商務(wù)英語-閱讀試卷1A及標(biāo)準(zhǔn)答案

1、光華管理學(xué)院 2010 2011 學(xué)年第 一 學(xué)期期末考試試題（A卷）課程名稱：商務(wù)英語（閱讀）任課教師： 考試日期：考試時(shí)間： 1.5 小時(shí)學(xué)生類別：本科年級(jí)班號(hào)： 考生姓名：考生學(xué)號(hào)：考試方式：閉卷試 題：（注意：答案一律寫在答題紙，否則不計(jì)分） I. Vocabulary (1×20 = 20)1o _ _ _ _ _ _ general; taking everything into count2a _ _ _ _ _ _ _union or association formed for mutual benefit3c_ _ _ _ _ _to change from on

2、e form to another4c _ _ _ _ _ _ _to arrange systematically in classes or groups5c _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _any of the parts of which sth. is made6e _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _producing a satisfactory result without wasting money or energy7e _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _expert knowledge or skill, especially in a particular field8f _ _

3、_ _ _ _ _to tell in advance; to predict with the help of information 9i _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _to combine sth. in such a way that it becomes fully a part of sth. else10a _ _ _ _ _ _to gain by ones own ability, efforts or behavior11m _ _ _ _ _ _ _a worker skilled in using or repairing machines12m _ _ _ to sh

4、ape something into a particular form13o _ _ _ _ _ _to manage or direct a business14p _ _ _ _stage in a process of change or development15p _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _possible16r _ _ _ _ _ _ _to keep or confine within limits17s _ _ _ _ _not easily obtained; short in supply18s _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _happening or do

5、ne at the same time19s _ _ _ _ _ _ _incentive; motivation; encouragement20s _ _ _ _ _ _ _plan or policy designed for a particular purposeII. Answer the Questions Briefly According to the Texts (4×5 = 20)1 Business may be defined as the production, distribution and sale of goods and services for

6、 a profit. What is distribution? Could you use an example to illustrate your definition?2 What is the theory of absolute advantage? Illustrate how absolute advantages may benefit countries in the international trade.3 Product, price, placement and promotion are known as the four Ps in a marketing mi

7、x. What is promotion? What activities would you arrange to promote a new car, giving at least three examples?4 What is the most important aspect of the late 20th century information revolution? What are the attributes of computers that led to their early specialization in data processing? List some

8、examples of computer applications.III. Reading Comprehension (1.5×40 = 60)Passage 1In the Black Stuff1. Barack Obamas administration has promised to keep its boot firmly applied to BPs neck. Many people would be happier if the boot were a blade. Fishermen who worry that their livelihoods are in

9、 peril; shareholders who have seen the value of BPs shares plunge; local Democratic politicians who want to make sure they cannot be blamed for reacting too slowly: the list of boot-and-blade wielders is growing longer by the day. In practice BPs neck means Tony Haywards. Just a few weeks ago Mr. Ha

10、yward was one of the worlds most celebrated chief executives, responsible for delivering $5.6 billion in profits in the first quarter of this year. Now, after the collapse of a rig leased by BP in the Gulf of Mexico, costing 11 lives and threatening environmental catastrophe, he is in the meat grind

11、er of public opprobrium along with Lloyd Blankfein, chief executive of Goldman Sachs, and Akio Toyoda, president of Toyota. 2. So far he has done a creditable job of crisis-management. He has been a whirlwind of activity moving to a Ramada Inn in Houma, Louisiana, meeting Mr. Obamas deputies and giv

12、ing back-to-back interviews on American television. He has thrown the full might of his companys resources at the problem, sending 2,500 people to help with the clean-up and chartering a sizeable armada. He has accepted “full responsibility” for the disaster but also made it clear that the rig was b

13、eing operated by a subcontractor, Transocean. Things may yet get worse for BP. The company faces a tidal wave of litigation and an epidemic of stories about oil-drenched sea birds and devastated wetlands. The final bill for the clean-up, which is costing BP about $6m a day, could well exceed $10 bil

14、lion. Mr. Hayward could yet buckle under the pressure. But, if he can keep his head, he is arguably the best man to deal with an impossibly difficult situation. 3. Mr. Hayward took over BP in 2007 as the back-to-basics candidate. His predecessor, John Browne, was in many ways a remarkable chief exec

15、utive, a man who sprinkled pixie dust onto the companys black gold while also boosting its market capitalization ninefold. But Lord Browne focused too much on the soft furnishings and too little on the foundations. He purchased rivals such as Amoco but failed to integrate them properly. He lavished

16、more than $200m on rebranding BP as “Beyond Petroleum” but failed to reorganize the companys sprawling bureaucracy. His final years were marred by a succession of devastating accidents an explosion at BPs Texas City refinery in 2005 that killed 15 workers and injured 170 others, and an oil spill a y

17、ear later that dumped 4,800 barrels of oil at Prudhoe Bay, on the coast of Alaska. 4. Mr. Hayward set out to replace flash and fluff with nuts and bolts. He promised to focus “l(fā)ike a laser on safe and reliable operations”. He streamlined the companys management. He played down the Beyond Petroleum r

