Lesson 8

听力部分

听力练习

一级练习：［难度系数★］

本课的主题“trade”在六级听力里出现。先听一段简单的文章，试一试！

1. A. Competition in business.

B. Government grants.

C. A type of economic policy.

D. International transportation practices.

2. A. American industrialists.

B. French economists.

C. International leaders.

D. Civil War veterans.

3. A. The rights of private business owners should be protected.

B. The government shouldn't interfere in private business.

C. Politicians should support industrial growth.

D. Competition among companies should be restricted.

听力原文如下：

In the 18th century French economists protested the excessive regulation of business by the government. Their motto was “laisser faire”. “Laisser faire” means “let the people do as they choose”. In the economic sense, this meant that while the government should be responsible for things like maintaining peace and protecting property rights, it should not interfere with private business. It shouldn't create regulations that might hinder business growth, nor should it be responsible for providing subsidies to help. In other words, governments should take a hand-off approach to business. For a while in the United States, laisser faire was a popular doctrine. But things quickly changed. After the Civil War, politicians rarely opposed the governments' generous support of business owners. They were only too glad to support government land grants and loans to railroad owners for example. Their regulations kept tariffs high and that helped protect American industrialists against foreign competition. Ironically in the late 19th century, a lot of people believed that the laisser faire policy was responsible for the countries' industrial growth. It was generally assumed that because business owners did not have a lot of external restrictions placed on them by the government, they could pursue their own interests, and this was what made them so successful. But in fact, many of these individuals would not have been able to meet their objectives if not for government support.

Q:

1. What is the talk mainly about?

2. Who first used the motto “laisser faire”?

3. What is the principal idea of the “laisser faire” policy?

二级练习：［难度系数★★］

这次的主题“trade”在较长的专业八级听力段落题里出现。依然是你熟悉的主题和词汇，挑战一下吧！

1. The trade dispute between the European Union and the US was caused by ______.

A. US refusal to accept arbitration by WTO

B. US imposing tariffs on European steel

C. US refusal to pay compensation to EU

D. US refusal to lower import duties on EU products

2. Who will be consulted first before the EU list is submitted to WTO?

A. EU member states.

B. The United States.

C. WTO.

D. The steel corporations.

听力原文如下：

The European Union has drafted a list of US products to be hit with import taxes in retaliation for tariffs the United States has imposed on European steel. EU member governments will review the list before the EU submits it to the World Trade Organization, which arbitrates international trade disputes.

EU officials will not say which American products will be hit by the EU sanctions. But diplomats monitoring the most recent trans-Atlantic trade dispute say they include textiles and steel products.

Earlier this month, the Bush administration imposed tariffs of up to 30% on some steel imports, including European products.

The EU has appealed to the World Trade Organization to get those duties overturned. But a WTO decision on the matter would take up to a year or more.

EU officials say that, under WTO rules, the EU has the right to impose retaliatory measures in June. But they say the United States can avoid the EU's possible counter-measures if it pays more than two billion dollars in compensation to the EU for imposing the steel tariffs in the first place. The officials say Washington could also escape retaliation by lowering US import duties on other EU products.

The Bush administration says it will not pay compensation.

听说练习

一级练习：听写填空［难度系数★］

这次的主题“trade”在段落听写练习里出现。在这里我们加大了段落听写题的难度，加入了口语练习，但录音的速度适当放慢了。依然是你熟悉的主题和词汇，先用听写填空的方式挑战一下吧！

The last three decades have seen ____________________________________ for hundreds of millions of people. ______________, the countries in which living standards have improved most rapidly ______________________________ and __________________. Since 1970 Asia's “_____________”—Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore—have been ______________________________________________________________. Many of their citizens now enjoy _______________________________ the United States and Europe. Not coincidentally, these four entities are among ________________ in the world.

