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(B)
Charlie Bell became chief executive of McDonald’s in April. Within a month doctors told him that he had colorectal cancer. After stock market hours on November 22nd, the fast-food firm said he had resigned; it would need a third boss in under a year. Yet when the market opened, its share price barely dipped then edged higher. After all, McDonald’s had, again, shown how to act swiftly and decisively in appointing a new boss.
Mr. Bell himself got the top job when Jim Cantalupo died of a heart attack hours before he was due to address a convention of McDonald’s franchisees(获特许经营联营店者). Mr. Cantalupo was a McDonald’s veteran brought out of retirement in January 2003 to help remodel the firm after sales began falling because of dirty restaurants, indifferent service and growing concern about junk food. He devised a recovery plan, backed by massive marketing, and promoted Mr. Bell to chief operating officer. When Mr. Cantalupo died, a rapidly convened(召集) board confirmed Mr. Bell, a 44-year-old Australian already widely seen as his heir apparent, in the top job. The convention got its promised chief executive’s address, from the firm’s first non-American leader.
Yet within weeks executives had to think about what to do if Mr. Bell became too ill to continue. Perhaps Mr. Bell had the same thing on his mind: he usually introduced Jim Skinner, the 60-year-old vice-chairman, to visitors as the “steady hand at the wheel”. Now Mr. Skinner, an expert on the firm’s overseas operations, becomes chief executive, and Mike Roberts, head of its American operations, joins the board as chief operating officer.
Is Mr. Roberts now the new heir apparent? Maybe. McDonald’s has brought in supposedly healthier choices such as salads and toasted sandwiches worldwide and, instead of relying for most of its growth on opening new restaurants, has turned to upgrading its 31,000 existing ones. America has done best at this; under Mr. Roberts, like-for-like sales there were up by 7. 5% in October on a year earlier.
The new team’s task is to keep the revitalization plan on course, especially overseas, where some American brands are said to face political hostility from consumers. This is a big challenge. Is an in-house succession(交替、继承) the best way to tackle it? Mr. Skinner and Mr. Roberts are both company veterans, having joined in the 1970s. Some recent academic studies find that the planned succession of a new boss from within, such as Mr. Bell and now (arguably) Mr. Roberts, produces better results than looking hastily, or outside, for one. McDonald’s smooth handling of its serial misfortunes at the top certainly seems to prove the point. Even so, everyone at McDonald’s must be hoping that it will be a long time before the firm faces yet another such emergency.
70.The main reason for the constant change at the top of McDonald is _______.
A. the constant change of its share price
B. the board’s failure to reach an agreement
C. the falling sales
D. the physical problems of the chief executives
71.The underlined phrase “heir apparent” (in Paragraph 2) in the article most probably means someone who _______.
A. has the same ideas, aims and style with a person
B. has the same right to receive the family title
C. is appointed as an executive of a company
D. is likely to take over a person’s position when that person leaves
72.Which of the following was NOT a cause of the falling sales of McDonald?
A. The change of the chief executive.
B. People’s concern about junk food.
C. Dirty restaurant.
D. Indifferent service.
73. In terms of succession at the top, McDonald_______.
A. has had to made rather hasty decisions
B. prefers to appoint a new boss from within
C. acts in a quick and unreasonable way
D. surprises all the people with its decisions
(C)
It is evident that there is a close connection between the capacity to use language and the capacities covered by the verb “to think”. Indeed, some writers have identified thinking with using words: Plato coined the saying, “In think?ing the soul is talking to itself”; J. B. Watson reduced thinking to inhibited(拘谨的) speech located in the minute(微小的) movements or tensions of the physiological mechanisms involved in speaking; and although Ryle is careful to point out that there are many senses in which a person is said to think and in which words are not in evidence, he has also said that say?ing something in a specific frame of mind is thinking a thought.
Is thinking reducible to, or dependent upon, language habits? It would seem that many thinking situations are hardly distinguishable from the skillful use of language, although there are some others in which language is not involved. Thought cannot be simply identified with using language. It may be the case, of course, that the non-linguistic skills involved in thought can only be acquired and developed if the learner is able to use and understand language. However, this question is one which we cannot hope to answer in this book. Obviously being able to use language makes for a considerable development in all one’s capacities but how precisely this comes about we cannot say.
At the common-sense level it appears that there is often a distinction between thought and the words we employ to communicate with other people. We often have to struggle hard to find words to capture what our thinking has already grasped, and when we do find words we sometimes feel that they fail to do their job properly. Again when we report or describe our thinking to other people we do not merely report unspoken words and sentences. Such sentences do not always occur in thinking, and when they do they are merged with vague imagery and the hint of unconscious or subliminal（潜意识） activities going on just out of rage. Thinking, as it happens, is more like struggling, striving, or searching for something than it is like talking or reading.
Again the study of speech disorders due to brain injury disease suggests that patients can think without having adequate control over their language. Some patients, for example, fail to find the names of objects presented to them and are unable to describe simple events which they witness; they even find it difficult to interpret long written notices. But they succeed in playing games of chess or draughts. They can use the concepts needed for chess playing or draught playing but are unable to use many of the concepts in ordinary language. How they manage to do this we do not know. Presumably human beings have various capacities for thinking situations which are likewise independent of language.
74. According to the theory of "thought" devised by J. B. Watson, thinking is_______.
A. talking to the soul
B. concealed speech
C. speaking nonverbally
D. a non-linguistic behavior
75. What does the author think about the relationship between language and thinking?
A. The ability to use language enhances one’s capacity of thinking.
B. Words and thinking match more often than not.
C. Thinking never goes without language.
D. Language and thinking are generally distinguishable.
76. According to the author, when we intend to describe our thoughts, we______.
A. merely report internal speech
B. have to search for proper words in the way we read
C. are overwhelmed with vague imagery
D. sometimes are not able to find appropriate words
77. Why are patients with speech disorders able to think without having adequate control of language?
A. They use different concepts.
B. They do not think linguistically.
C. It still remains an unsolved mystery.
D. Thinking is independent of language.
