Section B Compound Dictation

Directions: In this section, you will hear a passage three times. When the passage is read for the first time, you should listen carefully for its general idea. When the passage is read for the second time, you are required to fill in the blanks numbered from S1 to S7 with the exact words you have
just heard. For blanks numbered from S8 to SIO you are required to fill in the missing information. You can either use the exact words you have just heard or write down the main points in your own words. Finally; when the passage is read for the third time, you should check what you have written.

There are a lot of good cameras available at the moment – most of these are made in Japan but there are also good (S 1) models from Germany and the USA. We have (S2)
range of different models to see which is the best (S3) money. After a number of different tests and interviews with people who are (S4) assessed, our researchers (S5)
with the different cameras being the Olympic BY model as the best auto-focus camera available at the moment. It costs $200 although you may well want to spend more - (S6) much as another $200 - on buying (S7) lenses and other equipment. It is a good Japanese camera, easy to use. (S8) whereas the American versions are considerably more expensive The Olympic BY model weighs only 320 grams which is quite a bit less than other cameras of a similar type. Indeed one of the other models we looked at weighed almost twice as much. (S9)
All the people we interviewed expressed almost total satisfaction with it (Sl0)
Part II Reading Comprehension (35 points, 25 minutes)
Section I Careful reading (25points, 20 minutes)
Directions: There are 4 passages in this part. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A), B), C) and D). You should decide on the best choice and mark the corresponding letter on the Answer Sheet with a single line through the centre.
Text A

Many of the home electric goods which are advertised as liberating the modern woman tend to have the opposite effect, because they simple change the nature of work instead of eliminating it. Machines have a certain novelty value, like toys for adults. It is certainly less tiring to put clothes in a washing machine, but the time saved does not really amount to much: the machine has to be watched, the clothes have to be carefully sorted out first, stains removed by hand, buttons pushed and water changed, clothes taken out, aired and ironed. It would be more liberating to pack it all off to a laundry and not necessarily more expensive, since no capital investment is required. Similarly, if you really want to save time you do not make cakes with an electric mixer, you buy one in a shop. If one compares the image of the woman in the women’s magazine with the goods advertised by those periodicals, one realizes how useful a projected image can be commercially. A careful balance has to be struck: if you show a labour-saving device, follow it up with a complicated’ recipe on the next page; on no account hint at the notion that a woman could get herself a job, but instead foster her sense of her own usefulness, emphasizing the creative aspect of her function as a housewife. So we get cake mixes where the cook simply adds an egg herself, to produce “that lovely homo-baked flavour the family love”, and knitting patterns that can be made by hand, or worse still, on knitting machines, which became tremendously fashionable when they were first introduced. Automatic cookers are advertised by pictures of pretty young mothers taking their children to the park, not by professional women presetting the dinner before leaving home for work.��

26. According to the passage, many of the home electric goods which are supposed to liberate woman___.��
A. remove unpleasant aspects of housework��
B. save the housewife very little time��
C. save the housewife’s time but not her money��
D. have absolutely no value for the housewife ��
27. According to the context, “capital investment” refers to money___.��
A. spent on a washing machine��
B. borrowed from the bank��
C. saved in the bank��
D. lent to other people ��
28. The goods advertised in women’s magazines are really meant to ___.��
A. free housewives from housework��
B. encourage housewives to go out to work��
C. make housewives into excellent cooks��
D. give them a false sense of fulfillment ��