PART III READING COMPREHENSION

Section A (60 minutes, 30 points)

Directions: Below each of the following passages you will find some questions or incomplete statements.Each question or statement is followed by four choices marked A, B, C, and D.Read each passage carefully, and then select the choice that best answers the question or completes the statement.Mark the letter of your choice with a single bar across the square brackets on your Machine-scoring Answer Sheet.

Passage One

Not long ago, I stood on a corner near my home and watched as some of the 42,000 men, women and children participating in Boston’s Walk for Hunger strode by.Their 20-mile round-trip trek was a success, raising $3.6 million for food banks.It was as if, by burning calories, they were feeding the hungry.

Still, the logic that united the walkers, the donors and the hungry mystified me.After years of witnessing such events I still wonder why we must be a nation in motion to secure aid for the needy.Why are benefactors moved by the sight of urban hordes headed for the suburbs and back? Why do such exertions trigger the charitable impulse?

What I saw that morning in Boston was a resource diverted from its true purpose.Imagine those 210,000 man-hours (42,000 times a five-hour walk) put into direct service to benefit the poor.Think of the houses that might be built, roofs repaired, gardens planted and harvested, public spaces improved, and meals delivered to shut-ins.

In the charitable ritual that has evolved, two sides expend energy, but only the sponsors’ efforts directly aid the poor.The others’ is pure sweat equity that goes nowhere but down the necks of the participants.Consider, too, the public resources expended: the rescue squads and medics along the way, the police sealing off urban arteries, the snarling of traffic.I do not question the sincerity of the participants, but in these mass mobilizations I see many lost opportunity costs.I recognize the value of exercise and companionship, but question why society values these schemes.

The easy explanation, of course, is that there would be no giving—or not nearly so much—without the walks.Fund-raisers recognize that the nobility of giving is often stimulated by activities that conjoin the selfless with self-interest.For giving, we often offer value received.Raffles and auctions and naming rights are among the inducements used to win support.But that’s not what’s going on here.

Those who oversee such fund-raising spectacles argue that there is more to these events than meets the eyes—mine included.These walks and runs are incubators for future volunteers and donors.They constitute a public proclamation that others matter.They make the invisible visible.More to the point, it is easier to get relatives, friends and colleagues to open their pocketbooks than it is to win over the largess of strangers.

36. 42,000 people walked for 20 miles to ________.

A.lose weight

B.protest against food banks

C.raise money for the poor

D.impress the media

37.What puzzled the author?

A.Why we aid the hungry people.

B.Why people walk to suburbs.

C.The connection between the nation and the needy.

D.The connection between walking and charity.

38.In the third paragraph, the author thought that ________.

A.the walkers could have helped the poor people directly

B.the resources should be divided fairly

C.the number of participants is larger than needed

D.the housing conditions should be improved

39.According to the writer, in charity efforts, ________.

A.public inconvenience should be endured

B.participants’ sincerity should be questioned

C.opportunities should be open to the public

D.public resources should be used more efficiently

40.The writer is doubtful about ________.

A.sponsors’ efforts in helping the poor

B.volunteers’ motive in charity efforts

C.the value of mass mobilization

D.the value of exercise and companionship

41.The strength of the fund-raising activities is ________.

A.lo get more people involved in charity

B.lo make a show to the spectators

C.lo get the attention of the government

D.to decrease the gap between the rich and the poor

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