Questions 87-95 are based on the following passage.
My Views on Gambling
Most of life is a gamble. Very many of the things we do involve taking some risk in order to achieve a satisfactory result. We undertake a new job with no idea of the more indirect consequences of our action. Marriage is certainly a gamble and so is the bringing into existence of children, who could prove sad liabilities. A journey, a business transaction, even a chance remark may result immediately or ultimately in tragedy. Perpetually we gamble - against life, destiny, chance, the unknown - call the invisible opponent what we will. Human survival and progress indicate that usually we win.
So the gambling instinct must be an elemental one. Taking risks to achieve something is a characteristic of all forms of life, including humanity. As soon as man acquired property, the challenge he habitually issued to destiny found an additional expression in a human contest. Early may well have staked his flint axe, his bearskin, his wife, in the hope of adding to his possessions. The acquirement of desirable but nonessential commodities must have increased his scope enormously, while the risk of complete disaster lessened.
So long as man was gambling against destiny, the odds were usually in his favor, especially when he used commonsense. But as the methods of gambling multiplied, the chances of success decreased. A wager against one person offered on average even chances and no third party profited by the transaction. But as soon as commercialized city life developed, mass gambling become common. Thousands of people now compete for large prizes, but with only minute chances of success, while the organizers of gambling concerns enjoy big profits with, in some cases, no risk at all. Few clients of the betting shops, football pools, state lotteries, bingo sessions, even charity raffles, realize fully the flimsiness of their chances and the fact that without fantastic luck they are certain to lose rather than gain.
Little irreparable harm results for the normal individual. That big business profits from the satisfaction of a human instinct is a common enough phenomenon. The average wage-earner, who leads a colorless existence, devotes a small percentage of his earnings to keeping alive with extraordinary constancy the dream of achieving some magic change in his life. Gambling is in most cases a non-toxic drug against boredom and apathy and may well preserve good temper, patience and optimism in dreary circumstances. A sudden windfall may unbalance a weaker, less intelligent person and even ruin his life. And the lure of something for nothing as an ideal evokes criticism from the more rigidly upright representatives of the community. But few of us have the right to condemn as few of us can say we never gamble - even it is only investing a few pence a week in the firm's football sweep or the church bazaar "lucky dip."
Trouble develops, however, when any human instinct or appetite becomes overdeveloped. Moderate drinking produces few harmful effects but drunkenness and alcoholism can have terrible consequences. With an unlucky combination of temperament and circumstances, gambling can only become an obsession, almost a form of insanity, resulting in the loss not only of a man's property but of his self-respect and his conscience. Far worse are the sufferings of his dependants, deprived of material comfort and condemned to watching his deterioration and hopelessness. They share none of his feverish excitement or the exhilaration of his rare success. The fact that he does not wish to be cured makes psychological treatment of the gambling addict almost impossible. He will use any means, including stealing, to enable him to carry on. It might be possible to pay what salary he can earn to his wife for the family maintenance but this is clearly no solution. Nothing - education, home environment, other interest, wise discouragement - is likely to restrain the obsessed gambler and even when it is he alone who suffers the consequences, his disease is a cruel one, resulting in a wasted, unhappy life.
Even in the case of the more physically harmful of human indulgences, repressive legislation often merely increases the damage by causing more vicious activities designed to perpetuate the indulgence in secret. On the whole, though negative, gambling is no vice within reasonable limits. It would still exist in an ideal society. The most we can hope for is control over exaggerated profits resulting from its business exploitation, far more attention and research devoted to the unhappy gambling addict and the type of education which will encourage an interest in so many other constructive activities that gambling itself will lose its fascination as an opiate to a dreary existence. It could be regarded as an occasional mildly exciting game, never to be taken very seriously.
87. According to the author, we gamble regardless of the risk because we
A. want to survive.
B. usually win in the gamble.
C. don't know the indirect consequences of the action.
D. wish to achieve what may bring us satisfaction.
88. The bringing into existence of children is also a gamble because they may
A. be mentally retarded.
B. become our disappointment
C. go against us
D. become our opponents.
89. According to the passage, we all take risk in gambling because we are
A. born with the tendency of taking risks.
B. forced to achieve satisfactory result.
C. obliged to achieve what we desire.
D. born with the nature of achieving satisfaction.
90. The gambling instinct, according to the author, is reinforced by humans' desire to
A. give up unnecessary property.
B. add more to their material possession.
C. get desirable commodities.
D. change their living conditions.
91. Which of the following is true?
A. If we dare to gamble, we will usually win.
B. If we use commonsense to gamble, we will usually lose.
C. The luck is usually on our side so long as we have the confidence to change our fate.
D. We all have the luck to win the gamble if we use commonsense.
92. Which of the following is true?
A. The more the methods to gamble, the fewer the chance to succeed.
B. Commonsense plays a role in succeeding in a gamble.
C. The more methods there are, the less profit we will make.
D. The more methods there are, the more chances for us to win a gamble.
93. Who get profits from gambling activities with no risks?
A. Those who organize the activities.
B. Those who often go to state lotteries.
C. Those who often go to football pools.
D. Those who do not take it so seriously.
94. Many people would like to give away a small sum of money because they constantly thing the donation may
A. not affect their general income.
B. bring them unexpected big sums of money.
C. help them preserve their temper and patience.
D. bring them some pennies from heaven.
95. According to the author, gambling may lose its fascination if we
A. create more chances.
B. do not take it so seriously
C. organize more other activities
D. help develop an interest in other activities.
Questions 96-100 are based on the following passage.