二级练习：口语复读与背诵［难度系数★★］

刚才段落听写练习的答案是“trade”主题的关键表达，一定要积累成自己的口语素材。在今后同类主题的听力口语考试中，回忆起来，从容应对。

第一步：看着上面的听力原文跟读一遍。

第二步：自己试着完整地背诵一遍。（计时3分钟，背诵开始…）

词汇部分

一级练习：［难度系数★］

本课新学的词汇出现在六级、专业四级、考研、考博考试中。这些词汇如果在题干里出现，是否减轻了你的阅读负担呢？如果在选项里出现（可它们不一定是正确选项），你能选对吗？试一试吧！

临考情境模拟：每题控制在1分钟内，本级测试限时10分钟，请把计时器调到10分钟。计时开始！

考查词汇：regulation

1. If you want to set up a company, you must ______ with the regulations laid down by the authorities.

A. comply

B. adhere

C. confirm

D. accord

［六级真题］

2. All students in this university are requested to ______ with the regulations.

A. yield

B. comply

C. submit

D. consent

［六级真题］

考查词汇：approve

3. I could see that my wife was ______ having that fur coat, whether I approved of it or not.

A. adequate for

B. intent on

C. short of

D. deficient in

［六级真题］

考查词汇：accord

4. The goal is to make higher education available to everyone who is willing and capable ______ his financial situation.

A. with respect to

B. in accord with

C. regardless of

D. in terms of

［六级真题］

考查词汇：extend

5. Having finished their morning work, the clerks stood up behind their desks, ______ themselves.

A. expanding

B. stretching

C. prolonging

D. extending

［六级真题］

考查词汇：apply

6. Scientific research results can now be quickly ______ to factory production.

A. used

B. applied

C tried

D. practiced

［专四真题］

7. The capital intended to broaden the export base and ______ efficiency gains from international trade was channeled instead into uneconomic import substitution.

A. secure

B. extend

C. defend

D. possess

［考研真题］

考查词汇：principle

8. ______ can be seen from the comparison of these figures, the principle involves the active participation of the patient in the modification of his condition.

A. As

B. What

C. That

D. It

［考研真题］

考查词汇：apply

9. In what ______ to a last minute stay of execution, a council announced that emergency funding would keep alive two aging satellites.

A. applies

B. accounts

C. attaches

D. amounts

［考研真题］

考查词汇：extend

10. With its anti-terrorism campaign taking ______ over anything else, the government is extending its job and running in more affairs.

A. superiority

B. priority

C. majority

D. polarity

［考博真题］

二级练习：［难度系数★★］

这次新学的词汇在较难的GRE考试里出现，挑战一下吧！

临考情境模拟：每题控制在2分钟内，本级测试限时24分钟，请把计时器调到24分钟。计时开始！

考查词汇：regulation

1. In the current research program, new varieties of apple trees are evaluated under different agricultural ______ for tree size, bloom density, fruit size, ______ to various soils, and resistance to pests and disease.

A. circumstances...proximity

B. regulations...conformity

C. conditions...adaptability

D. auspices...susceptibility

E. configurations...propensity

［GRE真题］

2. Social scientists have established fairly clear-cut ______ that describe the appropriate behavior of children and adults, but there seems to be ______ about what constitutes appropriate behavior for adolescents.

A. functions...rigidity

B. estimates...indirectness

C. norms...confusion

D. regulations...certainty

E. studies...misapprehension

［GRE真题］

考查词汇：principle

3. The sociologist responded to the charge that her new theory was ______ by pointing out that it did not in fact contradict accepted sociological principles.

A. banal

B. heretical

C. unproven

D. complex

E. superficial

［GRE真题］

4. Despite the apparently bewildering complexity of this procedure, the underlying ______ is quite ______.

A. simplicity...calculated

B. principle...elementary

C. confusion...imaginary

D. purpose...effective

E. theory...modern

［GRE真题］

考查词汇：eliminate

5. In television programming, a later viewing time often ______ a more ______ audience and, therefore, more challenging subjects and themes.

A. requires...critical

B. evinces...affluent

C. implies...mature

D. eliminates...realistic

E. invites...general

［GRE真题］

6. The discovery that, friction excluded, all bodies fall at the same rate is so simple to state and to grasp that there is a tendency to ______ its significance.

A. underrate

B. control

C. reassess

D. praise

E. eliminate

［GRE真题］

7. It is ______ for a government to fail to do whatever it can to eliminate a totally ______ disease.

A. folly...innocuous

B. irresponsible...preventable

C. crucial...fatal

D. instinctive...devastating

E. detrimental...insignificant

［GRE真题］

考查词汇：construct

8. Estimating the risks of radiation escaping from a nuclear plant is ______ question, but one whose answer then becomes part of value-laden, emotionally charged policy debate about whether to construct such a plant.

