1 . The Old Man and The Sea

The old man took one look at the great fish as he watched the shark close in.     1    .

The shark closed fast on the boat and when he hit the fish the old man saw his mouth open and his strange eyes and his sharp teeth as he drove forward in the meat just above the tail. The old man could hear the noise of skin and flesh ripping on the big fish when he threw the fishing spear(叉)into the shark’s head at a place where the line between his eyes crossed with the line that ran straight back from his nose. There were no such lines.     2     He hit it with his wet, bloody hands driving a good spear with all his strength. He hit without hope but with determination and complete hatred.

The shark turned over and the old man saw his eye was not alive and then he turned over once again, wrapping himself in the rope.     3     Then, on his back, with his tail still moving and his mouth opening and closing, the shark swam over the water as fast as a speed boat. The water was white where his tail beat it and three quarters of his body was clear above the water when the rope broke.

    4     Then he went down very slowly. “He took about forty pounds,” the old man said aloud. He took my spear too and all the rope, he thought, and now my fish bleeds again and there will be others. He did not like to look at the fish any longer since the shark had bitten it. When the shark had hit the fish, it was as though he himself had been hit. But I killed the shark that hit my fish, he thought. And that was the biggest shark that he had ever seen. And he had seen big ones in his lifetime. It was too good to last, he thought. I wish it had been a dream now and that I had never caught the fish.

A．Finally, he wanted to give up because of lack of strength.

B．It was hard for me to escape from the shark but I will try.

C．But that was the location of the brain and the old man hit it.

D．The old man knew that he was dead but the shark would not accept it.

E．I cannot keep him from hitting me, he thought, but maybe I can get him.

F．The shark lay quietly for a little while on the surface and the old man watched him.

2 . No Guts, No Glory? The Fear and Attraction of Risky Winter Sports

Once I went flying off the side of a mountain on skis. Certainly, I didn’t mean to. Before I _________ the ground, there was a surprising amount of time for reflection—and more on the long painful journey down to the ambulance.

The Winter Olympics are here, and I’ll be astonished with my heart in my mouth, watching ski-jumping and people hurtling downhill at _________ speed one way and another. But why are we so attracted to doing, watching and glamorizing dangerous activity? Is it really the thrill (兴奋) of the adrenaline (肾上腺素) rush? I hate that part when I take a big risk of any kind.

It _________ out I’m not the only one. The popular “thrill-seeker” explanation put forward by Marvin Zuckerman and others that sensation seeking is a basic personality trait has been strongly _________. Thrill-seeking is common in the young, especially young males. Many pay a high _________ for it. But our relationship with fear, courage and risk-taking is _________.

Eric Brymer and Robert Schweitzer asked people who had been doing an extreme sport for many years, to reflect   _________ on the experience. For these people, it wasn’t that they didn’t feel fear, or that they were attracted to the feeling of fear. They saw fear as an important tool to _________ danger—and working through it was a transformative experience. Part of the reward was the sense of one-ness with nature that lay beyond the _________.

For me, reading what the research participants said was __________ and there was a lot that was easy to relate to. __________, it seemed as though they believed they were only taking on risks over which they could prevail (战胜). Presumably, many of the people who are severely injured thought so too. I wonder if many who draw the short __________ regret it?

I have an almost total lack of mastery of winter sports. The contrast between my enthusiasm and lack of skill   __________ the somewhat spectacular accident at the start of this post. But just what kind of risks are we talking about with winter sports more commonly? For example, Brian Chaze and Patrick McDonald gathered published data on head injuries in winter sports. They advocated __________ use for sledding and skating as well. Children who hurt their heads sledding need hospitalization twice as much as for head injuries in other sports. Helmets aren’t used much, though.

Perhaps the best __________ from watching the winter Olympians is not the glamour of their risk-taking, but the way they rock those helmets.

1.

A．left

B．hit

C．flew

D．lost

2.

A．short-lived

B．mind-numbing

C．break-neck

D．long-drawn-out

3.

A．turns

B．hangs

C．takes

D．bursts

4.

A．applauded

B．prohibited

C．recommended

D．challenged

5.

A．interest

B．respect

C．priority

D．price

6.

A．simple

B．straightforward

C．complicated

D．close

7.

A．swiftly

B．deeply

C．intensely

D．temporarily

8.

