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TEXT I
First read the following question.
34. The theme of the book by Marie Winn is presumably .
A. child abuse B. family relationship
C. loss of childhood innocence D. teen-age rebellion
Now go through TEXT I quickly and answer question 34.
Each new crop of adolescents always seems unfathomable to its predecessors. But when journalist Marie Winn began to study today's youngsters, she discovered something far more fundamental and disturbing than just another teen-age rebellion. In the short space of the past decade, she comments in her recent book Children without Childhood. that many middle-class American children not high-schoolers, but kids between the ages of 6 and 12 have been robbed of their most precious birthright — childhood itself. Willy-nilly, the typical fifth grader, once blissfully ignorant of adult matters, is now aware not just of sex and violence, but also of injustice, fear of death, adult frailty and cruelty, political corruption and economic instability.
What explains this sudden loss of innocence? One potent influence was the sexual revolution of the '60s. The new sexual awareness of that decade exposed adults and children alike to an endless parade of erotic possibilities. Another factor is the spiraling American divorce rate of the last two decades, which has brought so many children into intimate contact with their parents' self-absorption, vulnerability and quite often, new sexual liaisons.
Perhaps the most interesting explanation here for the altered nature of childhood is the sweeping change that occurred during the 1970s in the economic and social status of women. As hordes of them left home for the workplace and shed their own protected position as child-wives, according to Winn. the effect of child rearing was cataclysmic. In practical terms, kids were left with far less supervision. But something much more basic happened as well. Newly emancipated women began to feel that it was no longer fair to demand submission and deference from their offspring — or to deny them full access to information about life's confusing realities.
Such treatment was well intentioned. But, as Winn documents, "new-era child rearing" in which the child is enlisted as an equal partner in his own upbringing — has turned out to be a disaster. Children do not prosper when treated as adults. Instead, what they require to accomplish their important tasks of learning and exploration and play is the security of dependency, of their inherent inequality.
While the social forces that have transformed family life are probably irreversible, some measures. Winn suggests, can be taken to keep children from learning too much too soon. Couples who are bent primarily on self-fulfillment or high-powered careers would do well to think twice about producing offspring at all. Those who do become parents should be willing to take an authoritative position in the family and to sacrifice their own time for supervision of the kids.
Youngsters between the ages of 6 and 12, Winn emphasizes, require just as much time and attention as toddlers. She also urges parents to repress, gently, their children's sexuality by withholding information and maintaining discipline - not out of prudery, but because young people whose innocence is prolonged will devote more energy to learning and play, skills that ultimately lead to creativity and achievement. And in the meantime, they can enjoy the blessing of a real childhood.
TEXT J
First read the following questions.
35. The uncultivated part of the arable land in Saudi Arabia is________.
A. 9 000 sq. km B. 15 000sq. km
C. 6 000 sq. km D. 242 000 sq. km
36. Saudi farmer's success in agriculture can be attributed to all the following factors EXCEPT________.
A. abundant ground-water reserves
B. government's heavy subsidization
C. interest-free loans from the bank
D. Government's investment in agriculture
Now go through TEXT J quickly and answer questions 35 and 36.
Agriculture
Few people think of Saudi Arabia as a farm country, but agricultural production reached 1.5 billion last year and is on the rise. Tomatoes, potatoes and lettuce are grown in the desert, and there are large fields of wheat. In many cases the fields are watered by long irrigation arms that revolve on huge electrically-driven wheels.
Water comes from rainfall, ground-water or wells. There are 15 000 sq. km of arable land in the kingdom, only 6 000 sq. km of which are under cultivation.
Recent investigations have confirmed sufficient underground water reserves to support a century of sustained withdrawal, irrigating an additional 600 000 acres (242 000 hectares).
Between 1975 and 1980. 12 commercial dairy farms were established, making fresh milk available in commercial quantities for the first time. An additional 16 dairy farms will be in operation by 1985, producing 500000 tons of milk a year, and making the kingdom almost self-sufficient in this important commodity.
Due to heavy subsidization. Saudi Arabia may also achieve self-sufficiency in wheat production by the end of this year. Domestic yield reached 400 000 tons in 1982 with 600 000 tons expected this year. By 1985. an additional 144000acres will be placed in cereal production.
The 1982 harvest yielded 10 000 tons of potatoes and 77 000 tons of dates, of which 500 tons were exported.