A. an incomprehensible

B. an undefined

C. an irresponsible

D. a divisive

E. a technical

［GRE真题］

考查词汇：apply

9. Without the psychiatrist's promise of confidentiality, trust is ______ and the patient's communication limited; even though confidentiality can thus be seen to be precious in therapy, moral responsibility sometimes requires a willingness to ______ it.

A. implicit...extend

B. ambiguous...apply

C. prevented...uphold

D. assumed...examine

E. impaired...sacrifice

［GRE真题］

10. Darwin's method did not really ______ the idea of race as an important conceptual category; even the much more central idea of species was little more than a theoretical ______.

A. require...convenience

B. apply...measurement

C. exclude...practice

D. subsume...validation

E. reject...fact

［GRE真题］

考查词汇：extend

11. Even after ______ against the ______ of popular sovereignty were included, major figures in the humanistic disciplines remained skeptical about the proposal to extend suffrage to the masses.

A. recommendations...continuation

B. safeguards...excesses

C. arguments...introduction

D. provisions...advantages

E. laws...creation

［GRE真题］

12. Their ______ was expressed in quotidian behavior: they worshipped regularly, ______ all the regenerative processes of nature respect, and even awe.

A. selflessness...reserving to

B. moderation...extending to

C. reverence...exacting from

D. piety...according

E. serenity...refusing

［GRE真题］

阅读部分

一级练习：［难度系数★］

本课的主题“trade”在英语专业八级阅读里出现。下面的文章和题目中有你熟悉的主题和词汇，试一试！

临考情境模拟：请在10分钟内读完文章，5分钟做完题。请把计时器调到15分钟。计时开始！

It is nothing new that English use is on the rise around the world, especially in business circles. This also happens in France, the headquarters of the global battle against American cultural hegemony. If French guys are giving in to English, something really big must be going on. And something big is going on.

Partly, it's that American hegemony. Didier Benchimol, CEO of a French e-commerce software company, feels compelled to speak English perfectly because the Internet software business is dominated by Americans. He and other French businessmen also have to speak English because they want to get their message out to American investors, possessors of the world's deepest pockets.

The triumph of English in France and elsewhere in Europe, however, may rest on something more enduring. As they become entwined with each other politically and economically, Europeans need a way to talk to one another and to the rest of the world. And for a number of reasons, they've decided upon English as their common tongue.

So when German chemical and pharmaceutical company Hoechst merged with French competitor RhonePoulenc last year, the companies chose the vaguely Latinate Aventis as the new company name—and settled on English as the company's common language. When monetary policymakers from around Europe began meeting at the European Central Bank in Frankfurt last year to set interest rates for the new Euroland, they held their deliberations in English. Even the European Commission, with 11 official languages and traditionally French-speaking bureaucracy effectively switched over to English as its working language last year.

How did this happen? One school attributes English's great success to the sheer weight of its merit. It's a Germanic language, brought to Britain around the fifth century AD. During the four centuries of French-speaking rule that followed Norman Conquest of 1066, the language morphed into something else entirely.

French words were added wholesale, and most of the complications of Germanic grammar were shed while few of the complications of French were added. The result is a language with a huge vocabulary and a simple grammar that can express most things more efficiently than either of its parents. What's more, English has remained ungoverned and open to change—foreign words, coinages, and grammatical shifts—in a way that French, ruled by the purist Academic Francaise, had not.

So it's a swell language, especially for business. But the rise of English over the past few centuries clearly owes at least as much to history and economics as to the language's ability to economically express the concept win-win. What happened is that the competition—first Latin, then French, then, briefly, German—faded with the waning of the political, economic, and military fortunes of, respectively, the Catholic Church, France, and Germany. All along, English was increasing in importance. Britain was the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, and London the world's most important financial centre, which made English a language for business. England's colonies around the world also made it the language with the most global reach.

And as that former colony the US rose to the status of the world's preeminent political, economic, military, and cultural power, English became the obvious second language to learn.

In the 1990s more and more Europeans found themselves forced to use English. The last generation of business and government leaders who hadn't studied English in school was leaving the stage. The European Community was adding new members and evolving from a paper-shuffling club into a serious regional government that would need a single common language if it were ever to get anything done. Meanwhile, economic barriers between European nations have been disappearing, meaning that more and more companies are beginning to look at the whole continent as their domestic market. And then the Internet came along.

