The world’s population keeps growing. There now are about 4 billion of us on earth. That could reach 6 billion by the end of the century and 11 billion in a further 75 years. Experts have long been concerned about such a growth. Where will we fund the food, water, jobs, houses, schools and health to care for all these people
A major new study shows that the situation may be changing. A large and rapid drop in the world’s birth rates has taken place during the past 10 years. Families generally are smaller now than they were a few years ago. It is happening in both developing and industrial nations.
Researchers said they found a number of reasons for this. More men and women are waiting longer to get married and are using birth control devices and methods to prevent or delay pregnancy. More women are going to school or working at jobs away from home instead of having children. And more governments, especially in developing nations, now support family planning programs to reduce population growth.
China is one of the nations that have achieved great progress in reducing its population growth. China has already cut its rate of population growth by about one half since 1970.
Each Chinese family is now urged to have no more than one child. And the hope is to reach a zero population growth with the total number of births equaling the total number of deaths by the year 2003.
Several nations in Europe already have fewer births than deaths. Experts said that these nations could face a serious shortage of workers in the future. And the persons who are working could face much higher taxes to help support the growing number of retired people.
A. There has been a slower population growth in the past ten years.
B. The world’s rate is higher than ten years ago.
C. Families are as large as before.
D. Birth control has been carried out well all over the world.
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Questions 11—13 are based on the effect on the nuclear family for women.
The family is changing. In the past, grandparents, parents, and children used to live together; in other words, they had an "extended family". Sometimes two or more brothers with their wives and children were part of this large family group. But family structure is changing throughout the world. The "nuclear family" consists of only one father, one mother, and children; it is becoming the main family structure everywhere.
The nuclear family offers married women some advantages: they have freedom from their relatives, and the husband does not have all the power of the family. Family structure in most parts of the world is still "patriarchal"; that is, the father is the head of the family and makes most of the important decisions. Studies show, however, that in nuclear families, men and women usually make an equal number of decisions about family life. Also, well-educated husbands and wives often prefer to share the power.
But wives usually have to "pay" for the benefits of freedom and power. When women lived in extended families, sisters, grandmothers, and aunts helped one another with housework and childcare. In addition, older women in a large family group had important positions. Wives in nuclear families do not often enjoy this benefit, and they have another disadvantage, too: women generally live longer than their husbands, so older women from nuclear families often have to live alone.
Studies show that women are generally less satisfied with marriage than men are. In the past, men worked outside the home and women worked inside. Housework and childcare were a full-time job, and there was no time for anything else. Of course, this situation is changing. Women now work outside the home and have more freedom than they did in the past. Why are some women still discontent
In most parts of the world today, women work because the family needs more money. However, their outside jobs often give them less freedom, not more, because they still have to do most of the housework. The women actually have two full-time jobs, one outside home and another inside, and not much free time.
The nuclear family will probably continue to be the main family form of the future. Change, however, usually brings disadvantages along with benefits, and the family forms of the past had many advantages.
A. The nuclear family structure offers women both advantages and disadvantages.
B. Women are generally less satisfied with marriage than man are.
C. Family structure in most parts of the world is still patriarchal.
D. Family structure is changing throughout the world.
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Questions 17—20 are based on the following talk about the language ability.
Is language a basic human need without which a child at a critical period of life can be starved and damaged Judging from the experiment of Frederick in the thirteenth century it may be. Hoping to discover what language a child would speak if he heard no mother tongue, he told the nurses to keep silent. All the infants died before the first year.
Today no such drastic deprivation exists. Nevertheless, some children are still backward in speaking. Most often the reason is that the mother is insensitive to the signals of the infant. There are critical times when children learn more readily. If these sensitive periods are neglected, the ideal time for acquiring skills passes and they might never be learned so easily again.
Linguists suggest that speech milestone is reached in a fixed sequence and at a constant age. At twelve weeks a baby smiles and utters vowel-like sounds; at twelve months he can speak simple words and understand simple commands; at eighteen months he has a vocabulary of three to fifty words. At three he knows about 1,000 words which he can put into sentences, and at four his language differs from that of his parents in style rather than grammar.
Recent evidence suggests that an infant is born with the capacity to speak. What is special about man’s brain is the complex system which enables a child to connect the sight and feel. And even more incredible is the young brain’s to pick out an order in language from the hubbub of sound around him, to analyze, to combine and recombine the parts of a language in novels.
But speech has to be triggered, and this depends on interaction between the mother and child. Insensitivity of the mother dulls the interaction because the child gets discouraged and sends out only the obvious signals. Sensitivity to the child’s non-verbal cues is essential to the growth and development of language.
A. Their brains have been input with too much language at once.
B. They do not listen carefully to their mothers.
C. Their mothers are not intelligent enough to help them.
D. Their mothers do not respond to their attempts to speak.
Questions 14—16 are based on the following talk about the bank credit card.
The system of bank credit cards operates in much the same way as a store credit account except that the holder is not restricted to making purchases in one place.
Cards can be presented at any place where the bank card sign is displayed, and that could be at a shop, a service station, a hotel, a restaurant or in fact at all kinds of businesses.
The sales assistant imprints the card details on to a sales voucher which the customer signs, and the card is then returned to the customer. Each month the bank sends the holder a credit card statement setting out where purchases were made and totaling what is owing. A payment has to be made within 25 days of the date of the statement, but not necessarily the full amount. If the customer pays in full within this time the use of the card does not cost anything. But if he decides to pay only the minimum repayment shown on the statement — $5 or 5% of the outstanding balance, whichever is the greater — he automatically chooses to use the system’s extended repayment facility. The remaining balance is then carried forward and attracts interest at the rate of 2.25% per month.
Bank credit cards are more versatile than store credit accounts in that they also enable people to obtain cash. Any bank displaying the bank card sign will arrange a cash advance for a card holder, whether or not he is one of their own customers. For money drawn in this way the bank makes a charge at the rate of 2.25% a month, calculated daily from the day the advance is obtained. Details of cash advances appear on the monthly bank card statement.
The bank credit card system operates entirely separately from cheque accounts, but nevertheless it is a customer’s previous relationship with his bank that is used as a guide to the amount of credit he will be extended. When a card is issued a personal credit limit is imposed indicating the maximum that can be owing at any one time. This is confidential between customer and bank and does not appear on the card.
A. It imprints the card details on to a sales voucher.
B. It pays the store for the purchases made by customers.
C. It sends customers the purchases within 25 days.
D. It sends customers the purchases which shows the amount of money they will pay.
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