Dear friend,

As the anniversary of your membership approaches, I'd like to express a heartfelt “Thank you" from everyone here at the National Geographic Society for your valuable support. We appreciate having you as a member, which is why we’re asking you for help.

One of the Society's long-standing goals is to keep membership costs as low as possible. To do this, we ask members to post their fees early. This keeps renewal(续订)printing and postage costs down (you save the expense of sending renewal reminders to you repeatedly and help us save paper)and allows us to pass the savings on to you.

Member's cooperation is why we can afford to send you 12 colorful issues of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC magazine at such a low price. As you know, this rate is extraordinarily low for an award-winning publication filled from cover to cover with full-color photographs, pictures and wall maps created by our world-famous photographers.

Plus, your fee helps enrich the world. Part of the payment I hope that you will send today helps support the Society’s research, exploration, and educational projects around the globe. In the past ten years alone, your Society has helped sponsor more than 2, 700 scientific and environmental researches.

And, of course, posting your fee now guarantees that you won’t miss a single issue of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC magazine. I hope that you’ll commit yourself again to the pleasure that membership brings. Thank you in advance for your early renewal. I' m looking forward to hearing from you.

John Griffin

President, Publishing Department

59. The underlined word "disregard" probably means “______”.

A. ignore

B. consider

C. recognize

D. include

60. According to the Society, why is it cheaper to renew for two years?

A. The Society is a nonprofit organization. C. The discount is offered for readers' contribution. 61. This letter is intended to ______.

A. introduce an award-winning magazine C. persuade readers to renew membership

B. instruct readers how to make payment D. explain the benefits of an early renewal D

Money spent on advertising is money spent as well as any I know of. It serves directly to assist a rapid distribution of goods at reasonable prices, thereby establishing a firm home market and so making it possible to provide for export at competitive prices. By drawing attention to new ideas it helps enormously to raise standards of living. By helping to increase demand it ensures an increased need for labour, and is therefore an effective way to fight unemployment. It lowers the costs of many services: without advertisements your daily newspaper would cost four times as much, the price of your television license would need to be doubled, and travel by bus or tube would cost 20 per cent more.

And perhaps most important of all, advertising provides a guarantee of reasonable value in the products and services you buy. Apart from the fact that twenty-seven acts of Parliament govern the terms of advertising, no regular advertiser dare promote a product that fails to live up to the promise of his advertisements. He might fool some people for a little while through misleading advertising. He will not do so for long, for mercifully the public has the good sense not to buy the low-quality article more than once. If you see an article consistently advertised, it is the surest proof I know that the article does what is claimed for it, and that it represents good value.

What’s more, advertising does more for the material benefit of the community than any other force I can think of. There is one more point I feel I ought to touch on. Recently I heard a well-known television personality declare that

B. The Society highly appreciates readers' support. D. It can save the money for renewal reminders and papers.