PASSAGE TWO (Question 2)
Paragraph Ben and Jerry
1 All successful businesses are not established and run in the same way, with formal business plans, traditional organizational structures, and a strong focus on profits. Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, the entrepreneurs responsible for the highly successful ice cream business that bears their names, were businessmen with a rather unconventional approach.
2 They were rather unconventional from the start, not choosing to begin their careers by attending one of the elite business schools but instead choosing to take a five-dollar correspondence course from Pennsylvania State University. They had little financial backing to start their business, so they had to cut corners wherever they could; the only location they could afford for the startup of their business was a gas station that they converted to ice cream production. Though this start-up was rather unconventional, they were strongly committed to creating the best ice cream possible, and this commitment to the quality of their product eventually led to considerable success.
3 Even though they became extremely successful, they did not convert to a more conventional style of doing business. In an era where companies were measured on every penny of profit that they managed to squeeze out, Ben and Jerry had a strong belief that business should give back to the community; thus, they donated 7.5 percent of their pretax profit to social causes that they believed in. They also lacked the emphasis on executive salary and benefits packages that so preoccupy other corporations, opting instead for a five-to-one policy in which the salary of the employee receiving the highest pay could never be more than five times the salary of the employee receiving the lowest pay.
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This passage discusses Ben and Jerry's unconventional company. |
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Answer Choices (choose 3 to complete the chart):
(1) They each had a personal commitment to social causes.
(2) They began their business with little background and investment.
(3) They believed strongly in producing a very high-quality product.
(4) They had a salary structure that limits the salaries of high-level executives.
(5) They set aside a noteworthy portion of their profits for social causes.
(6) They borrowed several thousand dollars from friends to start their business.
参考答案：（2）、（4）、（5） 来源;考资网
PASSAGE THREE (Question 3)
paragraph The Bald Eagle
1 When the bald eagle became the national symbol of the United States in 1782, soon after the country was born, it is estimated that there were as many as 75,000 nesting pairs in North America. By the early 1960s, however, the number of nesting pairs had been reduced to only around 450.
2 The demise of the bald eagle is generally attributed to the effects of the pesticide DDT (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane). This pesticide was used to kill insects harmful to agriculture, thereby increasing agricultural production. One unintended negative result of the use of DDT was that, while it did get rid of the undesirable insects, it also made its way along the food chain into fish, a favorite food source of the bald eagle.
3 The bald eagle is now protected by federal laws. It was originally protected by the Bald Eagle Act of 1940 and later by the Endangered Species Act of 1973. However, it is not just the laws directly related to endangered species that aided in the resurgence of the bald eagle; its resurgence has also been widely attributed to the banning of DDT in 1972. Today there are more than 5,000 pairs of bald eagles, a tenfold increase over the low point of 450, and the bird was removed from the list of endangered species in july, 1999.
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This passage discusses radical shifts in population that the bald eagle has undergone. |
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Answer Choices (choose 4 to complete the chart):
(1) the numbers of bald eagles were greatly reduced, at least in part due to the effects of a pesticide.
(2) The legislation has had a positive effect on the number of bald eagles.
(3) The bald eagle was named as the national symbol of the United States in the late eighteenth century.
(4) Early in the history of the United States, there were huge numbers of bald eagles.
(5) Two different pieces of legislation that affected the bald eagle were enacted 33 years apart.
(6) The federal government enacted legislation specifically designed to protect the bald eagle as well as to outlaw the pesticide DDT.
参考答案：（1）、（2）、（4）、（6） 来源;考资网