18、hetoric in favor of a greater emphasis on the companys core business. “BP makes its money by someone, somewhere, every day putting on boots, overalls, a hard hat and glasses, and going out and turning valves,” he argued. “And wed sort of lost track of that.” To be sure, after the spill in the Gulf t

19、his back-to-basics strategy leaves him open to some sharp criticisms. Hasnt the disaster made a mockery of his “focus like a laser” argument? And hasnt he been at the forefront of lobbying for more deep-sea drilling? He has tried to convince the Obama administration that one of the keys to Americas

20、energy security lies in the oil and gas in the deep waters of the Gulf. Last September he even dispatched one of his lieutenants, David Rainey, to Congress to argue that new technology had made possible the “safe and reliable production” of offshore oil. 5. But against all this he has a number of th

21、ings on his side. One is that the disasters at Texas City and Prudhoe Bay occurred before he took over. A second is that before the current oil spill he had a solid record of improving safety and reducing injuries in the workplace. A third is that the markets have probably over-reacted to the oil sp

22、ill: the fact that BPs shares have lost $30 billion in value, three times the likely cost of the clean-up, suggests that they will start to climb back. But the fourth may count for most: that he is an oilman by conviction as well as profession. Mr. Hayward is at his most animated when reminiscing ab

23、out his hands-on experience out in the field working as a geologist on a North Sea platform (his first job with BP) or exploring for oil in Yemen or Papua New Guinea. He won widespread support in the companys lower ranks in the wake of the Texas City disaster when he criticized BP for “a leadership

24、style that is too directive and doesnt listen sufficiently well”.6. His immediate challenge is to stanch the flow of oil. But his longer-term problem is to secure the future of deep-sea drilling. BPs business strategy depends on its ability to keep pushing the frontiers of oil exploration: drilling

25、the worlds deepest wells and probing the corners of the Arctic for deposits. The Gulf already accounts for 10% of the companys worldwide oil production, a share that could be higher in the future. Mr. Hayward needs to salt his apologies for the disaster with some tough arguments about the virtues of

26、 offshore drilling. He needs to demonstrate that its risks are no greater than, say, those of long-haul shipping. (More oil is spilled from tankers than from offshore wells.) He needs to persuade a restive public that there is no magic that can provide them with risk-free energy. This will test his

27、political skills just as much as the spill in the Gulf is testing his organizational skills. i. Decide whether the following statements are true (T) or false (F).1. Tony Hayward reacted rather inactively and slowly to the crisis. F2. Tony Hayward suggests part of the responsibilities should be shoul

28、dered by Transocean, the subcontractor. T3. John Browne successfully boosted its market capitalization considerably with the back-to-basics approach. F4. Compared with his predecessor, Tony Hayward focuses more on details and BPs core business. T5. Tony Hayward made a lot of efforts to convince the

29、US government of the merits of deepwater drilling T.6. To apologize effectively for the crisis, Tony Hayward must drop the argument in favor of deepwater drilling which is too risky. Fii. Find out words used in the passage that mean the following. Numbers in the brackets indicate the paragraphs in w

30、hich you can find the words. 1. danger, hazard (1)2. rented (1)3. blame, criticism (1)4. lawsuit (2)5. wasted, spent exorbitantly (3)6. damaged (3)7. irony, sarcasm (4)8. halt, stop (6)9. hard to control or persuade (6)Passage 2That Sinking FeelingThey are certainly trying hard. When the Federal Res

31、erve Americas central bank announced an interest-rate cut of one quarter of a percentage-point on December 11, it marked the eleventh reduction since the beginning of the year. The federal-funds target rate, Americas basic interest rate form which all others are set, is now at 1.75%, down from 6% in

32、 January. Interest rates have fallen far more steeply than during the last American recession a decade ago: indeed, in nominal terms, interest rates are now at their lowest for more than 40 years. Yet the accumulation of grim economic news still outweighs the few more encouraging signs. Despite what

33、 some say, a short and sharp, or V-shaped, recession is not a racing certainty.It was only last month that the official arbiter of American business cycles, the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research, pronounced that the economy was in recession, and had been so

34、since March. November also saw confirmation that in the third quarter of this year, for the first time since 1993, gross domestic product contracted. The economy shrunk at an annualized rate of 1.1%.The picture is confusing, encouraging some at least to hope that the bad news will be only temporary.

35、 There are plenty of optimists who argue that the economy is already at a turning point, and that recovery is about to start. Some Wall Street forecasters are even bullish enough to say the pick-up could already be under way. Share prices have recovered their post-September 11 losses, and the Dow Jo

36、nes Industrial Average briefly broke back through the 10, 000 barrier this month.It is difficult to justify such extreme optimism, even though the picture is undoubtedly mixed and there is some good news as well as bad. In its statement accompanying the rate cut, the Fed described signs that weaknes

37、s in demand might be abating as preliminary and tentative. Although on some measures consumers have turned out to be less daunted than expected by the terrorist attacks, there are good reasons to expect consumption which accounts for about two thirds of the American economy to weaken. Retail sales i

