题目内容
The price of coffee beans hits a 12 – year high today. I thought there might
be some kind of coffee – market story, like we saw with cocoa earlier this summer.
But the main driver of coffee prices right now is simpler: Colombia has had
a few years of weak coffee harvests because of too much rain, which has reduced
the global supply. And coffee drinkers keep buying coffee, even as prices rise, in
other words, demand is unchanged.
The higher price of beans – up about 40 percent since March – means higher prices for the coffee you buy by the pound. But it probably won’t affect the coffee you buy by the cup.
Smuckers, which sells Folgers and Millstone coffees, recently said it was raising its prices because of the higher cost of beans. Starbucks, however, said it would absorb the higher cost of beans without raising prices.
“You see it much more in the grocery store because the raw materials are a big factor of cost,” Jose Sette of the International Coffee Organization told me. “In a coffee shop, your big expenses are rent and labor.”
While real – world supply and demand is the big driver of the price of beans, there may be some speculative action in coffee business in the future.
But futures (期货) of the high – grade Arabica beans are traded in the US, where regulations prevent speculators (投机商) from controlling the market, hoping such things won’t happen just as in London summer market. That suggests that prices should fall when supply improves – which may happen next year.
Some experts say that farmers in third world countries won’t actually benefit from higher prices in this case. When the price difference is due to supply and demand, the profit of the seller usually doesn’t go up.
【小题1】Which of the following is the best title for the passage?
A.Why coffee is getting more expensive? |
B.How farmer benefits from the high price? |
C.Whether the US will control the coffee market? |
D.What has caused the reduction of coffee? |
A.Colombia is the coffee trading center of the world |
B.Colombia coffee output contains a final share of the world |
C.People need more and more coffee |
D.Coffee sales will be getting less and less |
A.the US made more rules about coffee prices |
B.speculators once held the coffee bean market in London |
C.coffee bean trading was seriously disorganized |
D.coffee bean prices were very low in the US |
A.The price difference determines the profit of the seller. |
B.Smuckers is a famous coffee manufacturer. |
C.Real – world supply and demand decides the prices. |
D.Coffee prices will become much higher next year. |
【小题1】A
【小题2】B
【小题3】B
【小题4】C
解析
Henry Ford was the first person to build cars which were cheap,strong and fast.He was able to se11 millions of models because be could produce them in large numbers at a time;that is,he made a great many cars of exactly the same kind.Ford’s father hoped that his son would be come a farmer,but the young man did not like the idea and he went to Detroit(底特律)where he worked as a mechanic(机械师).By the age of 29,in 1892,he had built his first car.However,the car made in this way,the famous “Model T” did not appear until 1908-five years after Ford bad started his great motor car factory.This car showed to be well-known that it remained unchanged for twenty year.Since Ford’s time,this way of producing cars in large numbers has be come common in industry and has reduced the price of many goods which would otherwise be very expensive.
1.Henry Ford was the man to built _____ cars.
A.cheap and strong |
B.cheap and long |
C.fast and expensive |
D.strong and slow |
2.Ford was able to sell millions of cars,because_____.
A.he made many greet cars |
B.his cars are many |
C.he made lots of cars of the same kind |
D.both A and B |
3.The young man became a mechanic,_______.
A.which was his father’s will |
B.which was against his own will |
C.which was against his father’s will |
D.which was the will of both |
4.The “Model T” was very famous_____.
A.before 1908 |
B.between 1982 and 1908 |
C.before 1892 |
D.after 1908 |
5.Ford built his own car factory
A.in 1903 |
B.in 1908 |
C.in 1913 |
D.in 1897 |
Tea drinking was common in China for nearly one thousand years before anyone in Europe had ever heard about tea.People in Britain were much slower in finding out what tea was like, mainly because tea was very expensive. It could not be bought in shops and even those people who could afford to have it sent from Holland did so only because it was a fashionable curiosity. Some of them were not sure how to use it. They thought it was a vegetable and tried cooking the leaves. Then they served them mixed with butter and salt. They soon discovered their mistake but many people used to spread the used tea leaves on bread and give them to their children as sandwiches.
Tea remained scarce and very expensive in England until the ships of the East India Company began to bring it direct from China early in the seventeenth century. During the next few years so much tea came into the country that the price fell and many people could afford to buy it.
At the same time people on the Continent were becoming more and more fond of tea.Until then tea had been drunk without milk in it, but one day a famous French lady named Madame de Sevigne decided to see what tea tasted like when milk was added.She found it so pleasant that she would never again drink it without milk. Because she was such a great lady her friends thought they must copy everything she did, so they also drank their tea with milk in it. Slowly this habit spread until it reached England and today only very few Britons drink tea without milk.
At first, tea was usually drunk after dinner in the evening No one ever thought of drinking tea in the afternoon until a duchess (公爵夫人) found that a cup of tea and a piece of cake at three or four o’clock stopped her getting “a sinking feeling” as she called it. She invited her friends to have this new meal with her and so, tea-time was born.
1.Which of the following is true of the introduction of tea into Britain?
A.The Britons got expensive tea from India. |
B.Tea reached Britain from Holland. |
C.The Britons were the first people in Europe who drank tea. |
D.It was not until the 17th century that the Britons had tea. |
2.This passage mainly discusses_____________.
A.the history of tea drinking in Britain |
B.how tea became a popular drink in Britain |
C.how the Britons got the habit of drinking tea |
D.how tea-time was born |
3.Tea became a popular drink in Britain.
A.in eighteenth century |
B.in sixteenth century |
C.in seventeenth century |
D.in the late seventeenth century |
4.People in Europe began to drink tea with milk because.
A.it tasted like milk |
B.it tasted more pleasant |
C.it became a popular drink |
D.Madame de Sevinge was such a lady with great social influence that people tried to copy the way she drank tea |
5.We may infer from the passage that the habit of drinking tea in Britain was mostly due to the influence of ________.
A.a famous French lady |
B.the ancient Chinese |
C.the upper social class |
D.people in Holland |