2005年C类(A级)决赛试题.doc

Part V Reading Comprehension (25 minutes, 35 points) Section A Multiple Choice (5 points) Directions: In this section, there is １ passage with 5 questions or unfinished statements. For each of them, there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. You should decide on the best choice. Then mark the corresponding letter on the Answer Sheet with a single line through the centre. Questions 56 to 60 are based on the following passage. Federal Express is a company that specializes in rapid overnight delivery of high-priority packages. The first company of its type, Federal Express was founded by the youthful Fred Smith in 1971, when he was only 28 years old. Smith had actually developed the idea for the rapid delivery service in a term paper for an economics class when he was a student at Yale University. The term paper reputedly received a less-than-stellar grade because of the infeasibility of the project that Smith had outlined. The model that Smith proposed had never been tried; it was a model that was efficient to operate but at the same time was very difficult to institute. overnight 通宵的，晚上的 high-priority 高度优先的 reputedly 据说 infeasibility 不可行 outline 列出 institute 建立 Smith achieved efficiency in his model by designing a system that was separate from the passenger system and could, therefore, focus on how to deliver packages most efficiently. His strategy was to have his own planes so that he could create his own schedules and to ship all packages through the centralized hub city of Memphis, a set-up which resembles the spokes on the wheel of a bicycle. With this combination of his own planes and hub set-up, he could get packages anywhere in the United States overnight. set-up 配置，装置，机构 resemble 类似 spokes 刹车，轮辐 What made Smith’s idea difficult to institute was the fact that the entire system had to be created before the company could begin operations. He needed a fleet of aircraft to collect packages from airports every night and deliver them to Memphis, where they we