passengers on her 747, diverted to Hartford, Connecticut, on the return flight from Rome as a result of bad weather in New York City, were forced to sit on a runway for seven hours because no customs inspectors were on hand to process them.
（ 5 ） The great American waits are often democratic enough, like traffic jams. Some of the great waits have been collective, tribal — waiting for the release of the American hostages in Iran, for example. But waiting often makes class distinctions . One of the more depressing things about being poor in America is the endless waiting in welfare or unemployment lines. The waiting rooms of the poor are often in bad conditions, but in fact almost all waiting rooms are spiritless and blank-eyed places where it always feels like 3 in the morning.
（ 6 ） One of the inestimable advantages of wealth is the immunity that it can purchase from serious waiting. The rich do not wait in long lines to buy groceries or airplane tickets. The help sees to it. The limousine takes the privileged right out onto the tarmac, their shoes barely grazing the ground.
（ 7 ） People wait when they have no choice or when they believe that the wait is justified by the reward—a concert ticket, say. Waiting has its social orderings, its rules and assumptions. Otherwise peaceful citizens explode when someone cuts into a line that has been waiting a long time. It is unjust; suffering is not being fairly distributed. Oddly, behavioral scientists have found that the strongest protests tend to come from the immediate victims, the people directly behind the line jumpers. People farther down the line complain less or not at all, even though they have been equally penalized by losing a place.
（ 8 ） Waiting can have a delicious quality ( “ I can’t wait to see her. ” “ I can’t wait for the party ” ), and sometimes the waiting is better than the event awaited. At the other extreme, it can shade into terror: when one waits for a child who is late coming home or—most horribly—has vanished. When anyone has disappeared, in fact, or is missing in action, the ordinary stress of waiting is overlaid with an unbearable anguish of speculation : Alive or dead?
（ 9 ） Waiting can seem an interval of nonbeing, the blank space between events and the outcomes of desires. It makes time maddeningly elastic: it has a way of seeming to compact eternity into a few hours. Yet its brackets ultimately expand to the largest dimensions. One waits for California to drop into the sea or for the Messiah. All life is a waiting, and perhaps in that sense one should not be too eager for the wait to end. The region that lies on the other side of waiting is eternity.
IV. In this section, there are ten incomplete statements, followed by four choices marked A, B, C and D. Choose the best answer and write the corresponding letter on your Answer Sheet. (10 points, 1 point for each)
55. In the first paragraph, the writer introduces ______.
A. how people wait in different situations
B. the great anger of people caused by waiting
C. how miserable people feel while waiting
D. negative aspects of waiting and some way of coping
56. Jerry Ford and Jimmy Carter stood in mute suspension when the sound system went dead because they ______.
A. wanted to have a rest B. didn’t like each other
C. chose to wait that way D. didn’t know what to say
57. The example given in Paragraph 2 shows that ______.
A. one can receive an unexpected phone call
B. sometimes one is forced to wait
C. Mr. Green is too slow to come to the phone
D. a caller is always superior to a callee
58. From the passage we get to know that waiting makes people angry because ______.
A. they don’t have so much time B. their time is wasted by strangers
C. it is ridiculous for them to wait D. they feel being punished unfairly
59. Which of the following statements is true?
A. Waits are considered terrible by Americans.
B. Waiting is sometimes considered pleasant.
C. People wait for different reasons in America.
D. Travelers in America are free from waiting.
60. It can be inferred from the passage that ______.
A. Americans were greatly concerned about the American hostages in Iran
B. waiting for the American hostages in Iran to be released was great
C. the American hostages in Iran were admired by people at home
D. all Americans were waiting for the American hostages to be released
61. We can learn from the passage that ______.
A. being poor in America means waiting for various things
B. in order to get what they want Americans have to wait
C. rich people are free from waiting in long lines to buy things
D. endless waiting depresses Americans more than anything else
62. According to the passage, people waiting in a line ______.
A. fail to protest against line jumpers
B. all hate the line jumpers very much
C. consider line jumping an immoral behavior
D. respond differently to the line jumpers
63. It is implied that ______.
A. worrying about the result is worse than waiting
B. waiting for a missing person is the worst thing
C. many people can’t bear the stress of waiting
D. some people would rather wait than know the result
64. The author’s tone of the last paragraph is ______.
A. sincere B. ironic
C. pessimistic D. optimistic
V. There is one underlined part in each of the following sentences, followed by four choices marked A, B, C and D. Choose the one that is closest in meaning to the underlined part and write the corresponding letter on your Answer Sheet. (10 points, 2 points for each)
65. One is doing time — but why?
A. passing time carelessly B. spending time in prison
C. calculating time accurately D. enjoying the time lonely
66. But waiting often makes class distinctions .
A. differences B. similarities
C. connections D. conflicts
67. The limousine takes the privileged right out into the tarmac, their shoes barely grazing the ground.
A. touching B. polluting
C. feeling D. walking
68. Otherwise peaceful citizens explode when someone cuts into a line that has been waiting a long time.
A. become excited B. turn into a mob
C. get very angry D. protest immediately
69. … the ordinary stress of waiting is overlaid with an unbearable anguish of speculation : Alive or dead?
A. belief B. expectation
C. doubt D. guess
VI. Translate the following sentences into Chinese and write the translation on your Answer Sheet. (10 points, 2 points for each)
70. One is being punished not for an offense of one’s own but often for the inefficiencies of those who impose the wait.
71. Aside from boredom and physical discomfort, the subtler misery of waiting is the knowledge that one’s precious resource, time, a fraction of one’s life, is being stolen away, irrecoverably lost.
72. Americans have enough miseries of waiting, of course—waits sometimes connected with affluence and leisure.
73. One of the more depressing things about being poor in America is the endless waiting in welfare or unemployment lines.
74. The rich do not wait in long lines to buy groceries or airplane tickets. The help sees to it.
VII. Answer the following essay question in English within 80-100 words.Write your answers on the Answer Sheet. (10 points)
75. What is the author’s purpose in writing the article?
VIII. Translate the following sentences into English and write the translation on your Answer Sheet. (18 points, 2 points each for 76-80, 8 points for 81)
76.我们的城市将继续变得更加拥挤喧嚣，景色将变得更加混乱，空气和水变得更脏。
77.当我们从敞开的后门走进去的时候，看到厨房里站着一些人。
78.他们每个人都能说出至少一位上级，感到他对自己怀有敌意，而且存心想毁了自己的前途。
79.她做梦也没想到会和这些熟悉的东西分开，今后可能再也见不到它们了。
80.他站在大门口，尖顶帽推到脑后，头发向前散乱地垂在晒得黝黑的脸上。
81.老年生活既不是本来就痛苦，也不是本来就美满的。它和生命的每个阶段一样，有困难、欢乐、恐惧和无限的潜力。变老的过程以及最 后的死亡必须从根本上就被看 作是生命周期的自然进程，老年人结束了生命，为年轻人让路。老年的独特之处实际上主要在于变老的事实和死亡的逼近。
