1、GMAT考试阅读辅导GMAT考试阅读辅导Passage 1Recent years have brought minority-owned businesses in the United States unprecedented opportunities-as well as new and significant risks. Civil rights activists have long argued that one of (5) the principal reasons why Blacks, Hispanics, and other minority groups have
2、difficulty establishing themselves in business is that they lack access to the sizable orders and subcontracts that are generated by large companies. Now Congress, in appar(10) ent agreement, has required by law that businesses awarded federal contracts of more than $500,000 do their best to find mi
3、nority subcontractors and record their efforts to do so on forms filed with the government. Indeed, some federal and local agen- (15) cies have gone so far as to set specific percentage goals for apportioning parts of public works con- tracts to minority enterprises.Corporate response appears to hav
4、e been sub- stantial. According to figures collected in 1977, (20) the total of corporate contracts with minority busi- nesses rose from $77 million in 1972 to $1. lbillion in 1977. The projected total of corporate contracts with minority businesses for the early 1980s is estimated to be over 53 bil
5、lion per year with no (25) letup anticipated in the next decade. Promising as it is for minority businesses, this increased patronage poses dangers for them, too. First, minority firms risk expanding too fast and overextending themselves financially, since most (30) are small concerns and, unlike la
6、rge businesses, they often need to make substantial investments in new plants, staff, equipment, and the like in order to perform work subcontracted to them. If, there-after, their subcontracts are for some reason (35) reduced, such firms can face potentially crippling fixed expenses. The world of c
7、orporate purchasing can be frustrating for small entrepreneurs who get requests for elaborate formal estimates and bids. Both consume valuable time and resources, and a (40) small companys efforts must soon result in orders, or both the morale and the financial health of the business will suffer.A s
8、econd risk is that White-owned companies may seek to cash in on the increasing apportion- (45) ments through formation of joint ventures with minority-owned concerns. Of course, in many instances there are legitimate reasons for joint ventures; clearly, White and minority enterprises can team up to
9、acquire business that neither could (50) acquire alone. But civil rights groups and minority business owners have complained to Congress aboutminorities being set up as “fronts” with White back- ing, rather than being accepted as full partners in legitimate joint ventures.(55) Third, a minority ente
10、rprise that secures the business of one large corporate customer often run the danger of becoming-and remaining-dependent. Even in the best of circumstances, fierce compe-tition from larger, more established companies (60) makes it difficult for small concerns to broaden their customer bases: when s
11、uch firms have nearly guaranteed orders from a single corporate bene- factor, they may truly have to struggle against complacency arising from their current success.Passage 2Woodrow Wilson was referring to the liberal idea of the economic market when he said that the free enterprise system is the mo
12、st efficient economic system. Maximum freedom means (5) maximum productiveness; our “openness” is to be the measure of our stability. Fascination with this ideal has made Americans defy the “OldWorld” categories of settled possessiveness versus unsettling deprivation, the cupidity of retention (10)
13、versus the cupidity of seizure, a “status quo”defended or attacked. The United States, it was believed, had no status quo ante. Our only “station” was the turning of a stationary wheel, spinning faster and faster. We did not base our(15) system on property but opportunity-which meant we based it not
14、 on stability but on mobility. The more things changed, that is, the more rapidly the wheel turned, the steadier we would be. The conventional picture of class politics is (20) composed of the Haves, who want a stability to keep what they have, and the Have-Nots, who want a touch of instability and
15、change in which to scramble for the things they have not. But Americans imagined a condition in which spec-(25) ulators, self-makers, runners are always using the new opportunities given by our land. These economic leaders (front-runners) would thus he mainly agents of change. The nonstarters wereco
16、nsidered the ones who wanted stability, a (30) strong referee to give them some position in the race, a regulative hand to calm manic speculation; an authority that can call things to a halt, begin things again from compensatorily staggered “starting lines.”(35) “Reform” in America has been sterile
