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TEXT A In the United States, the fourth Thursday in November is called Thanksgiving Day. On this day, Americans give thanks for the blessing they have enjoyed during the year. Thanksgiving is usually a family day celebrated with big dinners and happy reunion. The first American Thanksgiving was held in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1621. It was in September of 1620 that the Puritans, or Pilgrims as they called themselves, left England aboard the Mayflower in search of religious freedom. After 65 days at sea, they landed in Province town Harbor, inside the tip of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. For about a month, the Pilgrims lived aboard ship and then sailed to Plymouth Harbor. The Pilgrims were not trained and equipped to cope with life in the wilderness. During their first winter, they suffered tremendously. Hard work, diseases, bitterly cold weather, and insufficient food killed about half of them. By the end of this terrible first winter, only about 50 Plymouth colonists remained alive. In spring 1621, the Indians of Massasoil’s tribe taught the Pilgrims how to hunt, fish, and grow food. They taught the Pilgrims to use fish for fertilizer when growing corn, pumpkins, and beans. Because of this help from the Indians, the Pilgrims had a good harvest. William Bradford, the governor chosen by the Pilgrims, was following an ancient tradition when, in the fall of 1621, he established a day of Thanksgiving to God. He invited Chief Massasoil and his men to share the Thanksgiving feast. The Indians gladly accepted and sent deer meat for the feast. The Pilgrim men went hunting and returned with turkey and other wild animals. The women of Plymouth prepared delicious dishes from corn, berries, squash and pumpkins. The first Thanksgiving dinner was cooked and served out-of- doors. Although it was late autumn, huge fires kept the hosts and guests warm. Many of the traditions of the modern American Thanksgiving come from that first Thanksgiving celebration. Today’s Thanks giving turkey is much like the ones that were hunted in the forests around Plymouth. Squash and corn, which were also harvested by the early Pilgrims, appear on the Thanksgiving table. Pumpkin pie is a traditional Thanksgiving dessert. Every year, about 500,000 Americans take a journey into early American history by visiting Plymouth, a modern city that respects its past. In Plymouth Harbor, sightseers tour Mayflower Ⅱ, a recently built ship similar to the original Mayflower. Then they spend a few hours walking through a reproduction of the original Pilgrim village. Modern Americans take great pride in these courageous ancestors who had so little by today’s standards, but who were thankful for receiving the things they valued most--a good harvest and the freedom to live and worship as they pleased. The present passage is probably taken from ______.

A. a geography book
B. a book about customs
C. a travel book
D. a book about the American way of life

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The health-care economy is filled with unusual and even unique economic relationships. One of the least understood involves the peculiar roles of producer or "provider" and purchaser or "consumer" in the typical doctor-patient relationship. In most sectors of the economy, it is the seller who attempts to attract a potential buyer with various inducements of price, quality, and utility, and it is the buyer who makes the decision. Such condition, however, does not prevail in most of the health-care industry. In the health-care industry, the doctor-patient relationship is the mirror image of the ordinary relationship between producer and consumer. Once an individual has chosen to see a physician -- and even then there may be no real choice -- it is the physician who usually makes all significant purchasing decisions: whether the patient should "return next Wednesday", whether X-rays are needed, whether drugs should be prescribed, etc... It is a rare and sophisticated patient who will challenge such professional decisions or raise in advance questions about price, especially when the disease is regarded as serious. This is particularly significant in relation to hospital care. The physician must certify the need for hospitalization, determine what procedures will be performed, and announce when the patient may be discharged. The patient may be consulted about some of these decisions, but in the main it is the doctor’s judgments that are final. Little wonder then that in the eye of the hospital it is the physician who is the real "consumer". As a consequence, the medical staff represents the "power center" in hospital policy and decision-making, not the administration. Although usually there are in this situation four identifiable participants -- the physician, the hospital, the patient, and the payer (generally an insurance carder or government ) -- the physician makes the essential decision for all of them. The hospital becomes an extension of the physician; the payer generally meets most of the bills generated by the physician/hospital, and for the most part the patient plays a passive role. We estimate that about 75 to 80 percent of healthcare expenditures are determined by physicians, not patients. For this reason, economy directed at patients or the general are relatively ineffective. The author’s primary purpose in writing this passage is to ______.

