浙江大学 2007年 攻读博士研究生入学考试题(8)

C. technologies of computers have been upgraded.

D. areas where computers can be applied have upgraded.

Passage 2

As is the case in many cultures, the degree to which a minority group was seen as different from the characteristics of the dominant majority determined the extent of that group’s acceptance. Immigrants who were like the earlier settlers were accepted. The large numbers of immigrants with significantly different characteristics tended to be viewed as a threat to basic American values and the American way of life.

This was particularly true of the immigrants who arrived by the millions during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Most of them came from poverty-stricken nations of southern and eastern Europe. They spoke languages other than English, and large numbers of them were Catholics or Jews.

Americans at the time were very fearful of this new flood of immigrants. They were afraid that these people were so accustomed to lives of poverty and dependence that they would not understand such basic American values as freedom, self-reliance and competition. There were so many new immigrants that they might even change the basic values of the nation in undesirable ways.

Americans tried to meet what they saw as a threat to their values by offering English instruction for the new immigrants and citizenship classes to teach them basic American beliefs. The immigrants, however, often felt that their American teachers disapproved of the traditions of their homeland. Moreover, learning about American gave them little help in meeting their most important needs such as employment, food, and a place to live.

Far more helpful to the new immigrants were the ―political bosses‖ of the larger cities of the northeastern United States, where most of the immigrants first arrived. Those bosses saw to many of the practical needs of the immigrants and were more accepting of the different homeland traditions. In exchange for their help, the political bosses expected the immigrants to keep them in power by voting for them in elections.