The U.S. Department of Labor statistics(统计) show that there is an oversupply of college-trained workers and that this oversupply is increasing. Already there have been more than enough teachers, engineers, physicists, aerospace experts, and other specialists. Yet colleges and graduate schools continue every year to turn out highly trained people to compete for jobs that aren't there. The result is that graduates cannot enter the professions for which they were trained and must take temporary jobs which do not require a college degree.

On the other hand, there is a great need for skilled workers of all sorts: carpenters, electricians, mechanics, plumbers, TV repairmen.

These people have more work than they can deal with, and their annual incomes are often higher than those of college graduates. The old gap that white-collar workers make a better living than blue-collar workers no longer holds true. The law of supply and demand now favors the skilled workmen.

The reason for this situation is the traditional myth that college degree is a passport to a prosperous future. A large part of American society matches success in life equally with a college degree. Parents begin indoctrinating(灌输) their children with this myth before they are out of grade school. High school teachers play their part by acting as if high school education were a preparation for college rather than for life. Under this pressure the kids fall in line. Whether they want to go to college or not doesn't matter. Everybody should go to college, so of course they must go. And every year college enrollments(入学) go up and up, and more and more graduates are overeducated for the kinds of jobs available to them.

One result of this emphasis on a college education is that many people go to college who do not belong there. Of the sixty percent of high school graduates who enter college, half of them do not graduate with their class. Many of them drop out within the first year. Some struggle on for two or three years and then give up.

1. It's implied but not stated in the passage that ________ .

A．many other countries are facing the same problem

B．white-collar workers in the US used to make more money than blue-collar workers

C．fewer students will prefer to go to college in the future

D．the law of supply and demand has a strong effect on American higher education

2. Which of the following is NOT a reason why college enrollments go up every year?

A．Many people believe that the only way to success is a college education.

B．Many parents want their children to go to college.

C．High school teachers urge their students to go to college.

D．Every young man and woman wants to go to college.

3. By saying that“many people go to college who do not belong there”, the author means that ________.

A．many people who are not fit for college education go to college

B．many people who do not have enough money go to college

C．many people who go to college drop out within the first year

D．many people who go to college have their hopes destroyed

4. We can infer from the passage that the author believes that _______ .

A．every young man and woman should go to college

B．college education is a bad thing

C．people with a college education should receive higher pay

D．fewer people should go to college while more should be trained for skilled jobs

One of the qualities that most people admire in others is the willingness to admit one's mistakes. It is extremely hard sometimes to say a simple thing like“I was wrong about that,” and it is even harder to say,“I was wrong, and you were right about that.”

I had an experience recently with someone admitting to me that he had made a mistake fifteen years ago. He told me he had been the manager of a certain store in the neighborhood where I grew up, and he asked me if I remembered the egg cartons (in many countries, eggs are sold by the dozen and are put in cartons.) Then he related an incident (event, matter) and I began to remember unclearly the incident he was describing.

I was about eight years old at the time. I went into the store with my mother to do some shopping. On that particular day, I must have found my way to the food department where the incident took place.

There must have been a special sale on eggs that day because there were lots of eggs in dozen and half-dozen cartons. The cartons were put three or four feet high. I must have stopped in front of the piles of egg cartons. Just then a woman came by pushing her shopping cart and knocked off the cartons. For some reason, I decided it was up to me to put the eggs back together, so I went to work.

The manager heard the noise and came rushing over to see what had happened. When he appeared, I was on my knees looking at some of the cartons to see if any of the eggs were broken, but to him it looked as though I was the one who just did it. He severely reprimanded me and wanted me to pay for any broken eggs. I tried to explain, but it did no good. Even though I quickly forgot all about the incident, it is plain that the manager did not.

5. Which is the correct order of the following?
a. I forgot all about the incident.                           
b. I went into the store.
c. A woman knocked off the egg cartons.                  
d. I stood in front of the egg cartons.
e. The manager reminded me of the incident.       
f. The manager didn't believe my explanation.
g. I picked up the unbroken eggs.