Summerhill began as an experimental school. It is no longer such; it is now a demonstration school, for it demonstrates that freedom works.
When my first wife and I began the school, we had one main idea: to make the school fit the child - instead of making the child fit the school. I had this idea because I had taught in ordinary schools for many years. I knew the other way well. I knew it was all wrong. It was wrong because it was based on an adult conception of what a child should be and of how a child should learn. The other way dated from the days when psychology was still and unknown science.
Well, we set out to make a school in which we should allow children freedom to be themselves. In order to do this, we had to renounce all discipline, all direction, all suggestion, all moral training, all religious instruction. We have been called brave, but it did not require courage. All it required was what we had - a complete belief in the child as a good, not an evil, being. For almost forty years, this belief in the goodness of the child has never wavered; it rather has become a final faith.
My view is that a child is innately wise and realistic. If left to himself without adult suggestion of any kind, he will develop as far as he is capable of developing. But, what is Summerhill like? Well, for one thing, lessons are optional. Children can go to them to stay away from them - for years if they want to. There is a timetable - but only for the teachers.
The children have classes usually according to their age, but sometimes according to their interests. We have no new methods of teaching, because we do not consider that teaching in itself matters very much. Whether a school has or has not a special method for teaching long division is of no significance, for long division is of no importance except to those who want to learn it. And the child who wants to learn long division will learn it no matter how taught.
Children who come to Summerhill as kindergarteners attend lessons from the beginning of their stay; but pupil from other schools vow that they will never attend any beastly lessons again at any time. They play and cycle and get in people's way, but they fight shy of lessons. This sometimes goes on for months. They recovery time is proportionate to the hatred their last school gave them. Our record case was a girl from a convent. She loafed for three years. The average period of recovery from lesson aversion is three months.
Summerhill is probably the happiest school in the world. We have no truants and seldom a case of homesickness. We very rarely have fights - quarrels, of course. I have seldom seen a stand-up fight like the ones we used to have as boys. I seldom hear a child cry, because children when free have much less hate to express than children who are downtrodden. Hate breeds hate, and love breads love. Love means approving of children, and that is essential in any school. You can't be on the side of children if you punish them and storm at them. Summerhill is a school in which the child knows what he is approved of.
96. According to the passage, Summerhill places more emphasis on
A. improving the teaching method.
B. physical activities than on mental training.
C. instilling confidence in the child.
D. freeing the child from heavy burden of lessons.
97. According to the author, the difference between Summerhill and other conventional schools is that Summerhill
A. has a well-planned timetable for the teachers.
B. treats children as a person.
C. prevents children from fighting and crying.
D. helps children recover from depression.
98. Summerhill, according to the passage, is
A. a discipline-centered school.
B. an instruction-centered school.
C. teacher-centered school.
D. students-centered school.
99. According to the author, a good school and its teachers should not
A. set out strict disciplines and punish children.
B. ignore proper teaching method.
C. require children to attend lessons regularly.
D. regulate the children's behavior by adult standard.
100. The approach Summerhill adopts in its education can be termed as being
A. humanistic.
B. realistic.
C. physiological.
D. psychological.
Section 3: Cloze Test (20 Points)
In the following passage, there are 20 blanks representing words that are missing from the context. You are to provide each of the blanks with the missing word. The time for this section is 20 minutes. Write your answers on the ANSWER SHEET.
Statistics from China ____(1) be mind boggling: 1.2 billion ____(2), 1.73 trillion cigarettes smoked in a year, 7,000 different ____(3) of woody plants. But amid all of these staggering sums, one factoid stands ____(4) for both its audacious size and for what it says about China's future: there are 630 million Chinese under the age of 24. That's a lot of ____(5) energy to burn. Materialism may be the ____(6) preoccupation among China's young people these days, but just beneath the surface lies a feeling ____(7) wounded nationalist pride and an ever-deepening spiritual hunger. It isn't clear where China's young people are headed. But this is a generation that, by its ____(8) size and certain talents, will ____(9) the world's destiny.
Here's another sobering statistic: this is Terry McCarthy's 22nd, and final, cover ____(10) for TIME Asia - he's leaving the region ____(11) three years to become TIME's Los Angeles ____(12) chief. McCarthy, who has indefatigably crisscrossed Asia out of his twin bases of Hong Kong and Shanghai, was the main driver ____(13) this week's superb special report on young China. He developed the story list, guided much ____(14) the reporting and wrote some of the articles. All ____(15) planning a swank black-tie masked ball last weekend in Shanghai. "I was ____(16) by the willingness of individual Chinese to write for us or talk about their ____(17)," McCarthy says about the special ____(18). "These are the guys ____(19) are going to be running the country in 20 ____(20)." If we're lucky, McCarthy will be back in the region long before then.