考前模擬：2008年6月閱讀真題及名師精講

　　54. How do many Europeans feel about the U.S with the devalued dollar?

　　A)They feel contemptuous of it

　　B) They are sympathetic with it.

　　C) They regard it as a superpower on the decline.

　　D)They think of it as a good tourist destination.

　　55. What is the author's advice to Americans?

　　A) They treat the dollar with a little respect

　　B)They try to win in the weak-dollar gamble

　　C)They vacation at home rather than abroad

　　D) They treasure their marriages all the more.

　　56. What does the author imply by saying “currencies don't turn on a dime” (Line 2, Para 7)?

　　A)The dollar's value will not increase in the short term.

　　B)The value of a dollar will not be reduced to a dime

　　C)The dollar's value will drop, but within a small margin.

　　D) Few Americans will change dollars into other currencies.

　　Passage Two

　　Questions 57 to 61 are based on the following passage

　　In the college-admissions wars, we parents are the true fights. We are pushing our kids to get good grades, take SAT preparatory courses and build resumes so they can get into the college of our first choice. I've twice been to the wars, and as I survey the battlefield, something different is happening. We see our kids' college background as e prize demonstrating how well we've raised them. But we can't acknowledge that our obsession(癡迷) is more about us than them. So we've contrived various justifications that turn out to be half-truths, prejudices or myths. It actually doesn't matter much whether Aaron and Nicole go to Stanford.

　　We have a full-blown prestige panic; we worry that there won't be enough prizes to go around Fearful parents urge their children to apply to more schools than ever. Underlying the hysteria(歇斯底里) is the belief that scarce elite degrees must be highly valuable. Their graduates must enjoy more success because they get a better education and develop better contacts. All that is plausible——and mostly wrong. We haven't found any convincing evidence that selectivity or prestige matters. Selective schools don't systematically employ better instructional approaches than less selective schools. On two measures——professors' feedback and the number of essay exams——selective schools do slightly worse.