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Part HI Reading Comprehension (40% )
Section A (30%)
Passage 5
America was optimistic almost as a matter of official doctrine right from the outset. Anyone setting up a republic in the 1770s had to be aware that nearly every republic in history had failed, usually under the iron heel of a tyrant or conqueror. No sooner had the American experiment got started than Napoleon repeated the pattern by ruining Europe’s frail republics. Yet this one, safeguarded by an ocean, prospered. British visitors in the 19th century, like Frances Trollope and Charles Dickens, found the Americans’ self-confidence, national pride and boastfulness almost insufferable, but they had to admit that the Americans got things done. Enterprising chaps like Andrew Carnegie emigrated from gaunt British poverty to accumulate Wagnerian fortunes on the other side of the Atlantic.In the 20th century, too, a succession of visitors as different as Rudyard Kipling, Winston Churchill and Alistair Cooke loved recharging their spiritual batteries with long trips to America. Cooke even made a career out of praising America’s can-do attitude, though with an undercurrent of irony at its excesses. What would he make of its current moods?
Today, recession-related jitters are widespread. Nearly everyone knows someone who has just lost their job and can’t help speculating whether they’re going to be next. American gloom comes in both highbrow and lowbrow forms. It has become characteristic of the wealthiest and most highly educated Americans to be pessimistic about their country. They fear the erosion of civil liberties, a loss of competitiveness and an inability to produce new generation of elite scientists.
Lowbrow gloom, sometimes developing into self-contempt, is easy to find just by turning on the TV. Millions watch The Biggest Losera show in which hideously overweight citizens cast off their last race of dignity as they compete to shed rolls of fat. In Das Kapital Karl Marx made a bitingly ironic remark that the bourgeoisie was becoming so bloated that it would soon be paying to lose weight. The joke’s on him; as it turns out, it’s the pro-bourgeois American working class that is paying millions to slim down, and taking an abnormal interest in others on the same quest.
60. In Paragraph 1, the case of American in the 1770s is mentioned in order to stress the country’s
A. historical progress B. self-confidence
C. political system D. independence
61. Frances Trollope and Charles Dickens recognized that Americans were indeed .
A. successful B. respectable C. tyrannical D. wealthy
62. According to the passage, Alistair Cooke .
A. assisted Americans in fighting several important battles
B. accompanied Winston Churchill during an American visit
C. mocked America’s extravagant boast of its competence
D. gave plenty of praise onto Americans’ current moods
63. The highbrow gloom in America is characterized by _.
A. seeing little promise of the country
B. feeling uneasy about unemployment
C. worrying about children’s education
D. doubting one’s own competitiveness
64. The author seems to think that the program The Biggest Loser .
A. tells the audience to respect overweight people
B. leads the audience to a wrong weight loss method
C. helps the participants to build a competitive spirit
D. makes the participants lose all of their self-respect
65. As implied by the author, the American working class, similar to the bourgeoisie criticized by Karl Marx, is now paying for their .
A. self-indulgence B. self-deception C. self-possession D. self-satisfaction