A. inform potential patients of their heath-care rights
B. criticize for exercising too much control over patients
C. urge hospitals to reclaim their decision-making authority
D. analyze some important economic factors in health-care

The nobler and more perfect a thing is, the later and slower it is in arriving at maturity. A man reaches the maturity of his reasoning powers and mental faculties hardly before the age of twenty-eight; a woman at eighteen. And then, too, in the case of woman, it is only reason of a sort--very niggard in its dimensions. That is why women remain children their whole life long; never seeing anything but what is quite close to them, cleaving to the present moment, taking appearance for reality, and preferring trifles to matters of the first importance. For it is by virtue of his reasoning faculty that man does not live in the present only, like the brute, but looks about him and considers the past and the future; and this is the origin of prudence, as well as of that care and anxiety which so many people exhibit. Both the advantages and the disadvantages which this involves, are shared in by the woman to a small extent because of her weaker power of reasoning. She may, in fact, be described as intellectually shortsighted, because, while she has an intuitive understanding of what lies quite close to her, her field of vision is narrow and does not reach to what is remote; so that things which are absent, or past, or to come, have much less effect upon woman than upon men. This is the reason why women are more inclined to be extravagant, and sometimes carry their inclination to a length that borders upon madness. In their hearts, women think it is men’s business to earn money and theirs to spend it--if possible during their husband’s life, but, at any rate, after his death. The very fact that their husband hands them over his earning for purposes of housekeeping, strengthens them in this belief. However many disadvantages all this may involve, there is at least this to be said in its favor; that the woman lives more in the present than the man, and that, if the present is at all tolerable, she enjoys it more eagerly. This is the source of that cheerfulness which is peculiar to women, fitting her to amuse man in his hours of recreation, and, in case of need, to console him when he is borne down by the weight of his cares. According to the author, the major difference between a man’s and a woman’s intellect is that ______.

A. men mature much later than women
B. men have a broader view of things
C. women are more cheerful than men
D. man’s intellect is nobler than that of woman

Questions 29 to 30 are based on the following news. At the end of the news item, you will be given 10 seconds to answer the questions. Now listen to the news. According to the internationally agreed measures, poor countries can ______ cheap copies of anti-AIDS drugs.

A. make
B. import
C. export
D. trade in

The nobler and more perfect a thing is, the later and slower it is in arriving at maturity. A man reaches the maturity of his reasoning powers and mental faculties hardly before the age of twenty-eight; a woman at eighteen. And then, too, in the case of woman, it is only reason of a sort--very niggard in its dimensions. That is why women remain children their whole life long; never seeing anything but what is quite close to them, cleaving to the present moment, taking appearance for reality, and preferring trifles to matters of the first importance. For it is by virtue of his reasoning faculty that man does not live in the present only, like the brute, but looks about him and considers the past and the future; and this is the origin of prudence, as well as of that care and anxiety which so many people exhibit. Both the advantages and the disadvantages which this involves, are shared in by the woman to a small extent because of her weaker power of reasoning. She may, in fact, be described as intellectually shortsighted, because, while she has an intuitive understanding of what lies quite close to her, her field of vision is narrow and does not reach to what is remote; so that things which are absent, or past, or to come, have much less effect upon woman than upon men. This is the reason why women are more inclined to be extravagant, and sometimes carry their inclination to a length that borders upon madness. In their hearts, women think it is men’s business to earn money and theirs to spend it--if possible during their husband’s life, but, at any rate, after his death. The very fact that their husband hands them over his earning for purposes of housekeeping, strengthens them in this belief. However many disadvantages all this may involve, there is at least this to be said in its favor; that the woman lives more in the present than the man, and that, if the present is at all tolerable, she enjoys it more eagerly. This is the source of that cheerfulness which is peculiar to women, fitting her to amuse man in his hours of recreation, and, in case of need, to console him when he is borne down by the weight of his cares. The author’s attitude toward women can best be described as

A. contemptuous
B. paternal
C. condescending
D. cynical

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