题目内容

SECTION C NEWS BROADCAST
Directions: In this section you will hear everything ONCE ONLY. Listen carefully and then answer the questions that follow. At the end of each news item, you will be given 10 seconds to answer the questions.
听力原文: About 200 years ago, the United States economy was growing quickly, mainly because a booming trade in grain and cotton. This trade of grain and cotton went on near areas near or at the coast, or near navigable rivers. It took place there because it was so expensive to transport goods over the roads that existed. They were muddy, narrow, and hard to travel on. At that time, don't forget there was only one continuous road that existed in the U. S. , and it was made up of north to south local country roads, linked together to get one long road. Within a short time, the first east-to-west roads were built. They were called turnpikes. Private companies built these roads, and collected fees from all vehicles traveled on them. Eventually, a network of dirt, gravel or plank roadways connected some major cities and towns. But even these turnpike roads were still very slow, and traveling on them was too costly for farmers. They would spend more money to move their crops than they got by selling them. So, we see that even with some major improvement in roadways, farmers still had to rely on rivers to move their crops to markets.
What's the news mainly about?

A. The advantages of an economy based on farming.
B. Reasons farmers continued using river transportation.
C. The role of cotton in the United States economy.
D. Improved methods of transporting farm crops.

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•Read the article below about the Early Developments in American Economy and questions.
•For each question (13-18), mark one letter (A, B, C or D) on your Answer Sheet.
Early American industries depended largely on skilled artisans working in small shops to serve a local market. But the Industrial Revolution that started in England during the 18th century did not take long to cross the Atlantic. It brought many changes to American industry between 1776 and 1860. Because labor was scarce in the United States and wages were high, employers welcomed any new method that could reduce the requirement for labor.
One key development was the introduction of the factory system, which gathered many workers together in one workplace and produced goods for distribution over a wide area. The first factory in the United States is generally dated to 1793, when an Englishman named Samuel Slater came to America to build a cotton cloth factory. He built the machinery from memory, because it was a crime to carry factory plant out of England. The success of Slater's factory started a process of change that turned the northeastern region of the United States into an important manufacturing center. The making of textiles also meant increased demand for cotton, grown in the southern region for the United States. As a result, the nation became a major cotton producer.
Another important development was the "American system" of mass production, which originated in the firearms industry about 1800. The new system required precision engineering to create parts that were interchangeable. This, in return, allowed the final product to be assembled in stages, each worker specializing in a specific operation.
Just as Slater's new factory system was being introduced, an American named Eli Whitney made cotton production more efficient by inventing a machine—the cotton gin—that rapidly removed the seeds from the bolls of cotton. Removing the seeds by hand was a difficult task; Whitney's machine made the job almost easy.
Whitney also began manufacturing rifles in a new way. Guns had always been made by gun makers working in their homes or small shops. Because the guns were handmade individually, a part from one gun would not necessarily fit another gun. Whitney began making guns with machinery, so that all the parts were the same in each gun. This method of manufacturing goods in a factory, with interchangeable parts, helped to advance American industry.
In 1913, the automaker Henry Ford introduced the "moving assembly" line. This was a variation on the earlier practice of continuous assembly. By improving efficiency, it made possible a major saving in labor costs. A new breed of industrial managers began the careful study of factory operations with the aim of finding the most efficient ways of organizing tasks. Their concepts of "scientific management" helped to lower the costs of production still further. Lower costs made possible both higher wages for workers and lower prices for consumers. More and more Americans were gaining the ability to purchase products made in the United States. During the first half of the 20th century, mass production of consumer goods such as cars, refrigerators and kitchen ranges helped to revolutionize the ways in which Americans lived.
In the first paragraph, the author intends to tell us that

A. early American industries mainly depended on new methods.
B. early American industries mainly depended on people who did skilled work with their hands.
C. early American industries mainly depended on England industries.
D. early American industries mainly depended on new changes.

All the followings are the reasons why Zanele's children don't grow properly EXCEPT

A. they don't have enough nutritious food
B. their bones have no time to grow well because of the hard work they do
C. their bodies have worked too hard
D. they are always beaten by their mother

According to the news, what caused the growth of the US economy about 200 years ago?

A. The new technology used to build roads.
B. The ability to transport goods over land.
C. The trade in grain and cotton.
D. The linking of smaller local roads into one long road.

Which of the following is NOT true in the case of pathological fatigue?

A. You arc involved in so many activities that you have to be in two places at once.
B. Your body has a disease.
C. The cells fail to deal with fighting the disease and keeping you alive at the same time.
D. The first thing to do is to cure the disease.

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