PART IV READING COMPREHENSION
　　
SECTION A (25 MIN.)
In this part there are four passages followed by fifteen questions or unfinished statements, each with four suggested answers marked A, B, C and D. choose the one that you think is the correct answer. Mark you choice on your answer sheet.
　　
TEXT A In the past thirty years many social changes have taken place in Britain. The greatest of these have probably been in the economic lives of women. The changes have been significant, but, because tradition and prejudice can still handicap women in their working careers and personal lives, major legislation to help promote equality of opportunity and pay was passed during the 1970s. At the heart of womens changed role in society has been the rise in the number of women at work, particularly married woman. As technology and society permit highly effective and generally acceptable methods of family planning there has been a decline in family size. Women as a result are involved in child-rearing for a much shorter time and related to this, there has been a rapid increase in the number of women with young children who return to work when the children are old enough not to need constant care and attention. Since 1951 the proportion of married women whose work has grown from just over a fifth to a half. Compared with their counterparts elsewhere on the Continent, British women comprise a relatively high proportion of the work force, about two-fifths, but on average they work fewer hours, about 31 a week. There is still a significant difference between womens average earnings and mens, but the equal pay legislation which came into force at the end of 1975 appears to have helped to narrow the gap between womens and mens basic rates. As more and more women joined the work force in the 1960s and early 1970s there was an increase in the collective incomes of women as a whole and a major change in the economic role of large numbers of housewives. Families have come to rely on married womens earnings as an essential part of their income rather than as "pocket money". At the same time social roles within the family are more likely to be shared, exchanged or altered.
　　
66. The general idea of the passage is about ______
A) social trends in contemporary Britain.
B) changes in women's economic status.
C) equal opportunity and pay in Britain.
D) women's roles within the family.
　　
67. According to the author, an increasing number of married women are able to work because ______
A) their children no longer require their care.
B) there are more jobs available nowadays.
C) technology has enabled them to find acceptable jobs.
D) they spend far less time on child care than before.
　　
TEXT B Natures Gigantic Snow plough On January 10,1962, an enormous piece of glacier broke away and tumbled down the side of a mountain in Peru. A mere seven minutes later, when cascading ice finally came to a stop ten miles down the maintain, it had taken the lives of 4 000 people. This disaster is one of the most devastating example of a very common event: an avalanche of snow or ice. Because it is extremely cold at very high altitude, sow rarely melts. It just keeps piling up higher and higher. Glaciers are eventually created when the weight of the snow is so great that the lower layers are pressed into solid ice. But most avalanches occur long before this happens. As snow accumulates on a steep slope, it reaches a critical point at which the slightest vibration will send it sliding into the valley below. Even an avalanche of light power can be dangerous, but the Peruvian catastrophe was particularly terrible because it was caused by a heavy layer of ice. It is estimated that the ice that broke off weighted three million tons. As it crashed down the steep mountainside like a gigantic snow plough, it swept up trees, boulders and tons of topsoil, and completely crushed and destroyed the six villages that lay in its path. At present there is no way to predict or avoid such enormous avalanches, but, luckily, they are very rare. Scientists are constantly studying the smaller, more common avalanches, to try to understand what causes them. In the future, perhaps dangerous masses of snow and ice can be found and removed before they take human lives.
　
68. The first paragraph catches the reader's attention with a ______
A) first-have report.
B) dramatic description.
C) tall tale.
D) vivid word picture.
　
69. In this passage devastating means ______
A) violently ruinous.
B) highly interesting.
C) stunning.
D) unpleasant.
　　
70. The passage is mostly about ______
A) avalanches
B) glaciers.
C) Peru.
D) mountains.
　　
TEXT C I was born in Tuckahoe, Talbot Country, Maryland. I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it. By far the larger part of the slaves knows as little of their age as horses know of theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant. I do not remember having ever met a slave who could tell of his birthday. They seldom come nearer to it than planting-time, harvesting, springtime, or falltime. A lack of information concerning my own was a source of unhappiness to me even during childhood. The white children could tell their ages, I could not tell why I ought to be deprived of the same privilege. I was not allowed to make any inquires of my master concerning it. He considered all such inquires on the part of a slave improper and impertinent. The nearest estimate I can give makes me now between twenty-seven and twenty-eight years of age. I come to this, from hearing my master say, some time during 1835, I was about seventeen years old. My mother was named Harriet Bailey. She was the daughter of Isaac and Betsey Bailey, both colored, and quite dark. My mother was of a darker complexion than either my grandmother or grandfather. My father was a white man. The opinion was also whispered that my master was my father; but of the correctness of this opinion, I know nothing; the means of knowing was withheld from me. My mother and I were separated when I was but an infant-before I knew her as my mother. It is a common custom, in the part of Maryland from which I ran away, to part children from their mothers at a very early age. Frequently, before the child has reached its twelfth month, its mother is taken from it, and hired out on some farm a considerable distance off, and the child is placed under the care of an older woman, too old for field labor. For what this separation is done, I do not know, unless it was to hinder the development of the childs affection towards its mother.
　　
71. The author did not know exactly when he was born because ______
A) he did not know who his mother was.
B) there was no written evidence of it.
C) his master did not tell his father.
D) nobody on his farm knew anything about it.
　　
72. In the mid-nineteenth century, slaves often ______
A) marked their birthdays by the season.
B) did not really care how old they were.
C) forgot the exact time when they were born.
D) pretended not to know each other's birthdays.
　　
73. The author's mother told him ______
A) his father was black.
B) his father was white.
C) nothing about his father.
D) his master was his father.
　
74. According the passage, when the author was very young his mother ______
A) ran away.
B) was light-skinned
C) had several children.
D) was sent to work elsewhere.
　　
75. The author had not spent much time with his ______
A) mother.
B) master.
C) grandfather.
D) grandmother.
　　
76. The author was most probably raised ______
A) by his grandparents.
B) by an old woman slave.
C) with his master's support.
D) together with other children.