The Net had two big impacts. One was that it was an exciting, potentially lucrative new industry that had its roots in the US, so if you wanted to get in on it, you had to speak some English. The other was that by surfing the Web, Europeans who had previously encountered English only in school and in pop songs were now coming into daily contact with it.

None of this means English has taken over European life. According to the European Union, 47% of Western Europeans（including the British and Irish） speak English well enough to carry on a conversation. That's a lot more than those who can speak German （32%） or French （28%）, but it still means more Europeans don't speak the language. If you want to sell shampoo or cell phones, you have to do it in French or German or Spanish or Greek. Even the US and British media companies that stand to benefit most from the spread of English have been hedging their bets—CNN broadcasts in Spanish, the Financial Times has recently launched a daily German-language edition.

But just look at who speaks English: 77% of Western European college students, 69% of managers, and 65% of those aged 15 to 24. In the secondary schools of the European Union's non-English-speaking countries, 91% of students study English, all of which means that the transition to English as the language of European business hasn't been all that traumatic, and it's only going to get easier in the future.

1. In the author's opinion, what really underlies the rising status of English in France and Europe is ______.

A. American dominance in the Internet software business

B. a practical need for effective communication among Europeans

C. European's eagerness to do business with American businessmen

D. the recent trend for foreign companies to merge with each other

2. Europeans began to favour English for all the following reasons EXCEPT its ______.

A. inherent linguistic properties

B. association with the business world

C. links with the United States

D. disassociation from political changes

3. Which of the following statements forecasts the continuous rise of English in the future?

A. About half of Western Europeans are now proficient in English.

B. US and British media companies are operating in Western Europe.

C. Most secondary school students in Europe study English.

D. Most Europeans continue to use their own language.

4. The passage mainly examines the factors related to ______.

A. the rising status of English in Europe

B. English learning in non-English-speaking EU nations

C. the preference for English by European businessmen

D. the switch from French to English in the European Commission

［专八真题］

二级练习：［难度系数★★］

本课的主题“trade”在英语专业八级阅读里出现。下面的文章和题目中有你熟悉的主题和词汇，试一试！

临考情境模拟：请在8分钟内读完文章，6分钟做完题。请把计时器调到14分钟。计时开始！

During the early stages of the Industrial Revolution, advertising was a relatively straightforward means of announcement and communication and was used mainly to promote novelties and fringe products. But when factory production got into full swing and new products, e. g. processed foods, came onto the market, national advertising campaigns and brand-naming of products became necessary. Before large-scale factory production, the typical manufacturing unit had been small and adaptable and the task of distributing and selling goods had largely been undertaken by wholesalers. The small nonspecialised factory which did not rely on massive investment in machinery had been flexible enough to adapt its production according to changes in public demands.

But the economic depression which lasted from 1873 to 1894 marked a turning point between the old method of industrial organisation and distribution and the new. From the beginning of the nineteenth century until the 1870s, production had steadily expanded and there had been a corresponding growth in retail outlets. But the depression brought on a crisis of over-production and under-consumption—manufactured goods piled up unsold and prices and profits fell. Towards the end of the century many of the small industrial firms realised that they would be in a better position to weather economic depressions and slumps if they combined with other small businesses and widened the range of goods they produced so that all their eggs were not in one basket. They also realised that they would have to take steps to ensure that once their goods had been produced there was a market for them. This period ushered in the first phase of what economists now call “monopoly capitalism”, which, roughly speaking, refers to the control of the market by a small number of giant, conglomerate enterprises. Whereas previously competitive trading had been conducted by small rival firms, after the depression the larger manufacturing units and combines relied more and more on mass advertising to promote their new range of products.

A good example of the changes that occurred in manufacture and distribution at the turn of the century can be found in the soap trade. From about the 1850s the market had been flooded with anonymous bars of soap, produced by hundreds of small manufacturers and distributed by wholesalers and door-to-door sellers.

Competition grew steadily throughout the latter half of the century and eventually the leading companies embarked on more aggressive selling methods in order to take customers away from their rivals. For instance, the future Lord Leverhulme decided to “brand” his soap by selling it in distinctive packages in order to facilitate recognition and encourage customer loyalty.

