In 1998 consumers could purchase virtually anything over the Internet. Books, compact discs, and even stocks were available form World Wide Web sites that seemed to spring up almost daily. A few years earlier, some people had predicted that consumers accustomed to shopping in stores would be reluctant to buy things that they could not see or touch in person. For a growing number of time-starved consumers, however, shopping from their home computer was proving to be a convenient alternative to driving to the store.
A research estimated that in 1998 US consumers would purchase $7.3 billion of goods over the Internet, double the 1997 total. Finding a bargain was getting easier, owing to the rise of online auctions and Web sites that did comparison shopping on the Internet for the best deal.
For all the consumer interest, retailing in cyberspace was still a largely unprofitable business, however. Internet pioneer Amazon.com, which began selling books in 1995 and later branched into recorded music and videos, posted revenue of $153.7 million in the third quarter, up from $37.9 million in the same periods of 1997. Overall, however, the company’s loss widened to $45.2 million from $9.6 million, and analysts did not expect the company to turn a profit until 2001. Despite the great loss, amazon.com had a stock market value of many billions, reflecting investors’ optimism about the future of the industry.
Internet retailing appealed to investors because it provided an efficient means for reaching millions of consumers without having the cost of operating conventional stores with their armies of salespeople. Selling online carried its own risks, however. With so many companies competing for consumers’ attention, price competition was intense and profit margins thin or nonexistent. One video retailer sold the hit movies “Titanic for $9.99, undercutting the 19.99 suggested retail in its initial stage, companies seemed willing to absorb such losses in an attempt to establish a dominant market position.

59. Which of the following is true according to the writer?
[A] Consumers are reluctant to buy things on the Internet.
[B] Consumers are too busy to buy things on the Internet.
[C] Internet retailing is a profitable business.
[D] More and more consumers prefer Internet shopping.
60. Finding a bargain on the Internet was getting easier partly because ______.
[A] there were more and more Internet users
[B] there were more and more online auctions
[C] the consumers had more money to spend
[D] there were more goods available on the Internet
61. It can be inferred from the passage that Amazon.com ________.
[A] will probably make a profit in 2001
[B] is making a profit now
[C] is a company that sells books only
[D] suffers a great loss on the stock market
62. Investors are interested in Internet retailing because ________.
[A] selling online involves little risk
[B] Internet retailing is in its initial stage
[C] it can easily reach millions of consumers
[D] they can make huge profits from it

Passage 4

The years of university expansion and the emergence of a research culture were the same years that saw increases in the number of women entering the university both as students and as faculty. The number of women undergraduates in North American universities increased and diversified. Non-traditional students, overwhelmingly female, began to study on a part-time basis, the numbers of women going to graduate school increased, and women sought entry to the non-traditional position of university faculty member. Nonetheless, while the number of women students expanded dramatically over the decades of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, the same has not been true for faculty. A 1980 report by Statistics Canada indicates that University faculty positions had long been the preserve of men and little has changed since then.
Between 1960 and 1980, female faculty grew from 11.4 to 20% and by 1994 had increased to 25% importantly though women are not equally distributed across discipline areas. In 1980-90, in the five broadly defined areas used by Statistics Canada, women accounted for 29% of the faculty in Education, 26% of those in Fine and Applied Arts, 25% of Humanities faculty, 19% of those in the Social Sciences, and 17% of those in Agricultural and Biological Sciences. The most recent statistics record women by subjects taught, rather than faculty, and do not suggest much change. In 1994, women taught 33.5% of education courses, 30.8% of the courses in Fine Arts, 28.7% of humanities courses, 23.4% of courses in Social Sciences, 20.7% of the courses in agriculture and biological sciences, and 5.4% of course offerings in engineering and applied sciences
The same phenomenon exists in the United States, where the proportion of women faculty was higher before World War II than after. Women were 20% of faculty on campuses at the turn of the century and their percentage increased to a high of 25% in 1940. After the war, proportions declined throughout the 1950s and 1960s to a low of 12% and did not increase to pre-war levels until the 1970s. This decline occurred in both coeducational and women’s colleges where women faculty declined from 72% in 1940 to 50% in 1955 and dropped to a low of 45% in 1978. By 1991, women were reported as accounting for 49.7% of those employed in academic positions. However, women’s positions in the United States are comparable to Canadian figures and have changed little over the last 25 years. 22.3% of full-time university faculty were women in 1972, this had increased to 26.9% by 1982 and to 30% in 1992.