A．identify

B．dread

C．treasure

D．conduct

9.

A．experience

B．society

C．fear

D．environment

10.

A．enlightening

B．distressing

C．entertaining

D．confusing

11.

A．Hence

B．Furthermore

C．Rather

D．However

12.

A．scene

B．picture

C．odds

D．straw

13.

A．stands for

B．accounts for

C．checks out

D．points out

14.

A．belt

B．helmet

C．protection

D．blade

15.

A．take-away

B．carry-out

C．take-off

D．try-out

3 . Transition. It’s a pleasant word and a calming concept. It means going surely and sweetly from somewhere present to somewhere future. Unless, that is, it is newspapers’ ‘transition’ to the _______ world, an uncertain and highly uncomfortable process.

Just look at the latest print circulation figures. The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian and many of the rest are down overall between 8% and 10% year-on-year, but their websites go ever higher.

All of that may well be true, depending on timing, geography and more. _______, everyone— from web academics to print analysis—says so. Yet pause for a while and count a few little things that don’t _______.

One is the magazine world, both in the UK and in the US. It ought to be _______, wrecked by the move to the tablets which fit existing magazine page sizes so perfectly. But, in fact, the rate of decline in magazine purchasing is relatively small, with subscriptions holding up strongly and advertising remarkable _______.

As for news and current affairs magazines — which you’d expect to find in the eye of the digital storm — they had a 8.4% increase to report. In short, on both sides of the Atlantic, although some magazine areas went down, many showed rapid growth.

You can discover a _______ phenomenon when it comes to books, Kindle and similar e-readers are booming, with sales up massively this year. The apparent first step of transition couldn’t be _______. Yet, when booksellers examined the value of the physical books they sold over the last six months, they found it just 0.4% down. Screen or paper, then? It wasn’t one or the other: it was _______.

So if sales in that area have fallen so little, perhaps the _______ mostly affects newspapers? Yet again, though, the messages are oddly ________. The latest survey of trends by the World Association of Newspapers shows that global circulation rose 1.1% last year (to 812 million copies a day). Sales in the West dropped back but Asia more than ________ the difference.

Already 360 US papers—including most of the biggest and best — have built paywalls around their products. However, the best way of attracting a paying readership appears to be a deal that offers the print copy and digital access as some kind of ________ package.

________, print is also a crucial tool in selling internet subscriptions. And its advertising rates raise between nine and ten times more money than online.

Of course this huge difference isn’t ________ news for newspaper companies, as maintaining both an active website and an active print edition is difficult, complex and expensive. But newspaper brands still have much of their high profile in print: a drift on the web, the job of just being ________ becomes far harder.

1.

A．publishing

B．online

C．ideal

D．unknown

2.

A．On the other hand

B．After all

C．To begin with

D．For instance

3.

A．stop

B．exist

C．emerge

D．fit

4.

A．regulated

B．advancing

C．collapsing

D．minimized

5.

A．solid

B．simple

C．creative

D．changeable

6.

A．cultural

B．common

C．scientific

D．similar

7.

A．later

B．harder

C．clearer

D．slower

8.

A．all

B．neither

C．both

D．either

9.

A．service

B．system

C．crisis

D．figure

10.

A．right

B．vague

C．designed

D．mixed

11.

A．made up

B．told apart

C．took over

D．held on

12.

A．joint

B．mysterious

C．modern

D．complex

13.

A．In other words

B．On the contrary

C．What’s more

D．Even so

14.

A．new

B．sad

C．big

D．good

15.

A．spared

B．updated

C．noticed

D．edited

4 . With advances in electronics and neuroscience, researchers have been able to achieve remarkable things with brain implant devices. In addition to restoring physical senses, scientists are also seeking innovative ways to ____ communication for those who have lost the ability to speak. A new “decoder” receiving data from an electronic device implanted inside the skull, for example, might help paralyzed patients speak using only their minds. Researchers from the University of California developed a two-stage method to turn brain ____ into computer-synthesized speech.

For years, scientists have been trying to control and use neutral inputs to give a voice back to people whose neurological damage prevents them from talking. Until now, many of these brain-computer interfaces have ____ a letter-by-letter approach, in which patients move their eyes or facial ____ to spell out their thoughts. But these types of interfaces are very slow - most max out producing 10 words per minute, a fraction of human’s average speaking speed of 150 words per minute.