Lord Leverhulme was one of the first industrialists to realise that advertisements should contain “logical and considered” arguments as well as eye-catching and witty slogans. Many advertisers followed his lead and started to include “reason-why” copy in their ads. For example, one contemporary Pears soap ad went into great detail about how the product could enhance marital bliss by cutting down the time the wife had to spend with her arms in a bowl of frothy suds. And an ad for Cadbury's cocoa not only proclaimed its purity but also detailed other benefits: “for the infant it is a delight and a support; for the young girl, a source of healthy vigour；for the young miss in her teens a valuable aid to development...” and so on. As the writer E. S. Turner rightly points out, the advertising of this period had reached the “stage of persuasion as distinct from proclamation or iteration”. Indeed advertise or bust seemed to be the rule of the day as bigger and more expensive campaigns were mounted and smaller firms who did not, or could not, advertise, were squeezed or bought out by the larger companies.

1. An example of a product which might well have been advertised during the early stages of the Industrial Revolution is ______.

A. a cooking utensil

B. a new child's toy

C. tinned fruit

D. household soap

2. One of the more aggressive selling methods in the soap trade by the leading companies was to ______.

A. buy out small firms

B. take over distribution

C. resort to product designing

D. keep contact with their customers

3. In addition to distinctive packaging, contemporary products should also ______.

A. draw customers' attention to their benefits

B. make customers aware of their attractiveness

C. display details of the main ingredients

D. focus on proclamation and iteration

［专八真题］

写作部分

本课涉及国际经济一体化进程中的机遇与问题，这里给大家提供这方面的写作素材，方便大家积累下来，在以后遇到的国际关系类话题中结合课文使用。

真题举例

The material progress and well-being of one country are necessarily connected to the material progress and well-being of all other countries.

［GRE真题］

写作素材

What Is Globalization?

Globalization is a process of interaction and integration among the people, companies, and governments of different nations, a process driven by international trade and investment and aided by information technology. This process has effects on the environment, on culture, on political systems, on economic development and prosperity, and on human physical well-being in societies around the world.

Globalization is not new, though. For thousands of years, people—and, later, corporations—have been buying from and selling to each other in lands at great distances, such as through the famed Silk Road across Central Asia that connected China and Europe during the Middle Ages. Likewise, for centuries, people and corporations have invested in enterprises in other countries. In fact, many of the features of the current wave of globalization are similar to those prevailing before the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.

But policy and technological developments of the past few decades have spurred increases in cross-border trade, investment, and migration so large that many observers believe the world has entered a qualitatively new phase in its economic development. Since 1950, for example, the volume of world trade has increased by 20 times, and from just 1997 to 1999 flows of foreign investment nearly doubled, from $468 billion to $827 billion. Distinguishing this current wave of globalization from earlier ones, author Thomas Friedman has said that today globalization is “farther, faster, cheaper, and deeper.”

This current wave of globalization has been driven by policies that have opened economies domestically and internationally. In the years since the Second World War, and especially during the past two decades, many governments have adopted free-market economic systems, vastly increasing their own productive potential and creating myriad new opportunities for international trade and investment. Governments also have negotiated dramatic reductions in barriers to commerce and have established international agreements to promote trade in goods, services, and investment. Taking advantage of new opportunities in foreign markets, corporations have built foreign factories and established production and marketing arrangements with foreign partners. A defining feature of globalization, therefore, is an international industrial and financial business structure.

Technology has been the other principal driver of globalization. Advances in information technology, in particular, have dramatically transformed economic life. Information technologies have given all sorts of individual economic actors—consumers, investors, businesses—valuable new tools for identifying and pursuing economic opportunities, including faster and more informed analyses of economic trends around the world, easy transfers of assets, and collaboration with far-flung partners.

Globalization is deeply controversial, however. Proponents of globalization argue that it allows poor countries and their citizens to develop economically and raise their standards of living, while opponents of globalization claim that the creation of an unfettered international free market has benefited multinational corporations in the Western world at the expense of local enterprises, local cultures, and common people. Resistance to globalization has therefore taken shape both at a popular and at a governmental level as people and governments try to manage the flow of capital, labor, goods, and ideas that constitute the current wave of globalization.

To find the right balance between benefits and costs associated with globalization, citizens of all nations need to understand how globalization works and the policy choices facing them and their societies.