Part Six Reading Comprehension Passages (30 points)

　　Passage One (20 points)

　　Read the following passage and then complete the sentences that follow by using either words from the text or your own invention that fit the gaps.

　　A Tall Story

　　When plans for the "Shard of Glass", near London Bridge, were unveiled in 2000, English Heritage condemned the tower as "Europe's tallest building and London's greatest folly". Since then, the disputes have come thick and fast. Only after a public enquiry did Renzo Piano's skyscraper win planning consent, at the end of 2003. The scheme is plagued by legal wrangles about its ownership. And, most emblematic of all, is the fuss over the four metres at the building's spire.

　　The Sellar Property Group, a backer of the 310 metre (1, 016 feet) Shard, insists the pointy bits at the top serve as ventilation. Rubbish, say the people behind the rival 63-storey Bishopsgate Tower. Because they are a "mast", and thus not part of the building at all, the European title belongs to their own 307.25 metre "Helter-Skelter".

　　Such wrangles are everything in a city that is fast becoming recognized for its spectacular schemes to put up new towers. Since the last glass tile was stuck on Swiss Re's "Erotic Gherkin" in late 2003, at least six high-rise towers containing at least 375, 000 square metres of office space have been proposed for the City—though, in a market distinctly lacking tenants, it is hard to say precisely when they will be built.

　　Proposals have come from all sides, including the two largest British property firms, Land Securities and British Land. If built, the Helter-Skelter will be 72.25 metres higher than One Canada Square in Canary Wharf and twice the height of the BT Telecom Tower. "Trophy architects" are thick on the ground—a novelty for staid London architecture. Lord Foster, Lord Rogers and Jean Nouvel, a French visionary, are busy. So is Rafael Vinoly, a Uruguayan finalist in New York's Ground Zero project.

　　Why the rush of high-rise extravagance? Partly because tenants will pay more for a boardroom with a view. But anxiety matters, too. The Corporation of London, the Square Mile's local authority, wants more tall buildings because it fears competition from rival financial districts—and not just Frankfurt and Paris. Canary Wharf in Docklands has poached several big banks from the City in the past decade. The Corporation is determined to prevent that from happening again. Although the demand for office space is not strong just now, it wants to be ready with a list of approved skyscrapers when the market eventually picks up. It has an ally in Ken Livingstone, London's mayor, who thinks tall buildings add to the capital's prestige.

　　Yet, in streets once trod by Dick Whittington and his cat, all that history can get in the way. English Heritage is reluctant to lose listed buildings, conservation areas and views of St Paul's Cathedral. Hence the world-class architecture. It is easier to see off heritage groups if a listed building is replaced by a scheme from Lord Rogers.

　　The conservationists are fighting back, saying tall buildings—however prestigious—will block views of St Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. Mr Livingstone has proposed adding 16 city vistas to the ten protected today. But conservationists complain that the listed views will be narrower. Adam Wilkinson, of Save Britain's Heritage, says: "The guidelines are cheeky really…[new plans] will alter their historic settings through sheer height."

　　Another difficulty for the tower crowd is that many of their plans are so "iconic" as to be impractical. Swiss Re's Gherkin (designed by Lord Foster) has been slow to find tenants because its environmentally-friendly ventilation system and cigar-like outline produce an awkward shape.

　　The mayor and the city authorities may be trying too hard. After losing ground to Canary Wharf by being conservative, central London is becoming ultra-modern in its architecture. If the towers aren't built, the area will suffer. If they aren't interesting, they won't win planning permission. But if the buildings become too interesting, they risk offending conservationists and deterring tenants.

　　Last month saw a new twist in the Helter-Skelter saga. The British Airports Authority and London City airport complained that the tower would endanger flight paths. The skyscraper may have to lose at least its top 20m. That would leave the Shard as the undisputed tallest tower in Europe—if it ever gets built.

　　(1)The plans for the Shard of Glass have been causing ______________________ among different groups of people concerned with building and preserving buildings.

　　(2)The proposals to build more skyscrapers in London are not supported by ________________.

　　(3)Trophy architects are people who design and build ______________ for a cosmopolitan city and win prizes for their designs,

　　(4)Ken Livingston, London's mayor, believes that skyscrapers enhance a city's ______ in the world .

　　(5)The newly designed tall buildings have ____________ taken due consideration of London's city skyline and will ____________ the cityscape.

　　(6)The writer____________ the plans for building the Shard and is cynical about the idea that tall buildings earn a city prestige.