The brain is undamaged in these patients, but the neurons - the pathways that ____ your arms, or your mouth, or your legs are broken down. These people have high cognitive functioning and abilities, but they cannot accomplish ____ tasks like moving about or saying anything, “says a co-lead author of the new study and an associate research specializing in neurological surgery at UCSF.” We are essentially by passing the pathway that’s broken down.“

The researchers started with high-resolution brain activity data collected from five volunteers over several years. These participants - all of whom had normal speech function - were already undergoing a ____ process for epilepsy(癫痫)treatment that involved implanting electrodes(电极)directly into their brains. The research team used these electrodes to ____ activity in speech-related areas of the brain as the patients read off hundreds of sentences.

From there, the UCSF team worked out a two-stage process to recreate the spoken sentences. First, they created a decoder to ____ the recorded activity patterns as instructions for moving parts of a virtual vocal tract(声道). They then developed a synthesizer that used the ____ movements to produce language.

Other research has tried to decode words and sounds directly from neural signals, ____ the middle step of decoding movement. However, a study the UCSF researchers published last year suggests that your brain’s speech center focuses on how to move the vocal tract to produce sounds, ____ what the resulting sounds will be.

Using this method, the researchers successfully reverse-engineered words and sentences from brain activity that ____ matched the audio recordings of participants’ speech. When they asked volunteers on an online crowd-sourcing platform to attempt to ____ the words and sentences using a word bank, many of them could understand the simulated(模拟的)speech, though their ____ was far from perfect. Out of 101 synthesized sentences, about 80 percent were perfectly transcribed(记录)by at least one listener using a 25-word bank.

1.

A．offer

B．facilitate

C．initiate

D．influence

2.

A．signs

B．consciousness

C．signals

D．waves

3.

A．featured

B．neglected

C．rejected

D．missed

4.

A．expressions

B．muscles

C．languages

D．masks

5.

A．contribute to

B．communicate with

C．match with

D．lead to

6.

A．daily

B．delicate

C．repetitive

D．tough

7.

A．growing

B．producing

C．checking

D．monitoring

8.

A．track

B．map

C．organize

D．design

9.

A．copy

B．transform

C．follow

D．interpret

10.

A．physical

B．virtual

C．individual

D．external

11.

A．considering

B．creating

C．skipping

D．moving

12.

A．other than

B．aside from

C．regardless of

D．rather than

13.

A．roughly

B．barely

C．similarly

D．formally

14.

A．spell

B．identify

C．parallel

D．invent

15.

A．version

B．fluency

C．pronunciation

D．accuracy

5 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

Human memory is notoriously (众所周知地) unreliable. Even people with the sharpest facial recognition skills can only remember so much.

It’s tough to quantify how good a person is     1     remembering. No one really knows how many different faces someone can recall, for example, but various estimates tend to hover in the thousands – based on the number of acquaintances a person     2     have.

Machines aren’t limited this way. Give the right computer a massive database of faces, and it can process what it sees – then recognize a face it     3     (tell) to find – with remarkable speed and precision. This skill is     4     supports the enormous promise of facial-recognition software in the 21^st century. It is also what makes contemporary surveillance (监控) systems so scary.

The thing is, machines still have limitations when it comes to facial recognition. And scientists are only just beginning to understand what those constraints are.     5     (figure) out how computers are struggling, researchers at the University of Washington created a massive database of faces – they call it MegaFace – and     6     (test) a variety of facial-recognition algorithms(算法) as they scales up in complexity. The idea was to test the machines on a database that included up to 1 million different images of nearly 7,000 different people – and not just a large database     7     (feature) a relatively small number of different faces, more consistent with what’s been used in other research.

As the databases grew, machine accuracy dipped across the board. Algorithms     8     were right 95% of the time when they were dealing with a 13,000-image database, for example, were accurate about 70% of the time when     9     (face) with 1 million images. That’s still pretty good, says one of the researchers, Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman. “Much better than we expected,” she said,

Machines also had difficulty adjusting for people who look a lot alike –either doppelgangers (长相极相似的人), whom the machine would have trouble       10     (identify) as two separate people, or the same person who appeared in different photos at different ages or in different lighting, whom the machine would incorrectly view as separate people.

