Part ⅡReading Comprehension (35 minutes)
Directions: There are 4 passages in this part, Each passage is followed by some questions at 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.
Passage One
Questions 21 to 25 are based on the following passage.
In 1985 when a Japan Air Lines (JAL) jet crashed, its president, Yasumoto Takagi, called each victim’s family to apologize, and then promptly resigned. And in 1987, when a subsidiary of Toshiba sole sensitive military technology to the former Soviet Union, the chairman of Toshiba gave up his post.
These executive actions, which Toshiba calls “the highest form of apology,” may seem bizarre to US managers. No one at Boeing resigned after the JAL crash, which may have been caused by a faulty Boeing repair.
The difference between the two business cultures centers around different definitions of delegation. While US executives give both responsibility and authority to their employees, Japanese executives delegate only authority—the responsibility is still theirs. Although the subsidiary that sold the sensitive technology to the Soviets had its own management, the Toshiba top executives said they “must take personal responsibility for not creating an atmosphere throughout the Toshiba group that would make such activity unthinkable, even in an independently run subsidiary.”
Such acceptance of community responsibility is not unique to businesses in Japan. School principals in Japan have resigned when their students committed major crimes after school hours. Even if they do not quit, Japanese executives will often accept primary responsibility in other ways, such as taking the first pay cut when a company gets into financial trouble. Such personal sacrifices, even if they are largely symbolic, help to create the sense of community and employee loyalty that is crucial to the Japanese way of doing business.
Harvard Business School professor George Lodge calls the ritual acceptance of blame “almost a feudal (封建的) way of purging (清除) the community of dishonor,” and to some in the United States, such resignations look cowardly. However, in an era in which both business and governmental leaders seem particularly good at evading responsibility, many US managers would probably welcome an infusion (灌輸) of the Japanese sense of responsibility, If, for instance, US automobile company executives offered to reduce their own salaries before they asked their workers to take pay cuts, negotiations would probably take on a very different character.
21. Why did the chairman of Toshiba resign his position in 1987?
A) In Japan, the leakage of a slate secret to Russians is a grave came.
B) He had been under attack for shifting responsibility to his subordinates.
C) In Japan, the chief executive of a corporation is held responsible for the mistake made by its subsidiaries.
D) He had been accused of being cowardly towards crises that were taking place in his corporation.
22. According to the passage if you want to be a good manager in Japan, you have to ________.
A) apologize promptly for your subordinates' mistakes
B) be skillful in accepting blames from customers
C) make symbolic sacrifices whenever necessary
D) create a strong sense of company loyalty
23. What’s Professor George Lodge’s attitude towards the resignations of Japanese corporate leaders?
A) Sympathetic C) Critical
B) Biased. D) Approving.
24. Which of the following statements is TRUE?
A) Boeing had nothing to do with the JAL air crash in 1985.
B) American executives consider authority and responsibility inseparable.
C) School principals bear legal responsibility for students' crimes.
D) Persuading employees to take pay cuts doesn’t help solve corporate crises.
25. The passage is mainly about ________.
A) resignation as an effective way of dealing with business crises
B) the importance of delegating responsibility to employees
C) ways of evading responsibility in times of crises
D) the difference between two business cultures
Passage Two
Questions 26 to 30 are based on the following passage.
As machines go, the car is not terribly noisy, nor terribly polluting, nor terribly dangerous; and on all those dimensions it has become better as the century has grown older. The main problem is its prevalence, and the social costs that ensue from the use by everyone of something that would be fairly harmless if, say, only the rich were to use it. It is a price we pay for equality.
Before becoming too gloomy, it is worth recalling why the car has been arguably the most successful and popular product of the whole of the past 100 years—and remains so. The story begins with the environmental improvement it brought in the 1900s. In New York city in 1900, according to the Car Culture. A 1975 book by J. Flink, a historian, horses deposited 2.5 millioo pounds of manure(糞)and 60,000 gallons of urine (尿) every day. Every year, the city authorities had to remove an average of 15,000 dead horses from the streets, It made cars smell of roses.
Cars were also wonderfully flexible. The main earlier solution to horse pollution and traffic jams was the electric trolley bus (電車). But that required fixed overhead wires, and rails and platforms, which were expensive, ugly, and inflexible, The car could go from any A to any B, and allowed towns to develop in all directions with low-density housing, rather than just being concentrated along the trolley or rail lines. Rural areas benefited too, for they became less remote.
However, since pollution became a concern in the 1950s, experts have predicted—wrongly—that the car boom was about to end. In his book Mr. Flink argued that by 1973 the American market had become saturated, at one car for every 2.25 people, and so had the markets of Japan and Western Europe (because of land shortages). Environmental worries and diminishing oil reserves would prohibit mass car use anywhere else.
He was wrong, Between 1970 and 1990, whereas America’s population grew by 23%, the aumber of cars on its roads grew by 60%, There is now one car for every 1.7 people there, one for every 2.1 in Japan, one for every 5.3 in Britain. Around 550 million cars are already on the roads, not to mention all the trucks and mocorcyeles, and about 50 million new ones are made each year worldwide. Will it go on? Undoubtedly, because people want it to.
26. As is given in the first paragraph, the reason why the car has become a problem is that ________.
A) poor people can’t afford it
B) it is too expensive to maintain
C) too many people are using it
D) it causes too many road accidents
27. According to the passage, the car started to gain popularity because ________.
A) it didn’t break down as easily as a horse
B) it had a comparatively pleasant odor
C) it caused less pollution than horses
D) it brightened up the gloomy streets
28. What impact did the use of cars have on society?
A) People were compelled to leave downtown areas.
B) People were able to live in less crowded suburban areas.
C) Business along trolley and rail lines slackened.
D) City streets were free of ugly overhead wires.
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