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  3. A history of long and effortless success can be a dreadful handicap, but, if properly handled, it may become a driving force. Wh

A history of long and effortless success can be a dreadful handicap, but, if properly handled, it may become a driving force. Wh

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问题     A history of long and effortless success can be a dreadful handicap, but, if properly handled, it may become 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 times larger than any competitor, giving its industries unparalleled economies of scale. Its scientists were the world’s 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 mid-1980s Americans had found themselves at a loss over their fading industrial competitiveness. Some huge American industries, such as consumer electronics, had shrunk or vanished in the face of foreign competition. By 1987 there was only one American television maker left, Zenith. (Now there is none: Zenith was bought by South Korea’s LG Electronics in July.) Foreign-made cars and textiles were sweeping into the domestic market. America’s machine-tool industry was on the ropes. For a while it looked as though the making of semiconductors which America had invented and which sat at the heart of the new computer 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 incomes would therefore shortly begin to fall as well. The mid-1980s brought one inquiry after another into the causes of America’s industrial decline. Their sometimes sensational findings were filled with warnings about the growing competition 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. Self-doubt has yielded to blind pride. "American industry has changed its structure, has gone on a diet, has learnt to be more quick-witted," according to Richard Cavanagh, executive dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. "It makes me proud to be an American just to see how our businesses are improving their productivity," says Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute, a think tank in Washington, D C. And William Sahlman of the Harvard Business School believes that people will look back on this period as "a golden age of business management in the United States."
What can be inferred from the passage?
选项 A、It is human nature to shift between self-doubt and blind pride.
B、Intense competition may contribute to economic progress.
C、The revival of the economy depends on international cooperation.
D、A long history of success may pave the way for further development.
答案B
解析 本题没有明显可以定位的关键词，解题时，可以根据四个选项的关键词返回原文定位。首先，我们明确一下各个段落的主题：第一段：第二次世界大战后美国取得优势地位的各种原因。第二段：美国在20世纪80年代中期的世界经济中失去统治地位的现象与原因。第三段：美国人出现信心危机的表现。第四段：美国人受到激烈竞争的刺激后经过反思又一次走向繁荣。根据各段主题，我们可以得出美国从第二次世界大战后到20世纪90年代的经济发展是从兴盛到衰败再到复兴的过程，这个过程的转变都是与激烈的竞争分不开的，所以选项B是对全文的全面概括，是正确选项。选项A无中生有，根据第四段第四句，原文说的是自我怀疑已经变成盲目骄傲，而选项将yielded[o(屈服于)偷换成shift between(在……之间变化)，并且human nature(人类的天性)在文中也没有提及。选项C的international cooperation(国际间的合作)是无中生有，文章没有提及说经济的复苏取决于国际间的合作。选项D “pave the way”的英文解释是：to prepare a smooth easy way, facilitate development意思是“为……铺平道路，为…做好准备”，即该选项是在说明以后不会碰到挫折，这显然与原文第一段dreadful handicap (可怕的障碍)不一致，并且第二段也着重描写了美国经济出现衰退的各种表现，所以，选项D正反混淆。
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