6 . Gone are the days when a mother’s place was in the home: in Britain women with children are now as likely to be in paid work as their unburdened sisters. Many put their little darlings in day care long before they start school. Mindful that a poor start can spoil a person’s chances of success later in life, the state has intervened ever more closely in how babies and toddlers are looked after. Inspectors call not only at nurseries but also at homes where youngsters are minded; three-year-olds follow the national curriculum. Child care has increasingly become a profession.

For years after the government first began in 2001 to twist the arms of anyone who looked after an unrelated child to register with the schools, the numbers so doing fell. Kind but clueless neighbours stopped looking after little ones, who were instead herded into formal nurseries or handed over to one of the ever-fewer registered child-minders. The decline in the number of people taking in children now appears to have halted. According to data released by the Office for Standards in Education on October 27th, the number of registered child-minders reached its lowest point in September 2010 and has since recovered slightly.

The new lot are certainly better qualified. In 2010 fully 82% of nursery workers held diplomas notionally equivalent to A-levels, the university-entrance exams taken mostly by 18-year-olds, up from 56% seven years earlier, says Anand Shukla of the Daycare Trust, a charity. Nurseries staffed by university graduates tend to be rated highest by inspectors, increasing their appeal to the pickiest parents. As a result, more graduates are being recruited.

But professionalization has also pushed up the price of child care, defying even the economic depression. A survey by the Daycare Trust finds that a full-time nursery place in England for a child aged under two, who must be intensively supervised, costs £194 ($310) per week, on average. Prices in London and the south-east are far higher. Parents in Britain spend more on child care than anywhere else in the world, according to the OECD, a think-tank. Some 68% of a typical second earner's net income is spent on freeing her to work, compared with an OECD average of 52%.

The price of child care is not only eye-watering, but has also become a barrier to work. Soon after it took power the coalition government pledged to ensure that people are better off in work than on benefits, but a recent survey by Save the Children, a charity, found that the high cost of day care prevented a quarter of low-paid workers from returning to their jobs once they had started a family. The government pays for free part-time nursery places for three-and four-year-olds, and contributes towards day-care costs for younger children from poor areas. Alas, extending such an aid during stressful economic times would appear to be anything but child’s play.

1. Which of the following is true according to the first paragraph?

A．Nursery education plays a leading role in one’s personal growth.

B．Pregnant women have to work to lighten families’ economic burden.

C．Children in nursery have to take uniform nation courses.

D．The supervision of the state makes child care professional.

2. It can be learned from Paragraph 2 and 3 that ___________.

A．the registered child-minders are required to take the university-entrance exams

B．the number of registered child-minders has been declining since 2001

C．anyone who looks after children at home must register with the schools

D．the growing recognition encourages more graduates to work as child-minders

3. The high price of child care __________.

A．prevents mothers from getting employed

B．may further depress the national economy

C．makes many families live on benefits

D．is far more than parents can afford

4. What is the author’s attitude towards the professionalization of child care?

A．Objective.

B．Skeptical.

C．Supportive.

D．Biased.

5. Which of the following would be the subject of the text?

A．The professionalization of child care has pushed up its price.

B．The high cost of child nursing makes many mothers give up their jobs.

C．The employment of more graduates makes nurseries more popular.

D．Parents in Britain pay most for child nursing throughout the world.

7 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper from of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

The fairest woman in the world was Helen.     1     was the fame of her beauty that there was not a single young prince in all of Greece that didn’t wish to marry her. When her suitors assembled in her home to make a formal proposal for her hand there were so many from such powerful families that her reputed father King Tyndareus, was afraid to select one from amongst them, fearing that the others would unite against him. He therefore demanded first a solemn path from all     2     they would stand up for the cause of Helen’s husband, whoever he might be, if any wrong was done to him through his marriage. Then Tyndareus chose Menelaus, the brother of Agamemnon, and made him King of Sparta as well.

So matters stood when Paris gave the golden apple to Aphrodite. The Goddess of Love and Beauty knew very well where the most beautiful woman on earth was     3     (find). She led the young shepherd straight to Sparta, where Menelaus and Helen received him graciously as their guest. The ties between guest and host were strong. But Paris broke that sacred bond. Menelaus, trusting completely to it, left Paris in his home and went off to Crete.

