TEXT A In 17th-century New England, almost everyone believed in witches. Struggling to survive in a vast and sometimes unforgiving land, America’s earliest European settlers understood themselves to be surrounded by an inscrutable universe filled with invisible spirits, both benevolent and evil, that affected their lives. They often attributed a sudden illness, a household disaster or a financial setback to a witch’s curse. The belief in witchcraft was, at bottom, an attempt to make sense of the unknown. While witchcraft was often feared, it was punished only infrequently. In the first 70 years of the New England settlement, about 100 people were formally charged with being witches; fewer than two dozen were convicted and fewer still were executed. Then came 1692. In January of that year, two young girls living in the household of the Reverend Samuel Parris of Salem Village began experiencing strange fits. The doctor identified witchcraft as the cause. After weeks of questioning, the girls named Tituba, Parris’s female Indian slave, and two local women as the witches who were tormenting them. Judging by previous incidents, one would have expected the episode to end there. But it didn’t. Other young Salem women began to suffer fits as well. Before the crisis ended, 19 people formally accused others of afflicting them, 54 residents of Essex County confessed to being witches and nearly 150 people were charged with consorting with the devil. What led to this Traditionally, historians have argued that the witchcraft crisis resulted from factionalism in Salem Village, deliberate faking, or possibly the ingestion of hallucinogens by the afflicted. I believe another force was at work. The events in Salem were precipitated by a conflict with the Indians on the northeastern frontier, the most significant surge of violence in the region in nearly 40 years. In two little-known wars, fought largely in Maine from 1675 to 1678 and from 1688 to 1699, English settlers suffered devastating losses at the hands of Wabanaki Indians and their French allies. The key afflicted accusers in the Salem crisis were frontier refugees whose families had been wiped out in the wars. These tormented young women said they saw the devil in the shape of an Indian. In testimony, they accused the witches—reputed ringleader—the Reverend George Burroughs, formerly pastor of Salem Village—of bewitching the soldiers dispatched to fight the Wabanakis. While Tituba, one of the first people accused of witchcraft, has traditionally been portrayed as a black or mulatto woman from Barbados, all the evidence points to her being an American Indian. To the Puritan settlers, who believed themselves to be God’s chosen people, witchcraft explained why they were losing the war so badly. Their Indian enemies had the devil on their side. In late summer, some prominent New Englanders began to criticize the witch prosecutions. In response to the dissent, Governor Sir William Phips of Massachusetts dissolved in October the special court he had established to handle the trials. But before he stopped the legal process, 14 women and 5 men had been hanged. Another man was crushed to death by stones for refusing to enter a plea. The war with the Indians continued for six more years, though sporadically. Slowly, northern New Englanders began to feel more secure. And they soon regretted the events of 1692. Within five years, one judge and 12 jurors formally apologized as the colony declared a day of fasting and prayer to atone for the injustices that had been committed. In 1711, the state compensated the families of the victims. And last year, more than three centuries after the settlers reacted to an external threat by lashing out irrationally, the convicted were cleared by name in a Massachusetts statute. It’s a story worth remembering—and not just on Halloween. A suitable title for the passage would be
A. The Significance of Salem’s Witch Trials.
B. European Settlers and American Indians.
C. The Reflection on the Details of Salem’s Witch Trials.
D. Campaigning on the Indian Frontier.
SECTION B In this section you will hear everything ONCE ONLY. Listen carefully and then answer the questions that follow. Mark the correct answer to each question on your answer sheet. 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. According to the interview, which is NOT an advantage of an informational interview
TEXT C American economists once spoofed university education as the only industry in which those who consume its product do not purchase it; those who produce it do not sell it, and those who finance it do not control it. That apt description, made in the 1970s, has been undermined since then by the emergence of the first for-profit universities in the United States. Controlled by entrepreneurs, these schools which number about 700 and counting sell a practical education to career-minded students and make a good buck doing it. They are now expanding abroad, creating the first multinational corporations in a sector long suspicious of balance sheets. The companies are lured by a booming market in which capitalist competition is still scarce. The number of university students is expected to double in the next 25 years to 170 million worldwide. Demand greatly exceeds supply, because the 1990s saw massive global investment in primary and secondary schools, but not in universities. The number of children enrolled in primary or secondary schools rose by 18 percent around the world—more than twice the rate of increase in any previous decade. Now these kids are often graduating from high school to find no openings in national universities, which nevertheless don’t welcome for-profit competition. The Brazilian university teachers’ union warned that foreign corporations would turn higher education into "a diploma industry". Critics raised the specter of declining quality and a loss of Brazil’s "sovereign control" over education. For-profit universities met with similar suspicion when they first opened in the United States. By the 1980s they were regularly accused of offering substandard education and had to fight for acceptance and respect. Lately, they have flourished by catering to older students who aren’t looking for keg parties, just a shortcut to a better career. For-profit colleges now attract 8 percent of four-year students in the United States, up from 3 percent a decade ago. By cutting out frills, including sports teams, student centers and summer vacation, these schools can operate with profit margins of 20 to 30 percent. In some countries, the American companies operate as they do at home. Apollo found an easy fit in Brazil, where few universities have dorms, students often take off time between high school and college, and there’s no summer vacation—just two breaks in July and December. In other Latin countries, Sylvan has taken a different approach, buying traditional residential colleges like the Universidad del Valle de Mexico (UVM). It has boosted enrollment by adding and heavily advertising courses in career-track fields like business and engineering, and adding no-frills satellite campuses. Sensitive to the potential hostility against foreign buyers, Sylvan keeps original school names, adding its own brand, Sylvan International Universities, to publicity materials, and keeps tuition in line with local private schools. Most of the schools that Sylvan has purchased were managed by for-profits to begin with, including the prestigious Les Roches Hotel Management School in Switzerland. But in general, Says Urdan, Sylvan’s targets "have not been run with world-class business practices. They’re not distressed, but there’s an opportunity for them to be better managed." When Sylvan paid $50 million for a controlling stake in UVM two years ago, the school had revenues of about $80 million and an enrollment of 32,000. The success of the for-profits is nothing to be afraid of, says World Bank education expert Jamil Salmi: "I don’t think they will replace traditional universities, but they can push some more traditional providers to be more innovative and more attentive to the needs of the labor market." Some students at Sylvan schools in Latin America welcome the foreign invasion. At the Universidad de las Americas in Santiago, Daniela Villagran says friends tease her for studying at "Yankeeland," but she figures Sylvan connections "will give me an edge when I go out to look for a job." The emphasis on independent thought is what separates UVM from other institutions in Mexico. And, for better or worse, more American schools are on the way. It can be inferred from the first paragraph that
Americans are arguing about the for-profit universities.
B. Americans used to pay little for university education.
C. Americans are in favor of the expansion of the universities.
D. Americans call for the supervision of the for-profit universities.
For each blank, choose the best answer from the four choices and write down on the answer sheet.In (1) the strength of the carrier signal is varied to represent binary 1 or 0. (2) is a system that can map a name to an address and conversely an address to an name. (3) is a three -way handshaking authentication protocol that it’s packets are encapsulated in the point - to -point protocol. (4) is an approach that enables an ATM Switch to behave like a LAN switch. (5) is an guided media which is made of glass or plastic and transmits signals in the form of light. 4()
A. VLAN
B. LANE
C. VPN
D. IPOA