27. Deprived of the financial means to remain independent, Thomas Edison was compelled to _________ employment as a night telephone operator.

A. obtain B. chase C. explore D. seek

28. Under her administration, claim the critics, high-rise construction has destroyed the of the city's downtown, darkening its streets and driving business.

A. property B. character C. personality D. quality

29. When the tank can carrying poisonous gas ran off the rails, the firemen tried to the village from all traffic.

A. dismiss B. insulate C. isolate D. expel

30. We object to the idea that it is military force that should be in settling international disputes.

A. applied to B. resorted to C. fallen back on D. restrained from

Part Ⅲ Reading Comprehension (45minutes, 30point)

Directions: There are 5 passages in this part. Each passage is followed by 6 questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are 4 choices marked A, B, C and D. Choose the best one and mark the corresponding letter with a single bar across the square brackets on your machine-scoring ANSWER SHEET.

Passage One

The study of history by way of a fat textbook and become quickly immersed in a vast sea of names, dates, events, and statistics. The students' skills are then tested by examinations that require them to show how much of the data they remember. From this experience a number of conclusions seem obvious: the study of history is the study of "facts" about the past; the more "facts" you know, the better you are as a student of history. But in this way students may become confused upon discovering that historians often disagree sharply. They discover that historians dealing with the same event may come to quite different conclusions about it.

Obviously, there is no easy solution to this problem. Historians disagree because each historian views the past from a particular perspective. Once students grasp this, they have taken the first step toward being able to evaluate the work of various historians. But before they can take this first step, students must consider a problem they have more or less taken for granted. They must ask themselves what history really is.

The word history has several meanings. In its broadest sense, it denotes the whole of the human past. More restricted is the notion that history is the recorded past, that is, that part of human life which has left some sort of record such as folk tales, artifacts, or written documents. Finally, history may be defined as that which historians write about the past.

31. What is the meaning of the word "fat" in Line 1?

A. Big. B. Hard. C. Thick. D. Well-filled.

32. What do most history teachers require their students to do, according to the first paragraph?

A. They ask their students to read a lot of history books.

B. They make their students show interest in names, dates, events, and statistics.

C. They ask their students to take many examinations.

D. They make students get involved in many names, dates, events and statistics, and keep them in mind.

33. Why do students become confused?

A. They can not understand the "fact" about the past.

B. They are confused by their teachers.

C. They find the descriptions and explanations of the same historical events are different from one historian to another.

D. They don't know that the quite different conclusions may come out from the same event.

34. Why do historians disagree with each other?

A. They stand in different places.

B. They just pick up the most important facts they believe.

C. They are not good friends.

D. Both B and C.