　　Passage Two (10 points)

　　Read the following passage and select the best answer to each of the questions below:

　　The modern multinational corporation is described as having originated when the owner managers of nineteenth-century British firms carrying on international trade were replaced by teams of salaried managers organized into hierarchies. Increases in the volume of transactions in such firms are commonly believed to have necessitated this structural change. Nineteenth-century inventions like the steamship and the telegraph, by facilitating coordination of managerial activities, are described as key factors. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century chartered trading companies, despite the international scope of their activities, are usually considered irrelevant to this discussion: the volume of their transactions is assumed to have been too low and the communications and transport of their day too primitive to make comparisons with modern multinationals interesting.

　　In reality, however, early trading companies successfully purchased and outfitted ships, built and operated offices and warehouses, manufactured trade goods for use abroad, maintained trading posts and production facilities overseas, procured goods for import, and sold those goods both at home and in other countries. The large volume of transactions associated with these activities seems to have necessitated hierarchical management structures well before the advent of modern communications and transportation. For example, in the Hudson's Bay Company, each far-flung trading outpost was managed by a salaried agent, who carried out the trade with the Native Americans, managed day-to-day operations, and oversaw the post's workers and servants. One chief agent, answerable to the Court of Directors in London through the correspondence committee, was appointed with control over all of the agents on the bay.

　　The early trading companies did differ strikingly from modern multinationals in many respects. They depended heavily on the national governments of their home countries and thus characteristically acted abroad to promote national interests. Their top managers were typically owners with a substantial minority share, whereas senior managers' holdings in modern multinationals are usually insignificant. They operated in a preindustrial world, grafting a system of capitalist international trade onto a premodern system of artisan and peasant production. Despite these differences, however, early trading companies organized effectively in remarkably modern ways and merit further study as analogues of more modern structures.

　　1. The author's main point is that

　　(A) modern multinationals originated in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with the establishment of chartered trading companies

　　(B) the success of early chartered trading companies, like that of modern multinationals, depended primarily on their ability to carry out complex operations

　　(C) early chartered trading companies should be more seriously considered by scholars studying the origins of modern multinationals

　　(D) scholars are quite mistaken concerning the origins of modern multinationals

　　2. According to the passage, early chartered trading companies are usually described as

　　(A) irrelevant to a discussion of the origins of the modern multinational corporation

　　(B) interesting but ultimately too unusual to be good subjects for economic study

　　(C) analogues of nineteenth-century British trading firms

　　(D) rudimentary and very early forms of the modern multinational corporation

　　3. It can be inferred from the passage that the author would characterize the activities engaged in by early chartered trading companies as being

　　(A) complex enough in scope to require a substantial amount of planning and coordination on the part of management

　　(B) too simple to be considered similar to those of a modern multinational corporation

　　(C) as intricate as those carried out by the largest multinational corporations today

　　(D) often unprofitable due to slow communications and unreliable means of transportation

　　4. The author lists the various activities of early chartered trading companies in order to

　　(A) analyze the various ways in which these activities contributed to changes in management structure in such companies

　　(B) demonstrate that the volume of business transactions of such companies exceeded that of earlier firms

　　(C) refute the view that the volume of business undertaken by such companies was relatively low

　　(D) mphasize the international scope of these companies' operations

　　5. With which of the following generalizations regarding management structures would the author of the passage most probably agree?

　　(A) Hierarchical management structures are the most efficient management structures possible in a modern context.

　　(B) Firms that routinely have a high volume ofbusiness transactions find it necessary to adopt hierarchical management structures.

　　(C) Hierarchical management structures cannot be successfully implemented without modern communications and transportation.

　　(D) Modern multinational firms with a relatively small volume of business transactions usually do not have hierarchically organized management structures.

　　6. The passage suggests that modern multinationals differ from early chartered trading companies in that

　　(A) the top managers of modern multinationals own stock in their own companies rather than simply receiving a salary

　　(B) modern multinationals depend on a system of capitalist international trade rather than on less modern trading systems

　　(C) modern multinationals have operations in a number of different foreign countries rather than merely in one or two

　　(D) the overseas operations of modern multinationals are not governed by the national interests of their home countries

　　7. The author mentions the artisan and peasant production systems of early chartered trading companies as an example of

　　(A)an area of operations of these companies that was unhampered by rudimentary systems of communications and transport

　　(B) a similarity that allows fruitful comparison of these companies with modern multinationals

　　(C) a positive achievement of these companies in the face of various difficulties

　　(D) a characteristic that distinguishes these companies from modern multinationals

　　8. The passage suggests that one of the reasons that early chartered trading companies deserve comparison with early modern multinationals is

　　(A)the degree to which they both depended on new technology

　　(B)the similar nature of their management structures

　　(C) similarities in their top managements' degree of ownership in the company

　　(D) their common dependence on political stability abroad in order to carry on foreign operations

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