2000年英语专八真题及答案

　　TEXT E

　　First read the following question.

　　31. In the passage Bill Gates mainly discusses ___.

　　A. a person's opportunity of a lifetime

　　B. the success of the computer industry

　　C. the importance of education

　　D. high school education in the US

　　Now go through TEXT E quickly and answer question 31.

　　Hundreds of students send me e-mail each year asking for advice about educa tion. They want to know what to study, or whether it's OK to drop out of colleg e since that's what I did.

　　My basic advice is simple and heartfelt." Get the best education you can. Take advantage of high school and college. Learn how to learn."

　　It's true that I dropped out of college to start Microsoft, but I was at H a rvard for three years before dropping out-and I'd love to have the time to go b a ck. As I've said before, nobody should drop out of college unless they believe they face the opportunity of a lifetime. And even then they should reconsider.

　　The computer industry has lots of people who didn't finish college, but I 'm not aware of any success stories that began with somebody dropping out of high school. I actually don't know any high school dropouts, let alone any successfu l ones.

　　In my company's early years we had a bright part-time programmer who threa tened to drop out of high school to work full-time. We told him no.

　　Quite a few of our people didn't finish college, but we discourage droppin g out.

　　College isn't the only place where information exist. You can learn in a l i brary. But somebody handing you a book doesn't automatically foster learning. Y o u want to learn with other people, ask questions, try out ideas and have a way t o test your ability. It usually takes more than just a book.

　　Education should be broad, although it's fine to have deep interests, too.

　　 In high school there were periods when I was highly focused on writing soft ware, but for most of my high school years I had wide-ranging academic interests . My parents encouraged this, and I'm grateful that they did.

　　One parent wrote me that her 15-year old son "lost himself in the hole of t he computer. "He got an A in Web site design, but other grades were sinking, sh e said.

　　This boy is making a mistake. High school and college offer you the best ch ance to learn broadly-math, history, various sciences-and to do projects with ot her kids that teach you firsthand about group dynamics. It's fine to take a dee p interest in computers, dance, language or any other discipline, but not if it j eopardizes breadth.

　　In college it's appropriate to think about specialization. Getting real e x pertise in an area of interest can lead to success. Graduate school is one way t o get specialized knowledge. Choosing a specialty isn't something high school s t udents should worry about. They should worry about getting a strong academic sta rt.

　　There's not a perfect correlation between attitudes in high school and su c cess in later life, of course. But it's a real mistake not to take the opportun i ty to learn a huge range of subjects, to learn to work with people in high schoo l, and to get the grades that will help you get into a good college.

　　TEXT F

　　First read the following question.

　　32. The passage focuses on ___.

　　A. the history and future of London

　　B. London's manufacturing skills

　　C. London's status as a financial centrer

　　D. the past and present roles of London

　　Now go through Text F quickly and answer question 32.

　　What is London for? To put the question another way, why was London, by 190 0, incomparably the largest city in the world, which it remained until the bomba rdments of the Luftwaffe? There could be many answers to this question, but any history of London will rehearse three broad explanations. One is the importance of its life as a port. When the Thames turned to ice in February 1855,50,000 men were put out of work, and there were bread riots from those whose liveliboods h ad been frozen with the river. Today, the Thames could be frozen for a year with out endangering the livelihoods of any but a few pleasure-boatmen. 

　　The second major cause of London's wealth and success was that it was easi l y the biggest manufacturing centre in Europe. At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, Dutch looms and the stocking knitting frame were first pioneered in London. The vast range of London's manufacturing skills is another fact; almos t any item you can name was manufactured in London during the days of its prosper ity. In 1851, 13.75 percent of the manufacturing work-force of Great Britain was based in London. By 1961, this had dramatically reduced. By 1993, there were a mere 328,000 Londoners engaged in manufacturing. In other words, by our own time s, two of the chief reasons for London's very existence-its life as a pert and as a centre of manufacture-had dwindled out of existence.

　　London's third great function, since the seventeenth century, has been tha t of national and international bourse: the exchange of stocks and shares, bankin g, commerce and, increasingly, insurance. Both In wood and Francis Sheppard, in London: A history, manage to make these potentially dry matters vivid to the gen eral reader, and both authors assure us that "The City" in the financial sense i s still as important as ever it was. Both, however, record the diminution of the City as an architectural and demographic entity, with the emptying of many city offices (since the advent of the computer much of the work can be done anywhere ) and the removal of many distinctive landmarks.

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