SECTION A MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS
In this section there are three passages followed by fourteen multiple choice questions. For each multiple choice question, there are four suggested answers marked A, B, C and D. Choose the one that you think is the best answer.
PASSAGE ONE
(1) The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter impressed most reviewers as a remarkable first novel from so young a writer. Lorine Pruette wondered in Books "how any young person could know so much" about loneliness. In the Saturday Review of Literature , Ben Ray Redman went further, calling The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter "an extraordinary novel in its own right, considerations of authorship apart". Writing for The New York Times , Rose Feld agreed that McCullers had proven herself "a full-fledged novelist whatever her age".
(2) The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter continues to be regarded as one of McCullers"s strongest claims to lasting fame, generally ranking in critical estimation just below The Ballad of the Sad Café (1951) and The Member of the Wedding (1946) among her longer fictions. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter is often cited as an ideal introduction to McCullers"s work because it foreshadows nearly everything else she wrote, revealing her literary strengths and limitations. In this first novel she started at length her master theme: spiritual isolation as the human condition in modern times.
(3) To dramatize this isolation as a universal rather than idiosyncratic state, McCullers interwove the stories of five main characters who struggle to overcome their loneliness and alienation. Her outline reveals her vision of the novel as a fugue (赋格曲) in which these characters" voices are developed independently, yet enriched by their interplay. Each chapter centers on one of the five characters, for each of whom she created an individualized third-person style of narration.
(4) Critics disagree about how well the narrative works on different levels in McCullers"s first novel and whether it is best approached as a realistic or symbolical book. Leslie Fiedler argues that The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter is "the last of "proletarian novels", a true Depression book". Despite its strong particularization in time and place, however, McCullers"s novel has endured while much social protest fiction of the era has faded because McCullers uses the topical to explore the timeless. She puts speeches in the excesses of capitalism and the horrors of racism into mouths of Blount and Copeland, but given their limitations—they cannot be considered her spokesmen, and the novel never becomes a tract. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter is stronger at dramatizing than solving social problems partly because these would-be leaders lack followers, but McCullers"s stress on psychological rather than sociological sources of disaffection also precludes the search for collective answers.
(5) Her intriguing reference to The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter as a parable on fascism has been interpreted by some to mean that she attacks economic exploitation and racial discrimination as American equivalents of European fascism, which is preparing to envelop the West as the novel ends. Her likelier purpose, though, is to expose the psychology that makes fascism possible—in this case, the mystification of Singer by estranged souls searching for what they lack. This view coincides with Barbara Farrelly"s argument that the novel gives literary form to its musical inspiration, Ludwig van Beethoven"s Third Symphony, the Eroica, which so moves Mick. The composer wrote the Eroica to honor of his hero, Napoleon, but withdrew the dedication when Napoleon named himself emperor. Likewise, those who impute superhuman qualities to Singer learn that he too is merely mortal.
PASSAGE TWO
(1) In 1933, approximately 117,000 Jewish children and youth between the ages of six and twenty-five lived in Germany. Compared with their elders, whose loss of jobs and businesses proceeded erratically, the younger generation faced a more drastic deterioration in conditions at public schools and among non-Jewish friends, often finding then-first safe haven in a Jewish school. They also experienced a drastic reduction in their aspirations and lived in tense homes with families on edge. Gender played an important role in children"s and young people"s lives. Parents and Jewish communal organizations held different expectations for girls and boys, and gender framed the ways in which children envisioned their futures. But from 1933 on, both girls and boys had to make unprecedented adjustments in their lives while facing unrelenting assaults on their self-esteem.
