六级快速阅读Reading Comprehension (Skimming and Scanning)(15 minutes)Passage1:The Next SocietyThe new economy may or may not materialize,but there is no doubt that the next society willbe with us shortly.In the developed world,and probably in the emerging countries as well,thisnew society will be a good deal more important than the new economy (if any).It will be quitedifferent from the society of the late 20th century,and also different from what most people expect.Much of it will be unprecedented.And most of it is already here,or is rapidly emerging.In the developed countries,the dominant factor in the next society will be something towhich most people are only just beginning to pay attention:the rapid growth in the olderpopulation and the rapid shrinking of the younger generation.Politicians everywhere still promiseto save the existing pension system,but they--and their constituents--know perfectly well that inanother 25 years people will have to keep working until their mid-70s,health permitting.What has not yet sunk in is that a growing number of older people--say those over 50--willnot keep on working as traditional full time nine-to-five employees,but will participate in thelabor force in many new and different ways:as temporaries,as part-timers,as consultants onspecial assignments,and so on.What used to be personnel and are now known as human resourcesdepartments still assume that those who work for an organization are full-time employees.Employment laws and regulations are based on the same assumption.Within 20 or 25 years,however,perhaps as many as half the people who work for an organization will not be employedby it,certainly not on a full-time basis.This will be especially true for older people.New ways ofworking with people at arm's length will increasingly become the central managerial issue ofemploying organizations,and not just of businesses.The shrinking of the younger population will cause an even greater upheaval,if only becausenothing like this has happened since the dying centuries of the Roman Empire.In every singledeveloped country,but also in China and Brazil,the birth rate is now well below the replacementrate of 2.2 live births per woman of reproductive age.Politically,this means that immigration willbecome an important and highly divisive issue in all rich countries.It will cut across all traditionalpolitical alignments.Economically,the decline in the young population will change markets infundamental ways.Growth in family formation has been the driving force of all domestic marketsin the developed world,but the rate of family formation is certain to fall steadily unless bolsteredby large-scale immigration of younger people.The homogeneous mass market that emerged in allrich countries after the Second World War has been youth-determined from the start.It will nowbecome middle-age-determined,or perhaps more likely it will split into two:amiddle-age-determined mass market and a much smaller youth-determined one.And because thesupply of young people will shrink,creating new employment pattems to attract and hold thegrowing number of older people (especially older educated people)will become increasinglyimportant.Knowledge is allThe next society will be a knowledge society.Knowledge will be its key resource,andknowledge workers will be the dominant group in its workforce.Its three main characteristics willbe:第1页共38页六级快速阅读Borderlessness,because knowledge travels even more effortlessly than money.Upward mobility,available to everyone through easily acquired formal educationThe potential for failure as well as success.Anyone can acquire the "means of production",i.e,the knowledge required for the job,but not everyone can win.Together,those three characteristics will make the knowledge society a highly competitiveone,for organizations and individuals alike.Information technology,although only one of manynew features of the next society,is already having one hugely important effect:it is allowingknowledge to spread near-instantly,and making it accessible to everyone.Given the ease andspeed at which information travels,every institution in the knowledge society--not only businesses,but also schools,universities,hospitals and increasingly govemment agencies too--has to beglobally competitive,even though most organizations will continue to be local in their activitiesand in their markets.This is because the Internet will keep customers everywhere informed onwhat is available anywhere in the world,and at what price.This new knowledge economy will rely heavily on knowledge workers.At present,this termis widely used to describe people with considerable theoretical knowledge and learning:doctors,lawyers,teachers,accountants,chemical engineers.But the most striking growth will be in"knowledge technologists"~computer technicians,software designers,analysts in clinical labs,manufacturing technologists,paralegals.These people are as much manual workers as they areknowledge workers;in fact,they usually spend far more time working with their hands than withtheir brains.But their manual work is based on a substantial amount of theoretical knowledgewhich can be acquired only through formal education,not through an apprenticeship.They are not,as a rule,much better paid than traditional skilled workers,but they see themselves as"professionals".Just as unskilled manual workers in manufacturing were the dominant social andpolitical force in the 20th century,knowledge technologists are likely to become the dominantsocial--and perhaps also political--force over the next decades.The new protectionismStructurally,too,the next society is already diverging from the society almost all of us stilllive in.The 20th century saw the rapid