问答题 Practice 1 　　France today is no superpower, but French influence in some spheres is significant. Nothing has cemented French influence in the world like the decision made by the victorious World War II powers in 1945 to include France as one of the five permanent, veto-wielding members of the Security Council. Until the end of the Cold War, France rarely found itself in disagreement with Britain or the U.S. on major issues. But the U. N. veto today takes on larger significance as France struggles to decide whether it wants to lead the European Union in defiance of American power or in partnership with it. 　　As America’s great media outlets have begun preparing for coverage of the D-Day celebrations, the question of a “grand gesture” by the French toward the American war in Iraq, has been raised. Administration officials hint that. perhaps，just perhaps，the French President wm use the occasion of France's rescue as an opportunity to square the accounts—to issue a blanket endorsement of America 78 plan for Iraq’s future and throw its support behind the transfer of power looming at the end of the month. France certainly wants the United States-to be successful in Iraq at this point. But France seems unlikely to see D-Day as an opportunity to make good on a 60-year-old debt. Beyond nice speeches and some truly fine cuisine, don't expect France to liberate America from Iraq.

问答题 Practice 4 　　Charles Darwin didn’t want to murder God, as he once put it. But he did. He didn’t want to defy his fellow Cantabrigians, his gentlemanly Victorian society, his devout wife. But he did. He waited 20 years to publish his theory of natural selection, but—fittingly, after another scientist threatened to be first—he did. 　　Before Darwin, most people accepted some version of biblical creation. Humans were seen as the apotheosis of godly architecture. Humans could thus be an accident of natural selection, not a direct product of God. Worries about how much his theory would shake society exacerbated the strange illnesses he suffered. It’s also worth noting that Darwin’s life wasn’t Darwinian: he achieved his wealth through inheritance, not competition, and some might say his sickly children suffered because they were inbred. 　　Darwin’s theories still provoke opposition. One hundred and forty years after The Origin of Species, backers of creationism have made a comeback in states like Kansas, pushing evolution out of the schoolroom. Yet Darwinism remains one of the most successful scientific theories ever promulgated. There is hardly an element of humanity—not capitalism, not gender relations, certainly not biology—that can be fully understood without its help.

问答题 Practice 6 　　None of us can afford to be complacent about our command of English. For most of the time, of course, there is no problem: we are dealing with family and friends on everyday affairs; and what is more, we are usually talking to them, not writing. It is in ordinary talk to ordinary people on ordinary matters that we are most at home, linguistically and otherwise. And fortunately, this is the situation that accounts for the overwhelming majority of our needs in the use of English. 　　Problems arise as soon as the context is somewhat out of the ordinary. We suddenly need to address a cousin about the death of her husband; or we are writing to our employer to explain temporary absence; composing the minutes of a particularly delicate committee meeting; even just drafting an announcement to pin on the club notice board. This is when we may—or should—pause and wonder about idiom, good usage, the most appropriate way of putting things. There is the risk of sounding too casual, too colloquial, too flippant. There is the converse risk of seeming ponderous, distant, pompous, unnatural; of using an expression which, instead of striking a resonant note, falls flat as a hackneyed cliché.

问答题 Practice 4 　　For much of the past year, Europe has been divided over America and its war in Iraq. Now it is divided against itself. The chief culprits: France and Germany. The worm has turned. France and Germany assailed the United States for riding roughshod over other countries in the war on Iraq. Now they stand accused of being the America of Europe—a two-headed superpower that has the rest of the European Union lunging at its throat. Their supposed crimes: flouting EU economic rules, scripting to their design a constitution that was meant to be a Magna Carta for all of Europe and generally hijacking the great European project. 　　Will the power of the Franco-German axis ebb? Only a year ago, the pair were at odds, largely for reasons of poor personal chemistry between Schroder and Chirac. Moreover, some European politicians expect their influence to wane as Europe expands and alliances begin to reknit in new configurations, often around specific issues—Iraq, say, or matters of trade and commerce. But that may be wishful thinking on the part of rivals. If anything, many Europeans believe, the changes in Europe will drive France and Germany closer together—precisely because their traditional nexus of power is threatened.

问答题 Practice 6 　　The financial crisis presents an opportunity for China to seize the leadership baton for globalization and become its centre for goods, services and capital, while catalyzing a new China boom that could last a decade or longer. That boom could turn China into the world’s largest economy—and a developed country—within two decades. 　　The global economy has run like a motorcycle, with American consumption as one wheel and China’s savings as the other, with everyone else piled up on top. The sustainability of this world depended on foreigners believing in the Wall Street debt instruments that paid for America’s imports while keeping inflation at bay. Inflation came three years ago with surging oil prices. The tightening that accompanied it burst the US property bubble in 2006. It took another year for the subprime market, and still another for financial derivatives, to blow up. The resulting crisis has destroyed Wall Street’s credibility. The motorcycle economy has fallen over. 　　The global financial crisis is casting a shadow over globalization. Developed economies may resort to protectionism to keep jobs at home, leading to a vicious cycle of recession and more protectionism. China is in a position to carry the baton for globalization.