63. Both women students and women faculty started to increase when ________.
[A] the number of male students and faculty was going up
[B] universities entered the 20th century
[C] female students could study on a part-time basis
[D] university began to expand
64. In which discipline did women faculty take up the highest percentage in Canada in 1980-90?
[A] Humanities. [B] Fine and Applied Arts.
[C] Education. [D] Social Sciences.
65. In which of the following subjects taught did female faculty occupy the lowest percentage in Canada in 1994?
[A] Fine Arts. [B] Engineering and applied sciences.
[C] Education courses. [D] Agriculture and biological sciences.
66. This passage tells us that in the U.S. and Canadian universities ________.
[A] women faculty have increased slowly
[B] there is great expansion in the number of female faculty
[C] female faculty are more than male faculty
[D] female faculty are more than female students

Passage 5

The existence of both racial and sexual discrimination in employment is well documented, and policy makers and responsible employers are particularly sensitive to the plight of the black female employee on the theory that she is doubly the victim of discrimination. That there exist differences in income between whites and blacks is clear, but it is not so clear that these differences are solely the result of racial discrimination in employment. The two groups differ in productivity, so basic economics dictates that their incomes will differ.
To obtain a true measure of the effect of racial discrimination in employment it is necessary to adjust the gross black/white income ratio for these productivity factors. White women in urban areas have a higher educational level than black women and can be expected to receive larger incomes. Moreover, State distribution of residence is important because blacks are overrepresented in the South, where wage rates are typically lower than elsewhere and where racial differentials in income are greater. Also, blacks are overrepresented in large cities, and incomes of blacks would be greater if blacks were distributed among cities of different sizes in the same manner as whites.
After standardization for the productivity factors, the income of black urban women is estimated to be between 108 and 125 percent of the income of white women. This indicates that productivity factors more than account for the actual white/black income differential for women. Despite their greater education, white women’s actual average income is only 2 to 5 percent higher than that of black women in the North. Unlike the situation of men, the evidence indicates that the money income of black urban women was as great as, or greater than, that of whites of similar productivity in the North, and probably in the United States as a whole.
At least two possible hypotheses may explain why the adjustment for productivity more than accounts for the observed income differential for women. First, there may be more discrimination against black men than against black women. The different occupational structures for men and women give some indication why this could be the case. Second, the data are consistent with the hypothesis that the intensity of discrimination against women differs little between whites and blacks. Therefore, racial discrimination adds little to effects of existing sex discrimination. These findings suggest that a black woman does not necessarily suffer relatively more discrimination in the labor market than does a white woman. Rather, for women, the effects of sexual discrimination are so pervasive that the effects of racial discrimination are negligible.

67. The primary purpose of the passage is to ________.
[A] explain the reasons for the existence of income differentials between men and women
[B] show that racial discrimination against black women in employment is less important than sexual discrimination
[C] explore the ways in which productivity factors influence the earning power of black workers
[D] sketch a history of racial and sexual discrimination against black and female workers in the labor market
68. Which of the following best describes the logical relationship between the two hypotheses presented in the fourth paragraph?
[A] They may both be true since each phenomenon could contribute to the observed differential.
[B] They are contradictory, and if one is proved to be correct, the other is proved incorrect.
[C] They are independent of each other, and it is hard to establish any relationship between them.
[D] The two hypotheses are logically connected so that it is impossible to prove either one to be true without also proving the other to be true.
69. If the second hypothesis mentioned by the author is correct, a general lessening of discrimination against women should lead to a(n) ________.
[A] higher white/black income ratio for women
[B] lower white/black income ratio for women
[C] lower female/male income ratio
[D] increase in the productivity of women
70. The author’s attitude toward racial and sexual discrimination in employment is one of _______.
[A] apology [B] concern [C] indifference [D] indignation

Section IV English-Chinese Translation

Directions:
Read the following passage carefully and then translate the underlined sentences into Chinese. Your translation must be written neatly on ANSWER SHEET 2.

