单选题With the increased use of high-tech communications equipment, business people _____.A have to get familiar with modern technologyB are gaining more economic benefit from domestic operationsC are attaching more importance to their overseas businessD are

Practice 8　　You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.　　Write about the following topic:　　Some people think people have benefited from modern communications technology, but other people think some people have not benefited at all. To what extent do you agree or disagree?　　You should write at least 250 words.

What is the best title for this passage?

With the increased use of high-tech communications equipment, business people _____.

Now people have more free time. Square Dancing is becoming more and more ______.

Read the passage carefully and answer questions 1 to 5. Answer each question in a maximum of 10 words. Remember to write the answers on the answer sheet　　Overseas assignments are becoming increasingly important to advancement within executive ranks. The executive stationed in another country no longer need fear being “out of sight and out of mind.” He or she can be sure that the overseas effort is central to the company’s plan for success, and that promotions often follow or accompany an assignment abroad. If an employee can succeed in a difficult assignment overseas, superior will have greater confidence in his or her ability to cope back in the United States where cross-cultural considerations and foreign language issues are becoming more and more prevalent.　　Thanks to a variety of relatively inexperience communications devices with business applications, even small businesses in the United States are able to get into international markets. English is still the international language of business. But there is an ever-growing need for people who can speak another language. A second language isn’t generally required to get a job in business, but having language skills gives a candidate the edge when other qualifications appear to be equal.　　The employee posted abroad who speaks the country’s principal language has an opportunity to fast-forward certain negotiations, and can have the cultural insight to know when it is better to move more slowly. The employee at the home office who can communicate well with foreign clients over the telephone or by fax machine is an obvious asset to the firm.　　Questions:　　1．What is the author’s attitude toward high-tech communications equipment?　　2．What is becoming more and more important to promotion?　　3．What does “out of sight and out of mind” (Line 2. Para. 3) probably mean?　　4．According to the passage, what is an important consideration of international corporations in 　　employing people today?　　5．What is the advantage of employees having foreign language skills?

With the (develop) ____ of foreign trade, more and more people are doing import and export business.

Practice 3　　It was the anti-globalization movement that really put globalization on the map. As a word it has existed since the 1960s, but the protests against this allegedly new process, which its opponents condemn as a way of ordering people’s lives, brought globalization out of the financial and academic worlds and into everyday current affairs.　　In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the business model called the “globalized” financial market came to be seen as an entity that could have more than just an economic impact on the parts of the world it touched. Globalization came to be seen as more than simply a way of doing business, or running financial markets—it became a process. From then on the word took on a life of its own.　　So how does the globalized market work? It is modern communications that make it possible; for the British service sector to deal with its customers through a call center in India, or for a sportswear (运动服) manufacturer to design its products in Europe, make them in south east Asia and sell them in north America.　　But this is where the anti-globalization side gets stuck in (关注). If these practices replace domestic economic life with an economy that is heavily influenced or controlled from overseas. Then the creation of a globalized economic model and the process of globalization can also be seen as a surrender of power to the corporations, or a means of keeping poorer nations in their place.　　Not everyone agrees that globalization is necessarily evil, or that globalized corporations are running the lives of individuals or are more powerful than nations. Some say that the spread of globalization, free markets and free trade into the developing world is the best way to beat poverty—the only problem is that free markets and free trade do not yet truly exist.　　Globalization can be seen as a positive, negative or even marginal process. And regardless of whether it works for good or ill, globalization’s exact meaning will continue to be the subject of debate among those who oppose, support or simply observe it.

Many studies have suggested that _____.

What benefit will distance learning program bring to a business?

The purpose of the passage is to _____.

With the increased use of high-tech communications equipment, business people .

Is More Growth Really Better?　　A number of writers have raised questions about the desirability of faster economic growth as an end in itself, at least in the wealthier industrialized countries. Yet faster growth does mean more wealth, and to most people the desirability of wealth is beyond question. “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor—and I can tell you, rich is better,” a noted stage personality is said to have told an interviewer, and most people seem to have the same attitude about the economy as a whole. To those who hold this belief, a healthy economy is one that is capable of turning out vast quantities of shoes, food, cars, and TV sets. An economy whose capacity to provide all these things is not expanding is said to have succumbed to the disease of stagnation.　　Economists from Adam Smith to Karl Marx saw great virtue in economic growth. Marx argued that capitalism, at least in its earlier historical stages, was a vital form of economic organization by which society got out of the rut in which the medieval stage of history had trapped it. Marx believed that “the development of the productive powers of society... alone can form the real basis of a higher form of productive powers of society”. Marx went on to tell us that only where such great productive powers have been unleashed can one have “a society in which the full and free development of every individual forms the ruling principle.” In other words, only a wealthy economy can afford to give all individuals the opportunity for full personal satisfaction through the use of their special abilities in their jobs and through increased leisure activities.　　Yet the desirability of further economic growth for a society that is already wealthy has been questioned on grounds that undoubtedly have a good deal of validity. It is pointed out that the sheer increase in quantity of products has imposed an enormous cost on society in the form of pollution, crowding, proliferation of wastes that need disposal, and debilitating psychological and social effects. It is said that industry has transformed the satisfying and creative tasks of the artisan into the mechanical and dehumanizing routine of the assembly line. It has dotted our roadsides with junkyards, filled our air with smoke, and poisoned our food with dangerous chemicals. The question is whether the outpouring of frozen foods, talking dolls, radios, and headache remedies is worth its high cost to society. As one well-known economist put it:　　The continued pursuit of economic growth by Western Societies is more likely on balance to reduce rather than increase social welfare... Technological innovations may offer to add to men’s material opportunities. But by increasing the risks of their obsolescence it adds also to their anxiety. Swifter means of communications have the paradoxical effect of isolating people; increased mobility has led to more hours commuting; increased automobilization to increased separation; more television to less communication. In consequence, people know less of their neighbors than ever before.　　Virtually every economist agrees that these concerns are valid, though many question whether economic growth is their major cause. Nevertheless, they all emphasize that pollution of air and water, noise and congestion, and the mechanization of the work process are very real and very serious problems. There is every reason for society to undertake programs that grapple with these problems. 11

The special needs of old people for housing have _____ more attention from house designers.

Which of the following is true about the Internet according to the passage?

One global trend in business is to ______

Compared to America, ______