试题库在线考试题库-历年真题模拟试题及答案-考博英语在线试题测试中心-希赛网

同济大学

Read the following nevus report and write a composition of 250〜300 words on Overhaul of National Holiday System in China. Write your composition on the ANSWER SHEET.The Chinese Government announced a major overhaul of its national holiday system recently. The three-day May Day holiday will be cut into one day while the Tomb-sweeping Festival, Dragon Boat Festival and Mid-Autumn Festival will become national holidays. That raises the number of paid holidays from 10 to 11.

Online newspapers are a look into the future and just pondering it raises the question of whether it isn’t nicer getting your daily news curled up in your favorite chair with your ballpoint pen handy to circle items of interest, or scissors ready to snip out articles you want to save. The Gazette Company is betting its subscribers want both electronic and paper options，and so far it seems to be right.The rest of the world is moving into cyberspace more slowly than the United States, and, in the developing world，the Internet has hardly penetrated at all. U. N. Secretary General Kofi Annan is determined to change this through the United Nations Information Technology Service, which will train large numbers of people to lap into the income-enhancing power of the Internet. Annan is also proposing an Internet health network that will provide state-of-the-art medical knowledge to 10,000 clinics and hospitals in poor countries.The onrushing Cyber Age has given newfound power to us all, as seen in Jody Williams’s one-woman organization using e-mail to promote a global ban on land mines. Yet, this is but a glimpse of what’s ahead in the minds of those immersed in this great and accelerating transformation.At Microsoft, Bill Gates predicts that by 2018 major newspapers will “publish their last paper editions and move solely to electronic distribution,” and that by 2020 dictionaries will redefine books as “eBook titles read on screen”.

In his 1976 study of slavery in the United States, Herbert Gutman, like Fogel，Engerman, and Genovese, has rightly stressed the slaves，achievements. But unlike these historians, Gutman gives plantation owners little credit for these achievements. Rather, Gutman argues that one must look to the Black family and the slaves’ extended kinship system to understand how crucial achievements, such as the maintenance of a cultural heritage and the development of a communal consciousness, were possible. His findings compel attention. Gutman recreates the family and extended kinship structure mainly through an ingenious use of what any historian should draw upon, quantifiable data, derived in this case mostly from plantation birth registers. He also uses accounts of ex-slaves to probe the human reality behind his statistics. These sources indicate that the two-parent household predominated in slave quarters just as it did among freed slaves after emancipation. Although Gutman admits that forced separation by sale was frequent, he shows that the slaves’ preference, revealed most clearly on plantations where sale was infrequent, was very much for stable monogamy. In less conclusive fashion Fogel, Engerman, and Genovese had already indicated the predominance of two-parent households; however, only Gutman emphasizes the preference for stable monogamy and points out what stable monogamy meant for the slaves’ cultural heritage. Gutman argues convincingly that the stability of the Black family encouraged the transmission of—and so was crucial in sustaining—the Black heritage of folklore, music, and religious expression from one generation to another, a heritage that slaves were continually fashioning out of their African and American experiences.Gutman’s examination of other facets of kinship also produces important findings. Gutman discovers that cousins rarely married, an exogamous tendency that contrasted sharply with the endogamy practiced by the plantation owners. This preference for exogamy, Gutman suggests, may have derived from West African rules governing marriage, which，though they differed from one tribal group to another, all involved some kind of prohibition against unions with close kin. This taboo against cousins’ marrying is important, argues Gutman, because it is one of many indications of a strong awareness among slaves of an extended kinship network. The fact that distantly related kin would care for children separated from their families also suggests this awareness. When blood relationships were few, as in newly created plantations in the Southwest, “fictive” kinship arrangements took their place until a new pattern of consanguinity developed. Gutman presents convincing evidence that this extended kinship structure—which he believes developed by the mid-to-late eighteenth century—provided the foundations for the strong communal consciousness that existed among slaves.In sum, Gutman’s study is significant because it offers a closely reasoned and original explanation of some of the slaves’ achievements，one that correctly emphasizes the resources that slaves themselves possessed.1.With which of the following statements regarding the resources that historians ought to use would the author of the passage be most likely to agree?2.Which of the following statements about the formation of the Black heritage of folklore, music，and religious expression is best supported by the information presented in the passage?3.Which of the following statements concerning the marriage practices of plantation owners during the period of Black slave in the United States can most logically be inferred from the information in the passage?4.Which of the following best describes the organization of the passage?5.Which of the following is the most appropriate title for the passage based on its content?