Laws of nature are of two basic forms: (1) a law is universal if it states that some conditions, so far as are known, invariably are found together with certain other conditions; and (2) a law is probabilistic if it affirms that, on the average, a stated fraction of cases displaying a given condition will display a certain other condition as well. In either case, a law may be valid even though it obtains only under special circumstances or as a convenient approximation. 71) Moreover, a law of nature has no logical necessity; rather, it rests directly or indirectly upon the evidence of experience.
Laws of universal form must be distinguished from generalizations, such as "All chairs in this office are gray," which appear to be accidental. Generalizations, for example, cannot support counterfactual conditional statements such as "If this chair had been in my office, it would be gray" nor subjunctive conditionals such as "If this chair were put in my office, it would be gray." On the other hand, the statement "All planetary objects move in nearly elliptical paths about their star" does provide this support. All scientific laws appear to give similar results. 72) The class of universal statements that can be candidates for the status of laws, however, is determined at any time in history by the theories of science then current.
Several positive attributes are commonly required of a natural law. Statements about things or events limited to one location or one date cannot be lawlike. Also, most scientists hold that the predicate must apply to evidence not used in deriving the law: though the law is founded upon experience, it must predict or help one to understand matters not included among these experiences. Finally, it is normally expected that a law will be explainable by more embracing laws or by some theory. 73) Thus, a regularity for which there are general theoretical grounds for expecting it will be more readily called a natural law than an empirical regularity that cannot be subsumed under more general laws or theories.
Universal laws are of several types. 74) Many assert a dependence between varying quantities measuring certain properties, as in the law that the pressure of a gas under steady temperature is inversely proportional to its volume. Others state that events occur in an invariant order, as in "Vertebrates always occur in the fossil record after the rise of invertebrates." Lastly, there are laws affirming that if an object is of a stated sort it will have certain observable properties. 75) Part of the reason for the ambiguity of the term law of nature lies in the temptation to apply the term only to statements of one of these sorts of laws, as in the claim that science deals solely with cause and effect relationships, when in fact all three kinds are equally valid.

Section V Writing

Directions:
A. Title: Children Education
B. Write an essay of at least 200 words
C. Your composition should be based on the OUTLINE below
D. Your composition should be written neatly on ANSWER SHEET 2.

Outline:
a. Factors influencing children education
b. The role of the parents in children education
c. Ways of ensuring a sounder education for children

模拟试题一答案
Section I Structure and vocabulary
1. A 2.D 3.B 4.D 5.B 6.D 7.C 8.B 9.D 10.B
11.B 12.B 13.B 14.C 15.A 16.B 17.A 18.B 19.C 20.D
21.D 22.C 23.D 24.C 25.A 26.D 27.D 28.C 29.B 30.A
Section II Cloze
31. C 32.A 33.D 34.A 35.B 36.C 37.B 38.D 39.C 40.A
41.C 42.B 43.D 44.B 45.C 46.B 47.D 48.A 49.B 50.C
Section III Reading Comprehension
51. D 52. C 53. A 54. A 55. A 56. D 57. D 58. D 59. D 60. B
61. A 62. C 63. D 64. C 65. B 66. A 67. B 68. A 69. A 70. B

Section IV English-Chinese Translation
71．而且，一条自然法则不存在逻辑上的必然，而是直接或间接地依赖于来自经验的证据。
72．然而，那些可能取得法则地位的带有普遍性的论断，是由特定历史时期流行的科学理论决定的。
73．因此，与一条不能被归入更普遍的法则或理论而是基于经验的规律相比，一条具有普遍的理论依据支持的规律很可能被认可为一条自然法则。
74．许多普遍法则确定的是用于测量某些特质的各种量之间的相互关系，如在恒温下气体的压力与其容量成反比这一原理。
75．“自然法则”这一术语之所以模糊不清，部分原因在于人们企图仅用这个术语指对这些法则中的某种法则的那些论断，如：有人认为科学仅研究因果关系，但实际上它三种都同样适用。

Section V Writing (略)