(2) Nazi legislation of April 1933, euphemistically entitled the "Law Against the Overcrowding of German Schools," established a quota of 1.5 percent total enrollment for Jews. Where Jews made up more than 5 percent of the population, schools could allow up to 5 percent of their pupils to be Jewish. Exemptions included Jewish pupils whose fathers had served during World War Ⅰ, children of mixed marriages (with no more than two Jewish grandparents), and Jewish children with foreign citizenship. Elementary school (the Volksschule) attendance remained, for the time being, required for all. Like the other April laws, the actual number of exemptions surprised the Nazis. But for Jews, the exemptions were, at best, a Pyrrhic victory. The massive hostility they faced and practical concerns with learning a vocation forced many to leave school.
(3) Because children spent so much time in school, unprotected by family, Jewish children continually met with the blatant repercussions of Nazism there. Well before Jewish children were expelled from German public schools, the majority lost the rights of non-Jews. They often had to sit apart from classmates. The curriculum isolated them further. In German class, one Jewish teenager had to study literature on the need for German expansion. Titles varied, including the bestseller Volk without Space. In English class, the same girl read news articles from a British pro-Nazi tabloid. Teachers often required essays on Nazi themes. Jews, however, were prohibited from addressing these topics and, instead, were given arbitrary topics that had never been discussed in class. No matter how well an essay was written, a Jewish child seldom received a top grade.
(4) School administrators and teachers barred Jewish children from school events, whether inside or outside school. When Nazi movies were shown, Jewish children could not attend but afterward had to listen while other children discussed the film. Denied school subsidies, they were forbidden from going to swimming pools or sleeping in dormitories on class trips. A mother described her daughter"s unhappiness about missing special events: "It was not because she was denied going to the show that my little girl was weeping... but because she had to stay apart, as if she were not good enough to associate with her comrades any longer." On Mother"s Day, Jewish children had to take part in the school festivities but were not allowed to sing along. When they protested, their teacher responded haughtily: "I know you have a mother... but she is only a Jewish mother." On the rare occasion when Jewish children could take part, the "Aryan" children would show up in their Nazi youth group outfits, making it clear who did not belong.
(5) The extent of persecution depended on various factors: whether Jewish children attended urban or rural schools, whether they lived in areas where the Nazis were particularly popular, and what political attitudes their teachers held. Children were more likely to be victimized in small town and village schools. There, non-Jewish children, even if they had wanted to, did not dare to be seen with Jews. Between 1933 and 1935, in a small town in the Mark Brandenburg, no one wanted to sit near a Jewish boy or play with him during breaks. In a small town near Aachen, a Jewish child suffered the abrupt rupture of her closest friendship—the other child even stopped greeting her—and had to listen to her female teacher make nasty remarks about Jews in class. For many children, public events were not nearly as upsetting as the situation at school, which grew worse and worse.
(6) Even in cities, Jewish children experienced at least some animosity. At best, Jewish children retained some of their non-Jewish friends for a short time, while self-identified "Aryan" teachers or classmates were unfriendly. There were segregated Jewish classes in some schools, Jewish benches in "mixed" classrooms in others. In a Berlin elementary school, which was not known for antisemitism and in which almost half the pupils were Jewish, non-Jewish children brought "pails full of soap and water ... in order to wash the seats clean where the Jewish children had sat." In a notably rare situation, " Aryans " in a Berlin Gymnasium defended their Jewish friends, resisted singing the bloodthirsty Nazi anthem, and as late as 1936 refused to hail the reoccupation of the Rhineland. Nonetheless, some teachers there insulted Jewish pupils or mumbled Nazi eugenics.
(7)Helmut Kallmann"s description of his Berlin high school between 1932 and 1938 manifests both his clear awareness of the political leanings of his teachers and the contradictions confronting Jews. The chemistry teacher, for example, was not an overt antisemite but still told his classes not to purchase their supplies from a Jewish woman"s store. Some teachers simply wore their SA or SS uniforms to class, while others were ideologues who harassed the Jewish teenagers. The biology teacher taught "racial education," insisting that "the Jew is the Master of the Lie, the King of Crime." This rhetoric backfired at first, embarrassing the non-Jewish pupils who could not imagine that these insults fit the fathers of their Jewish friends. Ultimately, however, such tirades intimidated Jews and non-Jews alike. By 1937, another Nazi teacher regularly alternated between long-standing antisemitic stereotypes, such as, "What kind of whispering and Yiddish-sounding dialect [Gemauschele] is going on We"re not in a Jew-school here, you know," and more novel approaches, such as "Shut your non-Aryan trap." Strangely enough, there were teachers who missed no opportunity to make sarcastic remarks about Jews but seemed to grade pupils impartially. The behavior of these teachers was replicated all over Germany: official hostility toward "the Jew" but personal tolerance or regard for a particular Jewish person.
