【正文】 be netted together. As a result, I now believe the digital divide will narrow rather than widen in the years ahead. And that is very good news because the Internet may well be the most powerful tool for bating world poverty that we39。 the journalist advocating participatory democracy in all phases of life, whose own children are enrolled in private schools. For such people and many more perhaps not so exceptional, the proper formulation is, Succeed at all costs but avoid appearing ambitious.　　The attacks on ambition are many and e from various angles。 and it especially must be highly regarded by people who are themselves admired, the educated not least among them. In an odd way, however, it is the educated who have claimed to have give up on have give up on ambition as an ideal. What is odd is that they have perhaps most benefited from ambitionif not always their own the that of their parents and grandparents. There is heavy note of hypocrisy in this, a case of closing the barn door after the horses have escaped with the educated themselves riding on them.　　Certainly people do not seem less interested in success and its signs now than formerly. Summer homes, European travel, BMWs. The locations, place names and name brands may change, but such items do not seem less in demand today than a decade or two years ago. What has happened is that people cannot confess fully to their dreams, as easily and openly as once they could, lest they be thought pushing, acquisitive and vulgar. Instead, we are treated to fine hypocritical spectacles, which now more than ever seem in ample supply: the critic of American materialism with a Southampton summer home。 fully 76 percent of Japans 119 million citizens live in cities where munity and the extended family have been abandoned in favor of isolated, two generation households. Urban Japanese have long endured lengthy mutes(travels to and from work)and crowded living conditions, but as the old group and family values weaken, the disfort is beginning to tell. In the past decade, the Japanese divorce rate, while still well below that of the United States, has increased by more than 50 percent, and suicides have increased by nearly onequarter.　　1. In the Westerners eyes, the postwar Japan was_____ .　　[A]under aimless development　　[B]a positive example　　[C]a rival to the West　　　　　　[D]on the decline 　　 to the author, what may chiefly be responsible for the moral decline of Japanese society?　　[A]Women39。t know where they should go next.　　The ing of age of the postwar baby boom and an entry of women into the maledominated job market have limited the opportunities of teenagers who are already questioning the heavy personal sacrifices involved in climbing Japans rigid social ladder to good schools and jobs. In a recent survey, it was found that only percent of Japanese students were fully satisfied with school life, pared with percent of students in the United States. In addition, far more Japanese workers expressed dissatisfaction with their jobs than did their counterparts in the 10 other countries surveyed.　　While often praised by foreigners for its emphasis on the basics, Japanese education tends to stress test taking and mechanical learning over creativity and selfexpression. Those things that do not show up in the test scores personality,ability, courage or humanity are pletely ignored, says Toshiki Kaifu, chairman of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party39。 for a noise and violence and speed. Consequently, our feelings, thoughts and emotions have undergone a corresponding change. This speeding up of life, says the Futurist, requires a new form of expression. We must speed up our literature too, if we want to interpret modern stress. We must pour out a large stream of essential words, unhampered by stops, or qualifying adjectives, of finite verbs. Instead of describing sounds we must make up words that imitate them。歷年考研英語閱讀理解真題匯總　　Passage 1　　A history of long and effortless success can be a dreadful handicap, but, if properly handled, it may bee a driving force. When the United States entered just such a glowing period after the end of the Second World War, it had a market eight ties larger than any petitor, giving its industries unparalleled economies of scale. Its scientists were the worlds best, its workers the most skilled. America and Americans were prosperous beyond the dreams of the Europeans and Asians whose economies the war had destroyed.　　It was inevitable that this primacy should have narrowed as other countries grew richer. Just as inevitably, the retreat from predominance proved painful. By the mid1980s Americans had found themselves at a loss over their fading industrial petitiveness. Some huge American industries, such as consumer electronics, had shrunk or vanished in the face of foreign petition. By 1987 there was only one American television maker left, Zenith.(Now there is none: Zenith was bought by South Koreas LG Electronics in July.)Foreignmade cars and textiles were sweeping into the domestic market Americas machinetool industry was on the ropes. For a while it looked as though the making of semiconductors, which America had which sat at the heart of the new puter age, was going to be the next casualty.　　All of this caused a crisis of confidence. Americans stopped taking prosperity for granted. They began to believe that their way of doing business was failing, and that their ines would therefore shortly begin to fall as well. The mid1980s brought one inquiry after another into the causes of Americas industrial decline. Their sometimes sensational findings were filled with warnings about the growing petition from overseas.　　How things have changed! In 1995 the United States can look back on five years of solid growth while Japan has been struggling. Few Americans attribute this solely to such obvious causes as a devalued dollar or the turning of the business cycle. Selfdoubt has yielded to blin