c. follow a set pattern
d. become worse and worse
3. According to the author, who of the following is more likely to get a job in times of high unemployment?
a. A person with the ability to learn by himself. b. A construction worker. c. A car repairman.
d. A person with quite a few salable skills.
4. According to the author, in developing a curriculum schools should ____.
a. predict the salability of skills in the future job market b. take the current job market into consideration c. consider what skills are salable
d. focus on the ability to adapt to changes
5. We can learn from this passage that ____.
a. liberal arts education is being challenged now
b. schools that teach practical skills fare better during hard times
c. extracurricular activities are more important than classroom learning d. many students feel cheated by the educational system. Passage 2
Sex and connections: these are not the criteria on which science should be judged, least of all by scientists. But in the first extensive analysis of the way that fellowships in science are awarded, which is published this week in Nature, Christine Wenneras and Agnes Wold, microbiologists at Gothenburg University, in Sweden, found that these factors matter as much as, if not more than, scientific merit.
Peer review, the evaluation (often anonymous) of a piece of scientific work by other scientists in the same field, is central to the way in which science proceeds. Journals use it to help decide whether to publish papers and funding agencies use it when deciding to whom to award grants.
Dr. Wenneras and Dr. Wold analyzed the reviews of the 114 applications that the Swedish Medical Research Council received for the 20 postdoctoral fellowships it offered in 1995. Of the applicants, 46% were women. Of the successful recipients of the awards, only 20% were women. In principle, of course, that might reflect their abilities. In practice, other factors seem to be at work.
When the council gets a grant application, it is evaluated by five reviewers, on three measures: scientific competence, the proposed methodology and the relevance of the research. Each measure is given a score of between zero and four; each reviewer’s scores are multiplied together, giving a single score between zero and 64; and finally, the scores from the reviewers are averaged together, giving the total score.
Dr. Wenneras and Dr. Wold identified, after careful analysis, two factors that improved the scores significantly: being male and knowing a reviewer. In fact, the difference was so great that in order to get the same competence score as a man, a woman need either to know someone in the committee or to have published three more papers than the man in Nature or Science. It is often joked that a woman has to be twice as good as a man to do well; Dr. Wenneras and Dr. Wold found that she need to be, on average, 2.5 times as good on their measures to be rated as highly by reviewers. Such being the case, ambitious women would perhaps do well to return to a time-honored but supposedly obsolete tradition, and apply under a male name.
6. What is this passage mainly about?
a. Abuses in peer review.
b. Favoritism in granting fellowships.
c. A comparison of male and female scientists. d. Sex discrimination in the science world.
7. What is the other most important factor beside sex that may affect peer review scores?
a. Connection.
b. Publication of papers in major science journals. c. Competence of the researcher. d. Methods used by the researcher.
8. What does the word “relevance” in the fourth paragraph probably mean?
a. Feasibility. b. Connections.
c. Practical value or importance. d. Probability of success.
9. What does the author suggest by using “supposedly” in the last sentence?
a. It is no longer fashionable for women to write under male names. b. Bias against women still exists today.
c. Women today are on an equal footing with men. d. Nowadays women do as well in science as men.
10. This piece of writing is most likely ____.
a. a news report b. a research paper c. a lecture d. an argument
Passage 3
The average population density of the world is 47 persons per square mile.
Continental densities range from no permanent inhabitants in Antarctica to 211 per square mile in Europe. In the Western Hemisphere, population densities range from about 4 per square mile in Canada to 675 per square mile in Puerto Rico. In Europe the range is from 4 per square mile in Iceland to 831 per square mile in the Netherlands. Within countries there are wide variations of population densities. For example, in Egypt, the average is 55 persons per square mile, but 1,300 persons inhabit each square mile in settled portions where the land is arable.
High population densities generally occur in regions of developed industrialization, such as the Netherlands, Belgium, and Great Britain, or where lands are intensively used for agriculture, as in Puerto Rico and Java.
Low average population densities are characteristic of most underdeveloped countries. Low density of population is generally associated with a relatively low percentage of cultivated land. This generally results from poor quality lands. It may also be due to natural obstacles to cultivation, such as deserts, mountains or malaria-infested jungles; to land uses other than cultivation, as pasture and forested land; to primitive methods that limit cultivation; to social obstacles; and to land ownership systems which keep land out of production.
More economically advanced countries of low population density have, as a rule, large proportions of their populations living in urban areas. Their rural population densities are usually very low. Poorer developed countries of correspondingly low general population density, on the other hand, often have a concentration of rural population living on arable land, which is as great as the rural concentration found in the most densely populated industrial countries.
11. Along the banks of the Nile, we may expect to find _____.
a. 1,300 persons b. few inhabitants c. pyramids d. many settlements
12. In timberland areas of the world, ________.
a. there is dense population b. the density of population is relatively low c. good quality land is found d. deserts are common
13. The title below that best expresses the ideas of this passage is _________. a. Where People Live b. Population Distribution c. Economics and Population d. Population Densities
14. In highly industrialized communities, we may expect ___________. a. large rural areas b. urban development c. arable land d. no change in population density
15. This passage has probably been taken from _________ a. a dictionary of geographical names b. a textbook on economics c. a world geography book