(8) Some children more directly resisted the indignities and abuse foisted upon them in the early years. In 1934, Annemarie Scherman, a Berlin "Mischling," confronted a teacher who continually gave her grades of "unsatisfactory". Despite his animosity, she achieved her Abitur a year later. In 1934, in a small town in Ostwestfalen-Lippe, a thirteen-year-old girl attending a school assembly found herself sitting through a Nazi song. When she heard its words,
I was blind with rage and fear I got up and decided ... I"m not listennig to this. I was pretty certain that they would kill me, grab me and break my bones But no one touched me. Somehow, the teachers as well as the pupils must have respected ... my courage. In a German school where discipline was stressed, to get up ...in the midst of a ceremony and simply leave without permission, that was incredible.
(9) This kind of opposition took a great deal of courage, because German teachers did not brook disobedience from pupils, especially Jewish pupils. Indeed, such protest was short-lived and was ultimately useless against the power of the state.
PASSAGE THREE
(1) Globally, it is found that adolescents represent 60% of global consumer spending, with over $1,880 billion USD per year, and influence 60% of the brand purchase decisions of their parents. Markets for adolescents and teens have grown substantially in recent decades, and adolescent consumers have exerted more influence on family purchase decisions. The purchasing power of adolescents is constantly increasing, as indicated by recent surveys and research.
(2) Therefore, it has become important to study adolescent purchasing behavior. Adolescent purchasing behavior involves a process of continual development, which is complicated by a variety of factors, such as the transitional stages from child to adult and family socioeconomic status. This study explores the effects that the adolescent life cycle and family socioeconomic status have on the adolescent consumer socialization process.
(3) Changes in the family structure have been a global phenomenon as single-parent households and nuclear families emerge and flourish in modern societies. In recent years, markets for adolescents and teens have grown exponentially, giving rise to the term " Tween Generation ". Tweens possess more individual decision-making power, have more purchasing power, and attract attention from businesses. Smith indicates that nearly 21 million of 9～13 year olds in the US collectively wield $ 43 billion in annual spending power. An estimated figure for the global purchasing power of this age group was $ 819～1880 billion USD per year, and they affect 60% of brand purchase decisions in the family. Not coincidentally, tweens encounter 40,000 advertisements annually. According to Teenage Research USA , tween purchasing power in the US has grown substantially, increasing from $ 86 billion USD in 1993 to $121 billion USD in 1998. In Britain, tweens account for $ 2. 7 billion USD in spending, with their income coming largely from pocket money given by parents, gifts received, and pay from temporary work. Indeed, also note that with an estimated $1.5 billion USD in disposable income, tweens are a sizeable direct market and they are a market which companies hope to start early with brand loyalty.
(4) As the Internet becomes more popular, many shopping websites are aggressively expanding their business territory, generating a fever for cyber purchasing. The Institute for Information Industry in its Industry Intelligence Survey (2009)indicated that there was a 30. 4% increase in the cyber purchasing market in Taiwan. Foreseeing Innovative New Digiservices (2012)reported that the number of regular Internet users in Taiwan had increased to 10. 97 million in 2012. A survey entitled Internet Usage in Taiwan in December 2009 showed that Internet users aged 15～19 topped the list, followed by the 25～29 age group. Insight Xplorer Market Research Consultants (2009) indicated that 64. 2% of the respondents would not change the extent of their use of cyber purchasing under the current economic conditions. The above statistics suggest that younger groups have the highest purchasing power and influence. Thus, the consumption behavior of adolescents is increasingly a target of research by marketing staff and scholars.
