出自:乐山师范学院商务英语
WTO It is well known that the World Trade Organization (WTO) is the only international organization（1） with the global rules of trade between
notions. Its main function is to ensure that trade flows as smoothly as possible. It was founded in 1993 by the Final Act that concluded the Urugudy
Round of multilateral negotiations under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade(GATT), which it （2）, and exists to administer and police the
28 free-trade agreements, oversee world trade practices, and adjudicate trade disputes. It began its operation on January 1, 1995, with its general
council （3） 76 member states; by early 1999 it numbered 134 members. The result of it is to make a more prosperous, peaceful and accountable
economic world. Decisions in the WTO are typically by （4） among all member countries and they are ratified by members’ parliaments. Trade
friction is channeled into the WTO’s dispute settlement process where the focus is on interpreting agreements and commitments, and how to ensure
that countries’ trade policies（5） with them. That way, the risk of disputes spilling over into political or military conflict is reduced. By lowering trade
barriers, the WTO’s system also breaks down other barriers between peoples and nations. At the heart of the system-known as the （6） trading
system-are the WTO’s agreements, negotiated and signed by a large majority of the world’s trading nations, and （7） in their parliaments. These
agreements are the legal ground-rules for international commerce. Essentially, they are contracts, guaranteeing member countries important trade
rights. They also bind governments to keep their trade policies within agreed limits to everybody’s benefit. The agreements were negotiated and signed
by governments. But their purpose is to help producers of goods and services, exporters and importers conduct their business. The goal is to improve the
welfare of the peoples of the member countries. The past 50 years have seen an （8） growth in world trade. Merchandise exports grew on average
by 6% annually. Total trade in 1997 was 14 times the level of 1950. GATT and the WTO have helped to create a strong and prosperous trading system
contributing to （9）growth. The system was developed through a series of trade negotiations, or rounds, held under GATT. The first rounds dealt
mainly with tariff reductions but later negotiations included other areas such as anti-dumping and non-tariff measures. The latest round - the 1986-84
Uruguay Round - led to the WTO’s creation. Decisions are made by the entire membership. A majority vote is also possible but it has never been used in
the WTO, and was extremely rare under the WTO’s （10）, GATT. The WTO’s agreements have been ratified in all members’ parliaments.
When did humans first arrive at the concept of money? What conditions spawned it? And how did it affect the ancient societies that created it? Until
recently, re- searchers thought they had the answers. (1)(____). But few see the matter so simply now. With evidence gleaned from such disparate
sources as ancient temple paintings, clay tablets, and buried hoards of un- coined metals, researchers have revealed far more ancient money: silver
scraps and bits of gold, massive rings and gleaming ingots. (2)(____).There, they suggest, wealthy citizens were flaunting money at least as early as
2500 B.C. and perhaps a few hundred years before that. "There.s just no way to get around it," says Marvin Powell, a historian at Northern Illinois
University in De Kalb. "Silver in Mesopotamia functions like our money today. It.s a means of exchange. People use it for a storage of wealth, and they
use it for defining value." Many scholars believe money began even earlier. ‘My sense is that as far back as the written records go in Mesopotamia
and Egypt, some form of money is there,’ observes Jonathan Williams, curator of Roman and Iron Age coins at the British Museum in London. "That
suggests it was probably there beforehand, but we can. t tell because I we don.t have any written records." Just why researchers have had such
difficulties in uncovering these ancient moneys has much to do with the practice of archeology and the nature of money itself. Archeologists, after all,
are the ultimate Dumpster divers: they spend their careers sifting through the trash of the past, ingeniously reconstructing vanished lives from broken
pets and dented knives. (3)(____)Money doesn.t always come in the form of dimes and sawbucks, even today. As a means of payment and a way of
storing wealth, it assumes many forms, from debit cards and checks to credit cards and mutual funds. The forms it took in the past have been, to say the
least, elusive. From the beginning, money has shaped human society. It greased the wheels of Mesopotamian commerce, spurred the development of
mathematics, and helped officials and kings rake in taxes and impose fines. (4)(____). "If there were never any money, there would never have
been prosperity," says Thomas Wyrick, an economist at Southwest Missouri State University in Springfield, who is studying the origins of money and
banking. "Money is making all this stuff happen." Ancient texts show that almost from its first recorded appearance in the ancient Near East, money
preoccupied estate owners and scribes, water carriers and slaves. In Mesopotamia, as early as 3000 BC, scribes devised pictographs suitable for
recording simple lists of concrete objects, such as grain consignments. (5) (____)
Questions 1 to 10 based on the following passage. Steve Redwood, a London-based management consultant with Price Waterhouse, tells of a client
who had brought together a team from eight different countries to work on a ‘The national stereotypes applied, he says.The people from Switzerland
and Germany were mainly interested in the way the project organized. The people from Spain took a much intuitive approach. The British had a high
level of skepticism about whether the whole really mattered. Language was not the issue. It was more basic than that. Behind this lies the most
fundamental problem of all: the fact that outside a handful of companies- Lowell Bryan, a senior partner with McKinsey in New York puts it at be dozen
and 20 worldwide even the biggest corporations are dominated by the culture home country.‘Outside that handful, Mr Bryan says.companids are very
German, or very British, or American. One big difference with American companies is they think globalization means Americanizing the world. Others
don.t have that arrogane. If top management all come from the home country, that makes it much more difficult to attract and keep a global pool of tale.
People know when they fit in and when they don’t. Mr Bryan says.“That.s true even of national companies: there.s a tendency for people to have gone
to the same school, or all have trained as enginesrs even more true when comes to where you grew The problem lies not in attracting people a talented
Indian or Korean manager will typically want early experience with a multinational 一but in keeping them. ‘People will join the company to learn, Mr
Bryan says,but unless they feel they are part of the company, they are going to leave, and exploit the brand status of the company in their next job. Given
the importance of local cultures within the global company, an obvious question is how to appraise and identify talent around the world on a consistent
basis. Richard Greenhalgh, head of management development and training at Unilever, says that the company has been working on this for the past four
years. We’ve been developing a set of l1 management compctencies we can use worldwide’ he says. .The aim is to have a clear objective measure of
potential. We measure such things as entrepreneurial drive, the ability to lead and develop others, and integrity. That makes up a common core of
behaviors. We’ve tested it, and so far it seems to be culturally transferable. 1 Which expression in Paragraph l matches the meaning some one whose
job is to give advice to companies?
A. Corporate leader.
B. Top manager.
C. Management consultant.
D. Corporate management.