Menelaus returned to find Helen gone, and he called upon all of Greece to help recover her. The chieftains responded     4     they were obliged to do. They eagerly arrived for the great expedition,    5     (cross) the sea and lay mighty Troy in ashes. Two of the first rank, however, were missing: Odysseus. King of the Island of Ithaca, and Achilles, the son of Peleus and the sea nymph Thetis. Odysseus, who was one of     6     (shrewd) men in Greece, did not want to leave his house and family to embark on a romantic adventure overseas for the sake of a faithless woman. He pretended, therefore, that he had gone mad, and when a messenger from the Greek

Army had arrived, the King was plowing a field and sowing it with salt     7     seed. But the messenger seized Odysseus’ little son and put him directly in the way of the plow. Instantly the father turned the plow aside, thus     8     (prove) that he had all his wits about him. However reluctant, he had to join the Army.

Achilles was kept back by his mother. She sent him to the court of Lycomedes and made him wear women’s clothing, hiding him among the maidens. Odysseus was dispatched by the chieftains to bring him out. Disguised as a peddler he went to the court     9     Achilles was said to be, with gay ornaments in his pack such as women love, and also some fine weapons. While the girls flocked around the trinkets, Achilles fingered each of the swords and daggers. Odysseus knew him then, and he had no trouble at all in making him disregard what his mother had said and     10     (go) to the Greek camp with him.

So the great fleet made ready.

8 . Directions:Fill in each blank with a proper word chosen from the box.Each word can be used only once.Note that there is one word more than you need.

A.tirelessly B. urgency C.concrete D.acknowledged E.roadmap F.call G committed H. intended I. update J. summed K.just

The pressure for change is building: reactions to the Glasgow climate pact

The Glasgow climate package, aimed at ensuring the world limits global heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, was     1     even by the UK hosts as“imperfect", and leaves much of the hard work on cutting greenhouse gas emissions for next year. Boris Johnson,the UK prime minister, said:“We asked nations to come together for our planet at Cop 26, and they have answered that     2     . I want to thank the leaders, negotiators and campaigners who made this pact (协议、契约）happen and the people of Glasgow who welcomed them with open arms."

"There is still a huge amount more to do in the coming years. But today's agreement is a big step forward and, critically, we have the first ever international agreement to phase down (逐步减少)coal and a     3     to limit global warming to 1.5C. I hope that we will look back on Cop 26 in Glasgow as the beginning of the end of climate change, and I will continue to work     4     towards that goal."

Al Gore,the former US vice-president,also praised the public pressure put on world leaders at the conference: “The Glasgow Climate Pact and the pledges made at Cop26 move the global community forward in our urgent work to address the climate crisis and limit global temperature rise to 1.5C, but we know this progress, while meaningful,is not enough. “We must move faster to deliver a     5     transition away from fossil fuels and toward a cleaner and more equitable future for our planet.The progress achieved in the lead-up and at Cop26 was only possible because of the power of people young and old using their voices to demand action."

Many developed and developing countries nailed the progress it represented on the world's goals .But green campaigners warned that the     6     of the climate crisis meant the world was running out of time. Frans Timmermans, executive vice-president of the European Commission,     7     up many countries' reactions, saying:“'It doesn't stop here,it only starts."

On the last-minute weakening of language about phasing out coal, Timmermans said: "Let's be clear, I'd rather not have the change. I was very happy with the language we had." But he added it was “like going from 24 carat gold to 18 carat, it's still gold...we are now making     8     steps to eliminate coal ...and that countries that are so dependent on coal are willing to be part of that agreement is astonishing".

Countries will have to return next year and the year after to     9     their targets on cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Laurence Tubiana, one of the architects of the 2015 Paris deal and now CEO of the European Climate Foundation, said the outcome showed that the 2015 Paris climate agreement was working as     10    .

9 . Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

Lost at sea

Two men from the Solomon Islands have been rescued after spending 29 days lost at sea.

The men     1     (travel) to another island when heavy rain and wind took them out to sea. The two men survived on oranges they had packed, coconuts they found in the sea and by gathering rainwater.

“I look forward to going back home     2     I guess it was a nice break from everything,” one of the men, Livae Nanjikana, told The Guardian.