For multinational corporations, tax planning has become extremely complex affairs. It has been stated that no multinational corporation possesses the ultimate tax expertise. Therefore，in addition to having their own experts, MNCs rely on heavily on local tax experts and legal counsel.Taxes have a very important impact on foreign direct investment decisions. Taxes will determine the financial structure of subsidiary，and they will influence pricing decisions. They may also lead to the formation of holding companies. An MNC may decide to establish a branch rather than a subsidiary because of a given tax situation. The absence of a tax treaty between the country of a would-be investor and the nation where a foreign investment is to take place might lead to cancellation of investment plans. An unfavorable depreciation allowance may keep the foreign investor out. This unit will deal with the different tax systems in the world and their impact on an MNC’s global strategy. Basically, any tax system can be divided into direct and indirect taxes. Corporate and individual income taxes are direct，value-added taxes，sales taxes，and import duties are indirect taxes. Corporate income taxes (taxes levied on earning) vary among the industrialized nations. France, the United States, Holland, Canada, and Germany have rates of around 50 percent; Italy，the United Kingdom and Japan have rates of between 36 and 40 percent.Less developed countries usually have lower corporate tax rates in order to attract foreign investment. Thus, Brazil has a rate of 30 percent, and Indonesia has a 40 percent tax rate. A corporate tax is levied on taxable earnings. Taxable earnings are more significant than the tax rate itself. They determine what can be deducted before the tax is computed; in other words, these items are tax deductible. Countries differ greatly in determining taxable earnings. Some allow accelerated depreciation, whereby the asset (usually the plant or equipment) is written off at a substantially higher rate during the first years than in the later years. This allows for smaller taxable earnings in the early years. Other countries allow tax-free investment reserves. These are used at a later stage for investment in undeveloped areas of countries or are sent when countries are in a recession. A recent type of tax that has won recognition in the European Common Market is value-added tax (VAT). This is a national sales tax levied at each stage of production or at the sale of consumer goods. The tax is assessed in proportion to the value added during that stage. Generally, manufacturing goods, such as plant and equipment, have been exempted from this tax. In most cases, food items also have been exempted. Here is an example of how VAT works. A tree owner who sells part of a tree to a lumber mill for $ 1 must set aside ten cents VAT to pay to the government. The lumber mill processes the tree into building material and sells the wood for $ 3 to a lumber wholesaler. The mill adds $ 2 in value，and thus sets aside 10 percent of the added value, or twenty cents, to pay to the government. And so the VAT continues until the final sale.The VAT system offers advantages, such as rebates on exports. Profitable and unprofitable firms are taxed alike, as there is no possibility of tax deductions to determine taxable income. A badly run company is, therefore, forced to improve or go out of business. Further, VAT is easy to calculate and collect. But VAT is often accused of having contributed to serious inflation in countries where it was introduced, notably in Western Europe.1.Tax systems can be divided into________.2.One arrives at taxable earnings when________.3.The reason no multinational corporation possesses the ultimate tax expertise is that___________.4.Which of the following is not an advantage of a VAT system?5.Why did the less developed countries usually have lower corporate tax rates?

Having a few too many drinks can mean more than just a blackout or a bad hangover. People who engage in binge drinking are courting danger, experts warn. Binge drinking is most common at colleges and universities, where many adults treat drinking to excess as a rite of passage. A 1997 study from the Harvard School of Public Health reports that 42. 7 % of all college students engage in binge drinking. The well-publicized deaths of several college students from binge drinking in 1997 highlights the risks.An 18-year-old freshman at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology drank himself into a coma and died. A 20-year-old fraternity pledge at Louisiana State University died from alcohol poisoning.“Alcohol is always toxic. It’s really a poison，”said Steven Schandler，professor of psychology at Chapman University and chief of addiction research at the Long Beach Veterans Affairs Health Care System, who added that binge drinking can lead to alcohol poisoning. “Because it’s a poison, like any other poison, if you take in a little bit, you might tolerate it, but if you take in a lot, you might die. Administrators and doctors say that college freshmen are especially at risk for alcohol poisoning, in part because they often lack the maturity to refrain or stop. And for some who may be new to drinking, their bodies have a relatively low tolerance for alcohol.But problems with alcohol aren’t limited to teenagers and young adults. A 39-year-old Buena Park man recently recalled that two days of steady imbibing on a trip to Las Vegas several years ago left him in bad shape. Doctors say blood alcohol levels of about 4 %—five times the legal intoxication limit of 0. 8%—can induce potentially lethal side effects in most people. Alcoholics have higher limits. Although not well understood，enzymes that break down and expel alcohol in the liver and kidneys do so more effectively in seasoned drinkers, allowing them to tolerate more, Schandler said. Regardless of a person’s tolerance, alcohol exerts its influence when the amount of alcohol taken in exceeds the amount that the body can digest. At that point, alcohol passes from the bloodstream into the brain and begins its attack. Alcohol first affects the brain’ s cortex，which controls more sophisticated thought processes. That’ s why people generally become less inhibited under the influence of alcohol，and some are more willing to try things that could be dangerous to themselves or others.Coordination, mainly controlled by the cerebellum, is the next to go, leading to slurred speech and difficulty walking in a straight line. As excessive drinking continues, alcohol moves deeper into the brain until “it gets to the very basic structure of the brain stem that affects things like respiration and heart beat,” said Dr. Bret Ginther, an assistant clinical professor of emergency medicine at UC Irvine.At that point, people may pass out or fall into a coma. Their vital signs may weaken. “The most common cause of death from alcohol poisoning is respiratory arrest，” said Ginther. Eventually, the heart simply stops. Getting to that point is fairly unusual. But Ginther said that at least once or twice a month, patients are brought into the emergency room at UCI Medical Center in Orange suffering from alcohol poisoning. College officials say they are always on the lookout for alcohol abuse but say there is no fail-safe method to keep students from drinking. Many colleges try to educate students, especially those caught drinking illegally or causing disruptions. The Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention in Newton, Mass，advocates a community-based approach that includes administrators, faculty, police and businesses in the fight to curb binge drinking, in part by being on alert for people abusing alcohol. The center also stresses the importance of parental guidance and urges parents to have frank discussions with their children about excessive drinking.1.From the passage，we can learn that “binge drinking” is ______.2.Why are college freshmen especially at risk for alcohol poisoning according to administrators and doctors?3.What can enzymes do when one is drunk?4.Which of the following is TRUE?5.Binge drinking may most seriously lead to__________.

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