decline 'of the sector that had dominated society for 10,000years:agriculture.In volume terms,farm production now is at least four or five times what it wasbefore the First World War.But in 1913 farm products accounted for 70%of world trade,whereasnow their share is at most 17%.In the early years of the 20th century,agriculture in mostdeveloped countries was the largest single contributor to GDP;now in rich countries itscontribution has dwindled to the point of becoming marginal.And the farm population is downto a tiny proportion of the total.Manufacturing has traveled a long way down the same road.Since the Second World War,manufacturing output in the developed world has probably tripled in volume,but inflationadjusted manufacturing prices have fallen steadily,whereas the cost of prime knowledgeproducts-health care and education-has tripled,again adjusted for inflation.The relativepurchasing power of manufactured goods against knowledge products is now only one-fifth orone-sixth of what it was 50 years ago.Manufacturing employment in America has fallen from35%of the workforce in the 1950s to less than half that now,without causing much socialdisruption.But it may be too much to hope for an equally easy transition in countries such asJapan or Germany,where blue-collar manufacturing workers still make up 25--30%of the laborforce.第2页共38页六级快速阅读The decline of farming as a producer of wealth and of livelihoods has allowed farmprotectionism to spread to a degree that would have been unthinkable before the Second WorldWar.In the same way,the decline of manufacturing will trigger an explosion of manufacturingprotectionism-even as lip service continues to be paid to free trade.This protectionism may notnecessarily take the form of traditional tariffs,but of subsidies,quotas and regulations of all kinds.Even more likely,regional blocks will emerge that trade freely internally but are highlyprotectionist extemally.The European Union,NAFFA and Mercosur already point in thatdirection.The future of the corporationStatistically,multinational companies play much the same part in the world economy as theydid in 1913.But they have become very different animals.Multinationals in 1913 were domesticfirms with subsidiaries abroad,each of them self-contained,in charge of a politically definedterritory,and highly autonomous.Multinationals now tend to be organized globally alongproduct or service lines.But like the multinationals of 1913,they are held together and controlledby ownership.By contrast,the multinationals of 2025 are likely to be held together and controlledby strategy.There will still be ownership,of course.But alliances,joint ventures,minority stakes,know-how agreements contracts will increasingly be the building blocks of a confederation.Thiskind of organization will need a new kind of top management.In most countries,and even in a good many large and complex companies,top managementis still seen as an extension of operating management.Tomorrow's top management,however,islikely to be a distinct and separate organ:it will stand for the company.One of the most importantjobs ahead for the top management of he big company of tomorrow,and especially of themultinational,will be to balance the conflicting demands on business being made by the need forboth short-term and long-term results,and by the corporation's various constituencies:customers,shareholders,knowledge employees and communities.1.The new society will be much more important than the new economy only in thedeveloped countries.2.In another 25 years people will have to keep working as full-time employees until theirmid-70s if health permits.3.Nowadays in China,because of the population policy,the birth rate has decreased.4.In developed countries,the issue of immigration will become important politically.5.The dominant part in the next society's work force is6.makes knowledge spread rapidly and available to everyone.7.had dominated society for 10,000 years but declined rapidly in the 20th century.8.In order to adjust for inflation,the cost ofwhich are the main knowledge productswas tripled.9.Multinationals in 1913 were composed of a domestic firms and its self-contained andautonomous10.Top management in the Next society will be aorgan.Passage2:Rain forestsTropical rainforests are the most diverse ecosystem(生态系统)on Earth,and also the oldest..Today,tropical rainforests cover only 6 percent of the Earth's ground surface,but they are home to第3页共38页六级快速阅读over half of the planet's plant and animal speciesWhat Is a Rainforest?Generally speaking,a rainforest is an environment that receives high rainfall and isdominated by tall trees.A wide range of ecosystems fall into this category,of course.But most ofthe time when people talk about rainforests,they mean the tropical rainforests located near theequator.These forests receive between 160 and 400 inches of rain per year.The total annual rainfall isspread pretty evenly throughout the year,and the temperature rarely dips below 60 degreesFahrenheit.This steady climate is due to the position of rainforests on the globe.Because of theorientation of the Earth's axis,the Northern and Southern hemispheres each spend part of the yeartilted away from the sun.Since rainforests are at the middle of the globe,located near the equator,they arc not especially affected by this change.They receive nearly the same amount of sunlight,and therefore heat,all year.Consequently,the weather in these regions remains fairly constant.The consistently wet,warm weather and ample sunlight give plant life everything it needs tothrive.Trees have the resources to grow to tremendous heights,and they live for hundreds,eventhousands,of years.These giants,which reach 60 