問題詳情

IV. Reading Comprehension: Choose the best answer for each question. (20%)Passage ANo, Steve Jobs declared. Apple wouldn‟t put a store in Brazil, with its “crazy” and “super-high”taxation. This was 2010, and Jobs was writing, bluntly, to an official in Rio de Janeiro. Four years later,Jobs‟s successor had a different message for Brazilians.“ „Obrigado‟ to everyone who visited our new store,” CEO Tim Cook tweeted in February, after 1,700people packed into a Rio mall for the opening of the first Apple store in Latin America. “We are Brazilians,with lots of pride and lots of love,” his blue-shirted employees sang, adapting a tune heard in stadiums andbars when the national soccer team plays. Apple is one of many foreign brands feeling the love for Brazil —even if Brazilians, mired in an economic slump, aren‟t. As the country hosts this year‟s World Cup andprepares for the Olympic Games in 2016, the optimism that led it to bid for the planet‟s two most famoussporting events has all but evaporated.Inflation and flagging growth are squeezing Brazil‟s new middle class, whose anger is so intense andencompassing that its targets include the World Cup itself — an amazing thing in a country that is thedefinition of soccer mad. Protesters have jeered the national team, the World Cup trophy and the country‟spresident, Dilma Rousseff, whom Brazilians blame for spending extravagantly on stadiums while neglectingbasic public services. In May, Sao Paulo bus drivers snarled 162 miles of traffic when they threw away theirkeys in a strike, a fitting image for a country that is stalled after years of rapid economic growth.The foreign investors still come, drawn by something even high taxes can‟t take away: young,increasingly educated and affluent consumers. Companies as diverse as Forever 21, known for trendyfashions, and luxury automaker Bayerische Motoren Werke are putting down stakes this year. “Brazil haschanged,” says Arturo Pineiro, head of BMW Brazil Group, which is investing $276 million in a plantscheduled to open later this year in Araquari, in the country‟s south. “It has some problems, but, with theright focus, they can be solved.”It can be hard to find ordinary Brazilians who agree with him, amid reports of protesters pelting policewith rocks — or, at one clash in May, shooting them with arrows — and widespread griping about publiccorruption.When the country was awarded the two sporting events last decade, then-President Luiz Inacio Lula daSilva — just Lula to Brazilians — was hailed as a miracle worker. The former union leader guided an epicboom during eight years in office, from 2003 to 2010, with the benchmark Ibovespa stock index growingsixfold and annual economic growth reaching as much as 7.5 percent. This allowed Lula to plow cash intohis ambitious Bolsa Familia, a program that gives low-income Brazilians a monthly stipend in exchange forsending their children to school and has helped cut the poverty rate in half. 第 7 頁,共 10 頁Brazilians long for those days now. Economic growth has slowed to just over 2 percent annually, andthe stock market has declined by more than 20 percent in three years under Rousseff, Lula‟s former chief ofstaff.
31. According to the passage, where would people most likely hear the singing of “We are Brazilians, withlots of pride and lots of love” in Brazil?
(A) In a soccer stadium.
(B) At a bar in Rio.
(C) In Soccer World Cups.
(D) In the Apple store.

參考答案

答案:D
難度:適中0.428571
統計:A(12),B(10),C(7),D(24),E(0)

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