00到07年的基础英语真题,及答案

new job in the Senate. She’s also zeroing in on a house in Washington. She won’t be staying at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue anymore, but she won’t be far away, either.

1. Explain the following sentences or phrases in English, bringing out the implied meaning, if there is any: (40 points)

1) Hillary Clinton was in her element.

2)... reminiscent of another Clinton...

3) But it’s been a bumpy ride.

4)... she’s already topping the whispering list of contenders for the Democratic presidential

nomination in 2004.

5)... seemed the natural heir of Bill Clinton’s legacy.

6) who already squandered the advantages of incumbency.

7)... has learned a thing or two about taking small steps.

8)... has finally found her groove.

9) It is a central tenet of Hillary land...

10)... she won’t be offering any how-to lectures.

2. Give a brief answer to each of the following questions: (15 points)

1) What does the author mean when he says: “Hillary was opening a whole new book.”?

2) According to the author, what has been Hillary Clinton’s greatest accomplishment as the

First Lady?

3) Does the author think that Hillary Clinton will eventually try to compete for the

presidency?

Passage Two

The news that McDonald’s is being sued by Hindus and vegetarians for glazing their french fries with beef extract Not merely because I am a vegetarian myself, but because we have come to the stage when people in America now feel entitled to expect McDonald’s, to serve them something that is 100 percent vegetarian.

What an evolution! When I came to the United States as a graduate student in 1975, to be vegetarian was a crippling handicap. The only food I could eat at the dorm cafeterias (other than breakfast) was salads. There were the occasional tasteless boiled vegetables, meant to accompany the main dish, but to one accustomed to the flavors and seasonings of richly varied Indian cuisine, these were barely edible. When I fled the campus to seek culinary solace in the wider world, all I could find were pizzas and submarine sandwiches. Great Boston boasted but one Indian restaurant, and as an impecunious student I couldn’t afford to go more than once a semester. At the rare dinner parties I was invited to, the hostesses heaped carrots and peas on my plate－and, if I was lucky, mashed potatoes.

If that wasn’t bad enough, I discovered that most Americans associated vegetarianism with the counterculture, a fad for pot-addled hippies in beads and sandals chanting “om” between crunching on those leaves they weren’t smoking. Merely confessing I was vegetarian meant being seen, at best, as some earnest, otherworldly fringe figure, probably full of dubiously utopian ideas about world peace and the environment. No one believed I didn’t even like animals. I just did not want to chew on their corpses.

How things have changed. A way of life once confined to a few rarefied precincts of LA gone mainstream. According to the Vegetarian Times, 7 percent of Americans consider themselves