评论
打印
Passage 7
The recent increase in car theft has alarmed the police who are looking for what they now believe must be a well-organized gang of professional car thieves. Most of the thefts have taken place in the rich residential areas round Southwell Park, where last week alone 22 car thefts were reported to the local police. Of these only one has been found, abandoned in Rockinghill Palace Road 20 miles away. The others have still not been found except for one which had been falsely reported missing. The owner later admitted that he had forgotten where he had parked it a few days before. An interesting aspect of the thefts is that nearly all the missing vehicles had been taken from locked garages. The owners now admit that they my have left the car doors unassumed that the gang find it easier to break into garages where vehicles are often left unlocked at night than into locked cars parked on the roadside in daytime or at night. They advise car owners to lock up their cars even when they are kept in locked garages.
Questions 23 to 26 are based on the passage you’ve just heard.
23. What has alarmed the police?
24. Where was one car found?
25. Why was one car falsely reported missing?
26. What did the police advise the car owners to do?
Passage 8
The American government, as well as every American, is touched by and concerned with inflation, and President Carter has called it our NO.1 problem.
The great jump in inflation has been during the past 10 years. Looking at the raw figures, people might consider this a time of prosperity. The wage of the average worker was ＄114 a week in 1969, and by September 1978 it had reached＄206. On the surface it might seem that people are better off, but taking into consideration the effects of inflation, the picture is different.
In 1976 the consumer price index stood at 100 and it has now topped 200. Allowing for this, the average wage of workers was＄104 in 1969 and ＄105 in April 1978. Since then with more inflation any gains in purchasing power has been wiped out and more taken away. In fact during the year of 1978, the buying power of the average paycheck had fallen by 3.4 percent. In addition to the income tax, there are usually state and country taxes, and in nearly all American communities, as in most of western Europe, there is a point of purchase tax, the sales tax, that is added to the cost of an item at the retail level. This is another tax that has been increasing with inflation, and it affects all purchasers.
Questions 27 to 29 are based on the passage you’ve just heard.
27. What does the article say about inflation?
28. How much will the dollar buy in real goods now compared with 1967?
29. What tax is collected from even the poorest citizen?
