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A. some modern women prefer a life of individual freedom.
B. the family is no longer the basic unit of society in present-day Europe.
C. some professional people have too much work to do to feel lonely.
D. Most Europeans conceive living a single life as unacceptable.
5.What is the author’s purpose in writing the passage?
A. To review the impact of women becoming high earners.
B. To contemplate the philosophy underlying individualism.
C. To examine the trend of young people living alone.
D. To stress the rebuilding of personal relationships.
Passage Two
American dramas and sitcoms would have been candidates for prime time several years ago. But those programs －though some remain popular －increasingly occupy fringe times slots on foreign networks. Instead, a growing number of shows produced by local broadcasters are on the air at the best times.
The shift counters longstanding assumptions that TV shows produced in the United States would continue to overshadow locally produced shows from Singapore to Sicily. The changes are coming at a time when the influence of the United States on international affairs has annoyed friends and foes alike, and some people are expressing relief that at least on television American culture is no longer quite the force it once was.
“There has always been a concern that the image of the world would be shaped too much by American culture,” said Dr. Jo Groebek, director general of the European Institu te for the Media, a non-profit group. Given the choice, he adds, foreign viewers often prefer homegrown shows that better reflect local tastes, cultures and historical events.
Unlike in the United States, commercial broadcasting in most regions of the world －including Asia, Europe, and a lesser extent Latin America, which has a long history of commercial TV －is a relatively recent development.
A majority of broadcasters in many countries were either state-owned or state-subsidized for much of the last century. Governments began to relax their control in the 1980’s by privatizing national broadcasters and granting licenses to dozens of new commercial networks. The rise of cable and satellite pay-television increased the spectrum of channels.
Relatively inexperienced and often financed on a shoestring, these new commercial stations needed hours of programming fast. The cheapest and easiest way to fill airtime was to buy shows from American studios, and the bidding wars for popular shows were fierce.
The big American studios took advantage of that demand by raising prices and forcing foreign broadcasters to buy less popular programs if they wanted access to the best-selling shows and movies.
“The studio priced themselves out of prime time,” said Harry Evans Sloan, chairman of SBS Broadcasting, a Pan-European broadcaster. Mr. Sloan estimates that over the last decade, the price of American programs has increased fivefold even as the international ratings for these shows have declined.
American broadcasters are still the biggest buyers of American-made television shows, accounting for 90% of the $25 billion in 2001 sales. But international sales which totaled $2.5 billion last year often make the difference between a profit and a loss on show. As the pace of foreign sales slows －the market is now growing at 5% a year, down from the double-digit growth of the 1990’s －studio executives are rethinking production costs.
6. Which of the following best characterizes the image embodied in American shows?
A. Self-contradictory
B. Prejudice-free
C. Culture-loaded
D. Audience-targeted
7. The intervention of governments in the 1980’s resulted in __________ .
A. the patenting of domination shows and movies
B. the emergence of new commercial networks
C. the promotion of cable and satellite pay-television
D. the intense competition coming from the outside
8. The phrase “on a shoestring” (Para. 6) most probably means __________.
A. in need of capital
B. after a fashion
C. on second thoughts
D. in the interests of themselves
9. The main reason why American dramas and sitcoms are driven out of prime time is that ____.
A. they lose competitiveness
B. they are not market-oriented
C. they are too much priced
D. they fall short of audience expectations
10. American studio producers will give thought to production costs __________.
A. if they have no access to popular shows
B. because their endeavors come to no avail
C. since bidding wars are no longer fierce
D. as international sales pace slows down
Passage Three
How shops can exploit people's herd mentality to increase sales
1. A TRIP to the supermarket may not seem like an exercise in psychological warfare—but it is. Shopkeepers know that filling a store with the aroma of freshly baked bread makes people feel hungry and persuades them to buy more food than they had intended. Stocking the most expensive products at eye level makes them sell faster than cheaper but less visible competitors. Now researchers are investigating how “swarm intelligence” (th at is，how ants，bees or any social animal，including humans，behave in a crowd) can be used to influence what people buy.
2. At a recent conference on the simulation of adaptive behaviour in Rome，Zeeshan-ul-hassan Usmani，a computer scientist from the Florida Institute of Technology，described a new way to increase impulse buying using this phenomenon. Supermarkets already encourage shoppers to buy things they did not realise they wanted: for instance，by placing everyday items such as milk and eggs at the back of the store，forcing shoppers to walk past other tempting goods to reach them. Mr Usmani and Ronaldo Menezes，also of the Florida Institute of Technology, set out to enhance this tendency to buy more by playing on the herd instinct. The idea is that, if a certain product is seen to be popular, shoppers are likely to choose it too. The challenge is to keep customers informed about what others are buying.
3. Enter smart-cart technology. In Mr Usmani's supermarket every product has a radio frequency identification tag, a sort of barcode that uses radio waves to transmit information，and every trolley has a scanner that reads this information and relays it to a central computer. As a customer walks past a shelf of goods, a screen on the shelf tells him how many people currently in the shop have chosen that particular product. If the number is high, he is more likely to select it too.