to 150 ft in the air,form the basic structure ofthe rainforest.Their top branches spread wide in order to capture maximum sunlight.This createsa thick canopy (level at the top of the forest,with thinner greenery levels undemeath.Somelarge trees grow so tall that they even tower over the canopy layer.As you go lower,down into the rainforest,you find less and less greenery.The forest floor ismade up of moss,fungi,and decaying plant matter that has fallen from the upper layers.Thereason for this decrease in greenery is very simple the overabundance of plants gathering sunlightat the top of the forest blocks most sunlight from reaching the bottom of the forest,making itdifficult for robust plants to thrive.The,Forest for the TreesThe ample sunlight and extremely wet climate of many tropical areas encourage the growthof towering trees with wide canopies.This thick top layer of the rainforest dictates the lives of allother plants in the forest.New tree seedlings rarely survive to make it to the top unless some oldertrees die,creating a "hole"in the canopy.When this happens,all of the seedlings on the groundlevel compete intensely to reach the sunlight.Many plant species reach the top of the forest by climbing the tall trees.It is much easier toascend this way,because the plant doesn't have to form its own supporting structure.Some plant species,called epiphytes,grow directly on the surface of the giant trees.Theseplants,which include a variety of orchids and ferns,make up much of the understory,the layer ofthe rainforest right below the canopy.Epiphytes are close enough to the top to receive adequatelight,and the runoff from the canopy layer provides all the water and nutrients(they need,which is important since they don't have access to the nutrients in the ground.Stranglers and ButtressesSome epiphytes eventually develop into stranglers.They grow long,thick roots that extenddown the tree trunk into the ground.As they continue to grow,the roots form a sort of webstructure all around the tree.At the same time,the strangler plant's branches extend upward,spreading out into the canopy.Eventually,the strangler may block so much light from above,andabsorb such a high percentage of nutrients from the ground below,that the host tree dies.第4页共38页六级快速阅读Competition over nutrients is almost as intense as competition for light.The excessiverainfall rapidly dissolves nutrients in the soil making it relatively infertile except at the top layers.For this reason,rainforest tree roots grow outward to cover a wider area,rather than downward tolower levels.This makes rainforest trees somewhat unstable,since they don't have very stronganchors in the ground.Some trees compensate for this by growing natural buttresses.Thesebuttresses are basically tree trunks that extend out from the side of the tree and clown to theground,giving the tree additional support.Rainforest trees are dependent on bacteria that are continually producing nutrients in theground.Rainforest bacteria and trees have a very close,symbiotic relationship.The treesprovide the bacteria with food,in the form of fallen leaves and other material,and the bacteriabreak this material down into the nutrients that the trees need to survive.One of the most remarkable things about rainforest plant life is its diversity.The temperaterainforests of the Pacific Northwest are mainly composed of a dozen or so tree species.A tropicalrainforest,on the other hand,might have 300 distinct tree species.All Creatures,Great and SmallRainforests are home to the majority of animal species in the world.And a great number ofspecies who now live in other environments,including humans,originally inhabited the rainforests.Researchers estimate that in a large rainforest area,there may be more than 10 million differentanimal species.Most of these species have adapted for life in the upper levels of the rainforest,where food ismost plentiful.Insects,which can easily climb or fly from tree to tree,make up the largest group(ants are the most abundant animal in the rainforest).Insect species have a highly symbioticrelationship with the plant life in a rainforest.The insects move from plant to plant,enjoying thewealth of food provided there.As they travel,the insects may pick up the plants'seeds,droppingthem some distance away.This helps to disperse the population of the plant species over a largerarea.The numerous birds of the rainforest also play a major part in seed dispersal.When they eatfruit from a plant,the seeds pass through their digestive system.By the time they excrete (the seeds,the birds may have flown many miles away from the fruit-bearing tree.There are also a large number of reptiles and mammals in the rainforest.Since the weather isso hot and humid during the day,most rainforest mammals are active only at night,dusk or dawn.The many rainforest bat species are especially well adapted for this lifestyle.Using their sonar,bats navigate easily through the mass of trees in the rainforest,feeding on insects and fruit.While most rainforest species spend their lives in the trees,there is also a lot of life on theforest floor.Great apes,wild pigs,big cats and even elephants can all be found in rainforests.There are a number of people who live in the rainforests,as well.These tribes-which,up untilrecently,numbered in the thousands-are being forced out of the rainforests at an alarming ratebecause of deforestation.DeforestationIn the past hundred years,humans have begun destroying rainforests at an alarming rate.Today,roughly 1.5 acres of rainforest are destroyed every second.People are cutting down therainforests in pursuit of three major resources:·land for cropslumber for paper and other wood products第5页共38页