(5) With the substantial growth in adolescent purchasing power, parental influence is likely to be an important factor in consumer decisions since family communications provide learning between parents and adolescents. Moreover, the literature shows that family size, family age, and gender compositions are good indicators of adolescent purchasing behavior. Ward proposed and defined "consumer socialization" as processes by which young people acquire skills, knowledge, and attitudes relevant to their functioning as consumers in the marketplace. By using the consumer socialization concept, we aim to explore whether family socioeconomic status affects family communication patterns, and how family communication patterns affect online shopping behavior of adolescents.
(6) Based on the above, there are three objectives of this study. First, to realize adolescent purchasing behavior is affected by life cycle and family socioeconomic status. Second, to find out how serious of parents influence affect in adolescent purchasing behavior. Third, to identify the correlation between the communication patterns, the family socioeconomic status, and adolescent purchasing behavior in different stages of the life cycle is significant.
(7) As an agent of socialization, the family provides the primary social learning for the purchasing behavior of adolescents. Moschis and Churchill found that parents attempt to teach consumer skills to their teenage children. Agent-learner communication patterns, such as the level of interpersonal communication, also affect various purchasing behaviors. Socialization theory suggests that a consumer develops consumption-related attitudes and behaviors by learning from socialization agents through interactions with them. There is a positive relationship between the frequency of family communication about consumption and the family"s socioeconomic status. Higher status families tend to communicate more about consumption matters than lower socioeconomic status families. In addition, higher socioeconomic status families purchase higher quality products. This study therefore includes as measures the father"s education level, the mother"s educational level, their occupations, and the family income, in order to examine how family socioeconomic status affects the cyber purchasing behavior of adolescents.
(8) Family is the primary socialization group for an individual and individuals observe initiations of and clues for adolescent socialization process from family interactions. Interactions among family members such as casual parent-child chats, emotional expressions, inquiries and answers, discussions of ideas, and arguments and negotiations, are all part of the socialization process for an individual. The quality of parent-child communication also affects consumer social learning. Good communication between parents and their children facilitates the learning of consumption skills, and makes parents more willing to be involved in their children"s consumption activities. Shim et al. Observed that consumption is a central experience of adolescence, which influences their values, motivations, and attitudes, ultimately shaping their path toward adulthood. Theories of family communication patterns are developed from scholars" studies on the socialization process of adolescents in the family. They take the perspective of socialization in discussing parental influence on adolescents.
(9) Two styles of communication play a pivotal role in socialization. Social-oriented communication is motivated by social conformity, and aims to produce obedience from the child and to foster harmonious social relationships at home. Monitoring and controlling the behavior of the child is the key to this communication style. Concept-oriented communication encourages the child to develop their own views about the world, and to evaluate alternatives on their merits. Topics are not limited to family matters, and concerns are extended to the outside world. Placing the two communication styles in a matrix, the fourfold topology quadrants of styles are termed Laissez-Faire, Protective, Pluralistic, and Consensual:
(10) 1. Laissez-Faire: Parents don"t tend to emphasize either of the two predominant styles, and little communication is carried out between parents and children.
(11) 2. Protective: Parents emphasize social-oriented communication, but don"t tend to emphasize concept-oriented communication. Parents stress obedience and social harmony, but are not concerned with conceptual matters.
(12) 3. Pluralistic: Parents emphasize concept-oriented communication, and encourage adolescent to discuss ideas openly without fear of punishment. Children are taught to respect their own interests as well as those of others.
(13) 4. Consensual: Parents emphasize both socio-and concept-oriented communication, and children are encouraged to explore the outside world and form their own opinions. As to the adolescent cyber purchasing behavior, which factor do you think is NOT closely connected (PASSAGE THREE)