38、n October grew by a spectacular 7.1% in value terms compared with September. But that largely reflected recovery from Septembers very weak performance, coupled with zero-financing deals being offered on new cars in an attempt to get shoppers back into the showrooms. Such deals are not sustainable in

39、 the longer term, and would anyway bring diminishing returns sales generated now from discounts are probably simply stealing revenue from future months.Unemployment, meanwhile, is rising fast and reached 5.7% in November, according to figures published on December 7. It probably has further to go. C

40、orporate profits are taking a hammering, which seems likely to feed through both into consumer confidence and actual spending patterns. But even here there have been recent signs of an improvement in some sectors, with the high-tech giant Cisco recently reporting better-than-expected numbers. Invent

41、ories continue to fall, more steeply than at any time in the past 50 years. But once re-stocking starts, the impact on GDP will be positive.The sharpness of the downturn which has taken place so far is illustrated by the very large revisions to forecasts, both for this year and next. The Economists

42、poll of private forecasters shows the average prediction is for growth next year of 0.6%, down from 2.6% in September (before the terrorist attacks). In June, the OECD expected America to grow by 3.1% in 2002; now it reckons on 0.7%.But from the start, the Fed has responded aggressively. Its powerfu

43、l chairman, Alan Greenspan, first demonstrated the extent of his concern by persuading his colleagues to cut interest rates on January 3, in between regular meetings of the Feds main policy making body, the Federal Open Market Committee. There have been two subsequent inter-meeting cuts, as the Fed

44、tried to respond quickly to the growing evidence of recession and, on September 17, to steady nerves when the New York Stock Exchange re-opened after the terrorist attacks. As interest rates approach zero, the Feds ability to influence activity through the manipulation of short-term interest rates i

45、s diminishing, though some economists believe it could start to do more to influence medium and longer-term rates.Current conventional wisdom argues that monetary policy is more useful and more flexible for short-term macroeconomic management. But there has also been some fiscal easing this year, fi

46、rst from President Gorge Bushs tax-cut plan, which included tax rebates sent to taxpayers over the summer, and then form the extra spending approved by Congress in response to the war on terrorism. There is still the chance of a further stimulus package of $ 100 billion, although this is currently s

47、tuck in Congress as the Democrats and the Republicans bicker about what the package should include. Mr. Bush wants it on his desk ready for signature before Christmas. To meet that deadline, both sides will have to make big compromises, and soon. It is not clear that they will.An agreed package migh

48、t boost confidence; it will not, though, have much direct impact on economic activity in the short term and so is unlikely to be a major factor in accelerating the recovery. Nor can America look to the rest of the world for help in kick-starting its sluggish economy. Since America started sliding to

49、wards recession, the global environment has deteriorated sharply. Europes performance is lackluster at best, and Germany could turn out to have a recession nearly as bad as Americas. Japans problems are now so bad the country is in its third recession in less than a decade that its economy is expect

50、ed to continue shrinking next year. Many East Asian countries are themselves reeling from the America-led high-tech slowdown. In sum, the world economy is in the midst of the worst slowdown since the mid-1970s.Some sense of perspective is important though. Although the short-term outlook for America

51、 is, at best, disappointing, it is important to remember that the slowdown followed a period of spectacular growth, the longest peacetime expansion in American history. Although in contrast to the late 1990s the downturn has come as a big shock and the much-vaunted soft landing has proved elusive th

52、is is, as yet, one of the mildest recessions America has experienced. That is one reason why some economists think it has longer to run. But there is, so far, little to support the fears, advanced by some, that following the stock market bubble and investment boom of the late 1990s, America is headi

53、ng for a Japanese-style deflationary cycle from which, like Japan, it could take years to emerge. That really would be grim news, not only for America but for the world. And yet Americas economy and political system is more resilient, and flexible, than Japans and this should help it to avoid Japans

54、 fate. By comparison with a Japanese-style malaise, even a traditionally painful, but finite, recession would seem like a lucky escape. Choose the best answer from A, B, C and D.1. The author of the above article probably thinks _.A. the American economy will very likely plunge into a Japanese-style

55、 recessionB. it will take years for the American economy to recoverC. the rising Dow Jones Industrial Average Index means a turning point in the economy is soon to be reachedD. it is not likely for America to experience the same economic woes as now experienced by Japan2. On December 11th, the Ameri

56、cas central bank cut the interest rates by _.A. 25%B. 2.5%C. 0.25%D. 4.25%3. The US short-term interest rates _.A. will provide immediate stimulus to the domestic economyB. have dramatically shortened the agony of current recessionC. are considered more effective than fiscal measures in boosting the

57、 economyD. have so far achieved little, if any, success4. The authors attitude towards the opinions of the “optimists” described in paragraph 3 can be best summarized as _.A. supportiveB. indifferentC. suspiciousD. infuriated5. The word “bullish” in paragraph 3 probably means _.A. aggressiveB. optim

58、isticC. stupidD. strong and healthy6. The Fed most probably thinks that the positive signs of the American economy _.A. mark the turning point in the economyB. are confusing and misleadingC. are indicative of the success of the Feds monetary policiesD. are just temporary and will not persist7. It can be inferred from the article that the m