Nanjikana and Junior Qoloni took off from Mono Island on Sept. 3 in a motorboat to travel 200 km to Noro on New Georgia Island. However, soon after they set out, their boat was hit by heavy winds and rain, which made unclear the coastline they were following     3     a guide. 

“When the bad weather came, it was bad, but it was     4     (bad) and became scary when the GPS died,” he said. “We couldn’t see where we were going and so we just decided to stop the engine and wait,     5     (save) fuel.”

When the rain had finally passed, Nanjikana and Qoloni had already drifted far out to sea. They spent the next 29 days     6     (live) off of limited supplies and by gathering rainwater with     7     they could make use of to keep themselves alive.

A fisherman found and rescued the two men on Oct. 2 off the coast of New Britain, Papua New Guinea, about 400 km from     8     they had started.

Nanjikana and Qoloni     9     (bring) to a local health clinic for treatment and are staying temporarily with a local man, Joe Kolealo, until they     10     return home.

10 . A Mountain But not a Volcano

On September 20th the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), the central banks' central bank, released data showing that corporate borrowing around the world remains at an all time high. A notable ______ is in China, where there is even more business borrowing as a share of GDP than in Japan at the peak of its bubble-related borrowing fever in the 1990s. But it is high everywhere. Corporate ______ in the rich world stood at 102% of GDP at the end of March, compared with 92% before the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic. Could high levels of debt ______ the recovery in advanced economies?

Many regulators were sounding the ______ about elevated company debt even before the covid19 pandemic. Since then, the hit to firm's incomes has led to a wave of rating downgrades: between March 2020 and March 2021, Fitch, a ratings agency, ______ 460 firms, or almost 20% of its corporate portfolio. While defanlts (违约) have eased this year as economies have recovered, many firms will be ______ by higher levels of debt for years to come. Even if interest rates remain ______, this "debt overhand" could affect their willingness to invest or to hire new staff.

Intriguingly, however, aftereffects from corporate debt booms rarely cause significant economic damage, even if ______ themselves suffer when firms default. A recent paper by Moritz Schularick, of the University of Bonn, and several co-authors, examines data on business cycles for 17 advanced countries over more than a century, and compares corporate debt bursts with those associated with ______ borrowing (like the 200809 financial crisis).

The authors argue that lenders often have a/an ______ to restructure old corporate loans, reducing the risk of "zombie" companies persisting, and freeing up finance to support the next recovery. For household debt, however, restructuring thousands of ______ loans is often impossible, and lenders may be more inclined to keep the loans on their books in the hope that house prices eventually ______. The risks to the economy are higher after commercial property bursts than for corporate debt where lenders mainly have their eyes on firm's cash flows. This is one reason why the property-related debt depression in China are potentially disturbing.

In much of the rich world, there are reasons to be ______ optimistic. The largest lenders are in much better health than in 2008. All of the major ______ authorities, carried out stress tests during 2020, using macroeconomic scenarios much more severe than have actually came out, but their banking systems were able to absorb large corporate losses and carry on lending. And the parts of the economy that have had the toughest time during the pandemic only account for a relatively small share of corporate debt. For example, the BIS projects that ______ will increase in the hospitality industry (酒店餐饮业) over the coming years, but they note that the sector only accounts for between 1.5% and 8% of corporate credit in the nine major economies they model.

There will be a mountain of corporate debt in many countries for some time. But that dos not mean the recovery will necessarily falter (衰退).

1.

A．situation

B．influence

C．case

D．initiative

2.

A．contribution

B．losses

C．investment

D．debt

3.

A．threaten

B．follow

C．stimulate

D．sustain

4.

A．signal

B．bell

C．alarm

D．whistle

5.

A．downgraded

B．updated

C．eliminated

D．licenced

6.

A．justified

B．burdened

C．isolated

D．shrunk

7.

A．predictable

B．high

C．low

D．stable

8.

A．creditors

B．borrowers

C．companies

D．investors

9.

A．regional

B．local

C．municipal

D．household

10.

A．imagination

B．virtuality

C．intention

D．diversity

11.

A．collective

B．individual

C．corporate

D．business

12.

A．drop

B．plunge

C．recover

D．persist

13.

A．cautiously

B．overwhelmingly

C．roughly

D．informally

14.

A．concerned

B．provincial

C．regulatory

D．political

15.

A．bankrupcy

B．defaults

C．impact

D．extension