 98 to the tune of “Start Me up” by the Rolling Stones. Boomers remember both tunes from their 20s.
If boomers are one market that values memories, exiles are another. According to the International Organization of Migration, more than 150 million people live today in a country other than the one where they were born—double the number that did so in 1965. This mass movement has sources as dire as tyranny and as luxurious as the freedoms of an EU passport. But exiles and refugees share one thing: homes left behind. Type in “nostalgia” on the search engine Google, and one of the first sites that pop up is the nostalgia page of The Iranian, an online site for Iran’s exiles, most of whom fled after 1978’s Islamic revolution. Perhaps the savviest exploitation of nostalgia has been the secondhand-book site alibris.com, which features stories of clients’ rediscovering long-lost books on it. One John Mason Mings writes of the glories of finding a book with information on “Kickapoo Joy Juice,” ad dreaded medicine of his youth.APennsylvanian waxes over alibris’s recovery of his first-grade primer” Down cherry Street.” The Net doesn’t merely facilitate nostalgia—it promotes it. Web-based auction houses have helped jump-start markets for vintage items, form marbles to Apple Macintoshes.

Cutting-edge technology, designed to be transient, has even bred its own instanostalgia. Last year a $666 Apple I went for $18,000 to a British collector at a San Francisco auction. “Historic! Microsoft Multiplan for Macintosh” crows one item on eBay’s vintage Apple section. Surf to The Net Nostalgia Quiz to puzzle over questions like “In the old days,Altavista used to have which one of these URLs?”
Those who don’t remember their history are condemned to repeat it. Or so entertainment moguls hope, as they market ‘70s TV hits like “Charlie’s Angels” and “Scooby Doo,” out next year, to a generation that can’t remember them the first time round. If you’ve missed a Puff Daddy track or a “Sopranos” episode, panic not. The megahits of today are destined to be the golden oldies of 2020, says Christopher Nurko of the branding consultant FutureBrand. “I guarantee you, Madonna’s music will be used to sell everything,” he says. “God help me, I hope it’s not selling insurance.” It could be. When we traffic in the past, nothing’s sacred.
43. Explain the beginning sentence “In the old days, it was all done withcakes.”

44. What is the other big group besides baby boomers which values memories?What do these people share?

45. What is “nostalgia market”? What do they sell in the nostalgia


market?
Part III. Writing(30 points)

46. Please reflect on the following opinion and write an essay of about 400 wordselaborating yourview with a well-defined title.
Some people believe the key of the reform in the education system is a well-shared awareness that educations is there, instead of simply offering the knowledge important to the students, to improve the students in an all-round way, and especially to guide them to a careful pondering over such fundamental issues as life itself and social responsibility. An undue emphasis on knowledge-education and the resultant ignorance over the guidance to the students to a proper understanding of life will bring us nothing but a large number of “memorizing machines”. We can never expect a group of young people well prepared for the real social life.