Saudi farmers are having considerable success raising cucumbers and tomatoes in enclosed humidity-controlled conditions. Using these hydroponic techniques, they arc able to harvest such produce in five to eight weeks after transplanting.
Experiments are also under way growing vegetables in sterilized sand, irrigated with nutrient pack drips.
Poultry operations provided the domestic market with 80 million chickens last year, 29% of national consumption, and 1.1 billion eggs. 90% of local requirements.
The Saudi government's incentives to invest in the agricultural sector are unusually attractive: the Saudi Arabian Agricultural Bank offers interest-free loans on 80% of the cost of a project up to 15 million. Fertilizers and animal feed are eligible for 50% of cost subsidies, and selected farm equipment, subsidies of 30 to 50% of the cost.
The airfreight for flying cattle into the country is paid for by the government, as is water for irrigation.
As of October 1982 the Agricultural Bank had made loans amounting to US $1. 75 billion.
During the current five-year plan the government is investing US $2. 4 billion in the agricultural sector.
TEXT K
First read the following questions.
37. When can the drought be expected to end?
A. In no time. B. In the summer.
C. In the fall. D. Beyond prediction.
38. The drought is predicted to cause to Texas agribusiness.
A. a US $2.4 billion loss B. a US $5 billion loss
C. a US $6. 5 billion loss D. an inestimable loss
Now go through TEXT K quickly and answer questions 37 and 38.
Drought
From its headwaters at San Ygnacio, Texas, to its giant hydroelectric dam 50 miles downstream. Falcon Lake covers some 87 000 acres along the Rio Grande and the US Mexican border. Created in the 1950's to improve flood control and irrigation, the lake is a water monument to the era of gigantic public works. But the worse drought since the Eisenhower years has lowered the water level by nearly 50 feet and bit by bit. Falcon Lake is revealing the secrets of its long-submerged past. On the Texas side of the lake, drowned border towns like Zapata and Lopeno, relocated when the dam was built, are reemerging from the flood. On the Mexican side, near the town of Benevidcs stone crosses in a once submerged old cemetery rise like eerie sentinels to the drought. The last time anybody saw these graves, segregation was the law of the land, the Dodgers were still in Brooklyn and Bill Clinton was in second grade.
The two-year drawdown of Falcon Lake is only one symptom of the Drought of '96 — a slowly gathering crisis that is putting a huge strain on the water supplies of the fast-growing cities of the Southwest and on the farm-and-cattle regions of the southern Plains as well. From Los Angeles to Corpus Christi. from Brownsville to Nebraska, the drought pits state against state, city dwellers against farmers and farmers against a global weather system that has turned suddenly hostile toward man. Severe to extreme drought conditions now prevail across the whole southwestern part of the United States, a region that includes southern California, southern Nevada, all of Arizona. New Mexico and Texas and most of Utah, Colorado and Oklahoma. The drought has afflicted some parts of the region for up to five years and other areas for as little as 10 months. But whatever its duration, climatologists agree there is no end in sight. "The expectation is that this thing is going to continue through the summer and into the fall," says Dr Don Wilhite of the National Drought Mitigation Center in Lincoln, Neb. "Beyond that, it's anybody's guess. "
What's going on here experts like Whilhite say, is a reverse El Nino effect. El Nino ("the Christ Child") is a huge weather system in the western Pacific that, in a good year spawns welcome winter rains in the southwestern states and the Plains. When El. Nino does not appear — and last year he didn't - the result is even less rainfall in a region that is naturally among the fries in the world. From August 1995 to May of this year, much of the Southwest and the southern Plains region recorded virtually no rainfall or snow. That dried out the soil and set the stage for a deepening drought.
In Texas, Oklahoma, Eastern Colorado and Western Kansas, the lack of rainfall fairly crushed the 1996 winter-wheat crop. It also led to a significant shortfall in the supply of cattle feed, which forced many ranchers to cut back their herds. "Cattle is a US $5 billion-a-year industry in Texas," says Texas agriculture commissioner Rick Perry. "The turmoil this industry is going through is causing a liquidation of historic proportions," Perry says the damage to Texas agribusiness has already reached US $2.4 billion and could rise to US $6. 5 billion — which would make the '96 drought the most costly natural disaster in the state's history.