A．b; d; g; c; a; f; e	B．b; d; c; g; f; e; a
C．b; c; d ;g; e; f; a	D．b; d; c; g; f; a; e

6. The word “reprimanded” in the last paragraph most exactly means “_________ ”.

A．frightened	B．scolded
C．warned	D．comforted

7. The best title for this passage should be________ .

A．A Case of Mistake	B．The Manager I Never Forget
C．The Manager and I	D．An Incident 15 Years Ago

One morning, more than a hundred years ago, an American inventor called Elias Howe finally fell asleep. He had been working all night on the design of a sewing machine but he had run into a very difficult problem: It seemed impossible to get the thread to run smoothly around the needle.

Though he was tired, Howe slept badly. He turned and turned. Then he had a dream.He dreamt that he had been caught by terrible savages whose king wanted to kill him and eat him unless he could build a perfect sewing machine. When he tried to do so, Howe ran into the same problem as before. The thread kept getting caught around the needle. The king flew into the cage and ordered his soldiers to kill Howe. They came up towards him with their spears raised. But suddenly the inventor noticed something. There was a hole in the tip of each spear. The inventor awoke from the dream, realizing that he had just found the answer to the problem. Instead of trying to get the thread to run around the needle, he should make it run through a small hole in the center of the needle. This was the simple idea that finally made Howe design and build the first really practised sewing machine.

Elias Howes was not the only one in finding the answer to his problem in this way.

Thomas Edison, the inventor of the electric light, said his best ideas came into him in dreams. So did the great physicist Albert Einstein. Charlotte Bronte also drew in her dreams in writing Jane Eyre.

To know the value of dreams, you have to understand what happens when you are asleep. Even then, a part of your mind is still working. This unconscious(无意识的), but still active part understands your experiences and goes to work on the problems you have had during the day. It stores all sorts of information that you may have forgotten or never have really noticed. It is only when you fall asleep that this part of the brain can send messages to the part you use when you are awake. However, the unconscious part acts in a special way. It uses strange images which the conscious part may not understand at first. This is why dreams are sometimes called “secret messages to ourselves”.

8. The problem Howe was trying to solve was________.

A．what kind of thread to use

B．how to design a needle which would not break

C．where to put the needle

D．how to prevent the thread from getting caught around the needle

9. Thomas Edison is spoken of because _____ .

A．he also tried to invent a sewing machine

B．he got some of his ideas from dreams

C．he was one of Howe's best friends

D．he also had difficulty in falling asleep

10. Dreams are sometimes called“secret messages to ourselves” because ________ .

A．strange images are used to communicate ideas

B．images which have no meaning are used

C．we can never understand the real meaning

D．only specially trained people can understand them

What will you do if you can’t eat everything bought in the canteen?     11     According to a survey, what students waste every year could feed over 10 million people.

    12     According to Xinhua News Agency, the food wasted by Chinese people is about 50 million tons of grain every year, which could feed 200 million people.

Food waste, which has become a global issue, serves as a mirror that reflects various cultural and social issues in different countries. In the West, for instance, consumerism, the belief that it’s a good thing to use a lot of goods and services, is often to blame for food waste.     13     Chinese people are well known for being hospitable and generous. Many even feel that they lose face if their guests have eaten all the food. On campus, a generation of single children is less aware of the food waste issue. Students nowadays are well protected by their families and hardly have any concept of how much toil (辛劳) others go through in order to provide them with the food they eat.

    14     There are over 925 million hungry people in the world, most of whom live in underdeveloped countries and areas. They don’t have enough food to eat. Many children die for lack of nutrition each year in some African countries. And farmers work very hard to grow the crops.     15     It’s also important that everyone should think about how they can do their bit to reduce food waste.

A．Most of us would simply throw away any leftover food.

B．Students’ waste is extremely serious.

C．China features its own eating culture.

D．Compared with them, some live in a different world.

E．But canteen waste is merely the tip of the iceberg.

F．So there’s no excuse that we should waste our food.

G．Students can never realize the serious food crisis.