问答题 Practice 4 　　Today I have read The Tempest ...Among the many reasons, which make me glad to have been born in England, one of the first is that I read Shakespeare in my mother tongue. If I try to imagine myself as one who cannot know him face to face, who hears him only speaking from afar, and that in accents which only through the labouring intelligence can touch the living soul, there comes upon me a sense of chili discouragement, of dreary deprivation. I am wont to think that I can read Homer, and, assuredly, if any man enjoys him, it is I; but can I for a moment dream that Homer yields me all his music, that his word is to me as to him who walked by the Hellenic shore when Hellas lived? I know that there reaches me across the vast of time no more than a faint and broken echo; I know that it would be fainter still, but for its blending with those memories of youth which are as a glimmer of the world’s primeval glory. Let every land have joy of its poet; for the poet is the land itself, all its greatness and its sweetness, all that incommunicable heritage for which men live and die. As I close the book, love and reverence possess me. Whether does my full heart turn to the great Enchanter, or to the Island upon which he has laid his spell? I know not. I cannot think of them apart. In the love and reverence awakened by that voice of voices, Shakespeare and England are but one. (George Gissing: Shakespeare’s Island)

问答题 Practice 8 　　The effect of governmental expenditures on the total economy varies with both the level of utilization of labor and capital in the economy at the time of the expenditure, and the segment of the economy which receives the expenditure's the economy as a whole or the segment of the economy which is the focus of the expenditure is operating at capacity or close to capacity, then the expenditure's major effects will tend to be inflationary, and will not generate much employment of capital and labor. If the economy or sector is operating at much less than full employment, the expenditure will produce a genuine(non-inflationary)rise in the GDP. 　　A true measure of the effect of governmental increase in the amount of money made available, then, is not the simple dollar value of the initial injection but the cumulative effect of this injection through spending and re-spending. In the optimum case the initial expansion of income flow could be great enough to produce tax revenues in excess of the original “deficit spending” or “the tax cut,” so that deficits are not only smaller than the increased GNP but are recouped. In Keynesian economics the fundamental point of government policy clearly is not budget-balancing but spending in the event of unused productive capacity and unemployment. Spending increases productivity. The productivity resulting from federal spending has overwhelmed the older economic myths of the balanced budget where government is conceived of as just another business firm.

问答题 Practice 2 　　The British caricature themselves as a nation of insular xenophobes. This helps to disguise the fact that they are living in one of the world’s most international countries. Saloon bar patriots may be happy to read tabloid newspapers which take every opportunity to hurl abuse at continental neighbour. But the bar itself is likely to employ Australian staff, who serve Thai food and Mexican beer to people who work for Korean companies, wear Italian clothes and—though they still can’t manage a complete sentence in French—are beginning to talk like Americans. The bar is also likely to be foreign-owned: a Japanese bank, Nomura, recently became the largest pub landlord in Britain. 　　Though ethnic minorities make up less than 10％ of the resident population, Britain is one of the easiest countries to enter, despite its insistence (often quoted as evidence of insularity) on maintaining border controls within the EU. All 300 million citizens of the European Economic Area can live and work in Britain if they choose without having to fill in so much as a form. At least 18 million of them will stop by Britain each year.

问答题 Practice 7 　　Average household debt in the United States is currently 130 percent of average household income. The U. S. household savings rate is close to zero. Consumer confidence has plummeted with the value of 401(k) plans and retirement nest eggs. Car sales are at a fifteen-year low. And credit card defaults look like the next shoe to drop as cash-strapped Americans have run up credit card debt to postpone the day of reckoning. 　　Too many Americans have been expressing the Dream through the acquisition of stuff. Americans need a refresher course on the American dream. The Constitution speaks of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, not an automatic chicken in every pot. The American Dream embraced by immigrants over the past two centuries has been the opportunity to set one’s own goals and pursue them honestly to the limits of one’s ambition and ability. Too many Americans have been expressing the Dream through the acquisition of stuff. Others see the Dream as raising a family in a land that delivers Franklin Roosevelt’s four freedoms. Still others dream of their children accessing the highest possible level of education, living healthy lives, being good citizens in their communities.

问答题 Practice 1 　　The three sacred words “duty”, “honor” and “country” reverently dictate what you should be, what you can be, and what you will be. They urge you to build courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes abandoned. I am convinced that these words teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and gentle in success; not to substitute words for action; not to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress of difficulty and challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm, but to have com- passion on those who fall; to have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep, to reach into the future, yet never neglect the past; to be serious, yet never take yourself too seriously; to be modest so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength. In short, these words teach you to be both a militant fighter and a gentleman. (Douglas MacArthur: Farewell Speech to West Point)