17、because it can imagine no change except through the extension of this metaphor of a race, wider inclusion of competitors, “a piece of the action,” as it were, for the disenfranchised. There is no (40) attempt to call off the race. Since our only stability is change, America seems not to honor the qu
18、iet work that achieves social interdependence and stability. There is, in our legends, no heroism of the office clerk, no stable industrial work (45) force of the people who actually make the system work. There is no pride in being an employee (Wilson asked for a return to the time when everyone was
19、 an employer). There has been no boasting about our social workers-they are (50) merely signs of the systemsailure, of opportunity denied or not taken, of things to be eliminated. We have no pride in our growing interdependence, in the fact that our system can erve others, that we are able to help t
20、hose in (55) need; empty boasts from the past make us ashamed of our present achievements, make us try to forget or deny them, move away from them. There is no honor but in the Wonderland race we must all run, all trying to win, none (60) winning in the end (for there is no end).Passage 3No very sat
21、isfactory account of the mechanism that caused the formation of the ocean basins hasyet been given. The traditional view supposes that the upper mantle of the earth behaves as a (5) liquid when it is subjected to small forces for long periods and that differences in temperature under oceans and cont
22、inents are sufficient to produce convection in the mantle of the earth with rising convection currents under the mid(10) ocean ridges and sinking currents under the continents. Theoretically, this convection would carry the continental plates along as though they were on a conveyor belt and would pr
23、ovide the forces needed to produce the split that occurs (15) along the ridge. This view may be correct: it has the advantage that the currents are driven by temperature differences that themselves depend on the position of the continents. Such a backcoupling, in which the position of the moving (20
24、) plate has an impact on the forces that move it, could produce complicated and varying motions.On the other hand, the theory is implausible because convection does not normally occur along lines. and it certainly does not occur along (25) lines broken by frequent offsets or changes in direction, as
25、 the ridge is. Also it is difficult to see how the theory applies to the plate between the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and the ridge in the IndianOcean. This plate is growing on both sides, and (30) since there is no intermediate trench, the two ridges must be moving apart. It would be odd if the rising conv
26、ection currents kept exact pace with them. An alternative theory is that the sinking part of the plate, which is denser than the (35) hotter surrounding mantle, pulls the rest of theplate after it. Again it is difficult to see how this applies to the ridge in the South Atlantic, where neither the Af
27、rican nor the American plate has a sinking part. (40) Another possibility is that the sinking plate cools the neighboring mantle and produces convection currents that move the plates. This last theory is attractive because it gives some hope of explaining the enclosed seas, such as the Sea of (45) J
28、apan. These seas have a typical oceanic floor,except that the floor is overlaid by several kilometers of sediment. Their floors have probably been sinking for long periods. It seems possible that a sinking current of cooled mantle material (50) on the upper side of the plate might be the cause of su
29、ch deep basins. The enclosed seas are an important feature of the earths surface, and eriously require explanation in because, addition to the enclosed seas that are developing at present behind island arcs, there are a number of (55) older ones of possibly similar origin, such as the Gulf of Mexico
30、, the Black Sea, and perhaps the North Sea.Passage 4The fossil remains of the first flying vertebrates, the pterosaurs, have intrigued paleontologists for more than two centuries. How such large creatures, which weighed in some cases as much as a piloted hang-glider (5) and had wingspans from 8 to 1
31、2 meters, solved the problems of powered flight, and exactly what these creatures were-reptiles or birds-are among the questions scientists have puzzled over. Perhaps the least controversial assertion about the (10) pterosaurs is that they were reptiles. Their skulls, pelvises, and hind feet are rep
32、tilian. The anatomy of their wings suggests that they did not evolve into the class of birds. In pterosaurs a greatly elongated fourthfinger of each forelimb supported a winglike membrane. (15) The other fingers were short and reptilian, with sharpclaws. In birds the second finger is the principal strut of the wing, which consists primarily of feathers. If thepterosaurs walked on all fours, the three short fingers may have been employed for grasping. When a(20) pterosaur walked or remained stationary, the fourth finger, and with it the wing, coul
