C.     How things have changed!

D.    The mid-1980s brought one inquiry after another into the causes of America's industrial decline. 

E.     Some huge American industries, such as consumer electronics, had shrunk or vanished in the face of foreign competition.

F.     Some of the nation's largest businesses shrink in size when they appear on the government's database of federal contractors. 

 

Passage 2

   If sustainable competitive advantage depends on work force skills, American firms have a problem. ---71--- Skill acquisition is considered an individual responsibility. Labor is simply another factor of production to be hired-rented at the lowest possible cost-much as one buys raw materials or equipment. 

 

  The lack of importance attached to human resource management can be seen in the corporate hierarchy. In an American firm the chief financial officer is almost always second in command. ---72--- The executive who holds it is never consulted on major strategic decisions and has no chance to move up to Chief Executive Officer (CEO). By way of contrast, in Japan the head of human resource management is central-usually the second most important executive, after the CEO, in the firm's hierarchy. 

 

  While American firms often talk about the vast amounts spent on training their work forces, in fact they invest less in the skills of their employees than do either Japanese or German firms. ---73---And the limited investments that are made in training workers are also much more narrowly focused on the specific skills necessary to do the next job rather than on the basic background skills that make it possible to absorb new technologies. 

 

  As a result, problems emerge when new breakthrough technologies arrive. ---74---More time is required before equipment is up and running at capacity, and the need for extensive retraining generates costs and creates bottlenecks that limit the speed with which new equipment can be employed. ---75--- And in the end the skills of the population affect the wages of the top half. If the bottom half can't effectively staff the processes that have to be operated, the management and professional jobs that go with these processes will disappear.

 

A. If American workers for example, take much longer to learn how to operate new flexible manufacturing stations than workers in Germany (as they do), the effective cost of those stations is lower in Germany than it is in the United Stated. 

B. The head of human resource management is one of the most important executives in the firm.

C. The money they do invest is also more highly concentrated on professional and managerial employees.

D. Human resource management is not traditionally seen as central to the competitive survival of the firm in the United States.

E. The post of head of human resource management is usually a specialized job, off at the edge of the corporate hierarchy.

F. The result is a slower pace of technological change.

 

 

PAPER TWO

 

PART V TRANSLATION  (30 minutes, 15 points)

 

Directions: Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese. Write your pieces of Chinese version in the proper space on your Answer Sheet II.

 

There is no greater power in the world today than that wielded by the manipulators of public opinion in America. (1) No king or pope of old, no conquering general or high priest ever disposed of a power even remotely approaching that of the few dozen men who control America’s mass news and entertainment media.

 (2)Their power is not distant and impersonal; it reaches into every home in America, and it works its will during nearly every waking hour. It is the power which shapes and molds the mind of virtually every citizen, young or old, rich or poor, simple or sophisticated.

The mass media form for us our image of the world and then tell us what to think about that image. (3)Essentially everything we know—or think we know—about events outside our own neighborhood or circle of acquaintances comes to us via our daily newspaper, our weekly news magazine, our radio, or our television.

It is not just the heavy-handed suppression of certain news stories from our newspapers or the blatant propagandizing of history-distorting TV “docudramas” which characterizes the opinion-manipulating techniques of the media masters. They exercise both subtlety and thoroughness in their management of both the news and the entertainment which they present to us.