题目内容
Prefer
(i) Prefer is normally followed by to, not than: "1 prefer coffee to tea", "She preferred sewing to knitting", "We prefer going by car to traveling by train". The difficulty arises when infinitives are involved. We cannot say "She preferred to sew to to knit." In such cases we use rather than, but never than alone.
Occasionally (more often in literary than in spoken style. ) rather is brought forward and placed before the first infinitive, and than is left before the second: "He preferred rather to take the whole blame himself than to allow it to fall on the innocent".
(ii) Even with nouns rather than is permissible in a situation where a choice specifically for that occasion is involved. Thus "I prefer port to sherry" expresses a general preference.
But if the question is "What shall we have to drink？ Port？... Sherry.*", the reply might be, "I should prefer port rather than sherry". Perhaps there is a vague feeling that the infinitive to have is understood before each of the alternatives. But "I should prefer port to sherry" is also correct.
(iii) "Which do you prefer most？" is incorrect. Literally, prefer means "place before the other(s) ". It is therefore an absolute term, and cannot be modified by more or most.
According to the entry, which of the following sentences is/are correct？ (1) People here prefer to tide their own bicycles than riding the town buses. (2) People here prefer riding their own bicycles than riding the town buses. (3) People here prefer tidi
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The word "commute" is equal to ______ .
SECTION B INTERVIEW
Directions: In this section you will hear everything ONCE ONLY. Listen carefully and then answer the questions that follow. Questions 1 to 5 are based on an interview. At the end of the interview you will be given 10 seconds to answer each of the following five questions.
Now listen to the interview.
听力原文：INTERVIEWER: Mrs. Sutter, is there a need to control population only in countries like India, Africa, Brazil, those countries that we call the underdeveloped countries, or is there a case for limiting population in Europe, for instance？
INTERVIEWEE: The reason one would have to limit population is because you're running out of food and you're running out of resources. The people in Europe and Americas consume a far greater proportion of the world's resources and the world's food than they do in India. So, population is directly related to consumption and your general impact on the environment.
INTERVIEWER: Do you mean that if as an individual your impact is far greater than anybody else's, then that is the factor that's important, rather than how many people there are, or how many people can the world support？
INTERVIEWEE: Exactly. Now obviously in that sense, it's possible to increase population if everybody is willing to use less material or eat less food, but this doesn't seem to be tile trend at the moment.
INTERVIEWER: But the world can produce more to meet the needs.
INTERVIEWEE: The problem is that the underdeveloped areas try and develop more material benefits, but as soon as they do this, the population increase has wiped out any benefits they may have achieved.
INTERVIEWER: But do you feel that this battle with a rapidly expanding population can be won？
INTERVIEWEE: The most sensible thing is to realize that you can't go on expanding human populations forever and countries and individuals must decide to have a policy which would limit population.
INTERVIEWER: What section of the population do you think free birth control techniques should be available to ？
INTERVIEWEE: They should be available to all sections of the community. Since things are getting to such a pitch that I personally think that not only should birth control methods be available to all sections of the community, but indeed should be compulsory. There should be some kind of law which says that a family should not have more than three children, a complete maximum of three children, if they have three children then they must be obliged by law to use birth control.
INTERVIEWER: But surely this is very explosive in social terms？
INTERVIEWEE: It's a very totalitarian notion. But if we look around us in the world we can see millions of people are starving to death in places like India, and people suffering from malnutrition in other parts of the underdeveloped world and indeed even in parts of the so-called developed world.
What does this interview mainly about？
Which of the following sentence is true？
Americans' passion for living large is growing, even if their incomes aren't, a Census survey released Thursday indicates.
Since the beginning of the decade, their homes have gotten substantially bigger and more expensive. Almost half of all homes, about 46%, have six or more rooms. More than 15% have eight rooms or more.
Almost one in five families have three or more cars. And more workers are opting out of carpools and mass transit to drive to work alone.
But this lifestyle. comes at a cost when incomes are stagnating and housing prices are soaring.
In a separate report on poverty and income, the Census Bureau reported that median household income, when adjusted for inflation, remained flat last year.
But the survey of how Americans live finds that more than 22% of homeowners spent at least 35% of their income on housing in 2003, up from 19% in 2000. And 38% of renters spent as much, up from 33% in 2000.
"Our wages stopped growing, but our wants kept going," says Robert Lang, a demographer who heads the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech.
"People will just suffer a little and pay a bigger mortgage to hold on to their dreams," he says.
The latest snapshot of American life comes from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey. The annual survey of 800,000 households asks the same questions as the Census that is taken every 10 years. The 2003 numbers offer a look at how the nation has changed in the wake of recession and terrorist attacks, and they hint at social trends shaping the decade.
"Even though the economy took a dive, the initial shock of 9？11 has worn off," says William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "People are buying bigger homes, more cars. "
Riding record-low interest rates, housing prices have skyrocketed. The percentage of homeowners who live in houses valued at more than $500,000 doubled since 2000, to more than 6%.
And one in eight homeowners live in homes valued at $300,000 to $499,999.
About half still live in homes that cost less than $150,000, the typical price range for working-class families and young couples buying their first homes. But that number has dropped sharply from almost 64% in 2000.
Even in North Dakota, which has the lowest housing value in the nation, prices rose. The median value of a house there went up 10% to $81,796 since 2000. Nationally, the median value rose 22% to $147,275.
The survey reflects other changes:
The percentage of homes without telephone service rose to 3.8%, from 3% in 2000, which reflects the increased dependence on cellular phones.
"A lot of dorms have no phone service now," Lang says. "Kids go to college, and not one of them has a real phone. They're all cells. "
The educational level is on the rise. More than a quarter of the population has a bachelor's degree or higher. And the percentage of high school graduates continues to climb, up 2 percentage points to 83.6%.
The ratio of college grads to high school dropouts has increased. There are 1.62 college grads for every dropout, up from 1.35 in 2000.
This "brains-to-brawn" ratio reflects the shift from a blue-collar to a knowledge economy, Frey says.
Americans are spending about the same 24 minutes commuting to work, but almost 78% are driving alone, up from 76.3% in 2000. The exception is so-called "exurban" counties across the USA, such as Pasco County, north of Tampa, and McHenry and Kane counties outside Chicago. They experienced significant increases in commuting times.
Use of other forms of transportation, from walking to riding a bus, dropped. But the percentage of people working from home increased slightly.
All racial groups are growing, except for whites who are not Hispanic. Whites make up 76.1% of the population, down from 77.3% in 2000. They're expected to make up half of the population within 50 years.
The foreign-born population continues to grow but so does the share of immigrants becomin
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