Finally, to flow successfully depends a great deal on the activity itself; not too difficult to produce anxiety, not too easy to bring about boredom; challenging, interesting, fun. Some good examples of flow activities are games and sports, reading, learning, working on what you enjoy, and even day-dreaming.

 

61. What is the main purpose of the article?

A. to illustrate the feeling of “flow”

B. to analyze the causes of a special feeling

C. to define the new psychological term “flow”

D. to lead people to acquire the feeling of “flow”

 

62. In this article, “flow” refers to a feeling which probably results from _____________.

A. awareness               

B. ecstasy

C. unconsciousness             

D. self-rewarding

 

63. The word “immersed” (in boldface) is closest in meaning to _____________.

A. occupied                 

B. engrossed

C. soaked              

D. committed

 

64. What does one usually act while “flowing” in reading?

A. thinks what he is doing

B. wonders how fast he can read

C. turns the pages

D. minds the page number

 

65. The activity which can successfully bring about “flow” is most probably ____________.

A. gripping                  

B. difficult

C. boring                     

D. easy

 

 

Section B ( 20 minutes, 10 points)

 

Direction: In each of the following passages, five sentences have been removed from the original text. They are listed from A to F and put below the passage. Choose the most suitable sentence from the list to fill in each of the blanks (numbered 66 to 75). For each passage, there is one sentence that does not fit in any of the blanks. Mark your answers on your machine scoring Answer Sheet.

Passage 1

A history of long and effortless success can be a dreadful handicap, but, if properly handled, it may become a driving force. When the United States entered just such a glowing period after the end of the Second World War, it had a market eight times larger than any competitor, giving its industries unparalleled economies of scale. --- 66 --- America and Americans were prosperous beyond the dreams of the Europeans and Asians whose economies the war had destroyed.

It was inevitable that this primacy should have narrowed as other countries grew richer. Just as inevitably, the retreat from predominance proved painful. By the mid-1980s Americans had found themselves at a loss over their fading industrial competitiveness. --- 67 --- By 1987 there was only one American television maker left, Zenith. (Now there is none: Zenith was bought by South Korea's LG Electronics in July.) Foreign-made cars and textiles were sweeping into the domestic market. America's machine tool industry was on the ropes. --- 68 ---

All of this caused a crisis of confidence. Americans stopped taking prosperity for granted. They began to believe that their way of doing business was failing, and that their incomes would therefore shortly begin to fall as well. --- 69 ---Their sometimes-sensational findings were filled with warnings about the growing competition from overseas.

--- 70 ---In 1995 the United States can look back on five years of solid growth while Japan has been struggling. Few Americans attribute this solely to such obvious causes as a devalued dollar or the turning of the business cycle. Self-doubt has yielded to blind pride." American industry has changed its structure, has gone on a diet, has learnt to be more quick-witted," according to Richard Cavanagh, executive dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.  “It makes me proud to be an American just to see how our businesses are improving their productivity,” says Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute, a think-tank in Washington, DC. And William Sahlman of the Harvard Business School believes that people will look back on this period as" a golden age of business management in the United States."

 

A.    For a while it looked as though the making of semiconductors, which America had invested and which sat at the heart of the new computer age, was going to be the next casualty. 

B.     Its scientists were the world's best, its workers the most skilled.