Text 4

Perhaps only a small boy training to be a wizard at the Hogwarts school of magic could cast a spell so powerful as to create the biggest book launch ever. Wherever in the world the clock strikes midnight on June 20th, his followers will flock to get their paws on one of more than 10m copies of “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix”. Bookshops will open in the middle of the night and delivery firms are drafting in extra staff and bigger trucks. Related toys, games, DVDs and other merchandise will be everywhere. There will be no escaping Pottermania.

Yet Mr Potter’s world is a curious one, in which things are often not what they appear. While an excitable media (hereby including The Economist, happy to support such a fine example of globalisation) is helping to hype the launch of J.K. Rowling’s fifth novel, about the most adventurous thing that the publishers (Scholastic in America and Britain’s Bloomsbury in English elsewhere) have organised is a reading by Ms Rowling in London’s Royal Albert Hall, to be broadcast as a live webcast. Hollywood, which owns everything else to do with Harry Potter, says it is doing even less. Incredible as it may seem, the guardians of the brand say that, to protect the Potter franchise, they are trying to maintain a low profile. Well, relatively low.

Ms Rowling signed a contract in 1998 with Warner Brothers, part of AOL Time Warner, giving the studio exclusive film, licensing and merchandising rights in return for what now appears to have been a steal: some $500,000. Warner licenses other firms to produce goods using Harry Potter characters or images, from which Ms Rowling gets a big enough cut that she is now wealthier than the queen—if you believe Britain’s Sunday Times rich list. The process is self瞘enerating: each book sets the stage for a film, which boosts book sales, which lifts sales of Potter products.

Globally, the first four Harry Potter books have sold some 200m copies in 55 languages; the two movies have grossed over $1.8 billion at the box office. This is a stunning success by any measure, especially as Ms Rowling has long demanded that Harry Potter should not be over commercialised. In line with her wishes, Warner says it is being extraordinarily careful, at least by Hollywood standards, about what it licenses and to whom. It imposed tough conditions on Coca Cola, insisting that no Harry Potter images should appear on cans, and is now in the process of making its licensing programme even more restrictive. Coke may soon be considered too mass market to carry the brand at all.

The deal with Warner ties much of the merchandising to the films alone. There are no officially sanctioned products relating to “Order of the Phoenix”; nor yet for “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban”, the film of the third book, which is due out in June 2004. Warner agrees that Ms Rowling’s creation is a different sort of commercial property, one with long-term potential that could be damaged by a typical Hollywood marketing blitz, says Diane Nelson, the studio’s global brand manager for Harry Potter. It is vital, she adds, that with more to come, readers of the books are not alienated. “The evidence from our market research is that enthusiasm for the property by fans is not waning.”

36. When the author says “there will be no escaping Potter mania”, he implies that .

［A］ Harry Potter’s appeal for the readers is simply irresistible

［B］ it is somewhat irrational to be so crazy about the magic boy

［C］ craze about Harry Potter will not be over in the near future

［D］ Hogwarts school of magic will be the biggest attraction world over

37. Ms Rowling’s reading in London’s Royal Albert Hall is mentioned to show .

［A］ publishers are really adventurous in managing the Potter’s business

［B］ businesses are actually more credible than media in Potter’s world

［C］ the media are promoting Pottermania more actively than Hollywood

［Ｄ］ businesses involved with Potter are moving along in an unusual way

38. The author believes that .

［A］ Britain’s Sunday Times rich list is not very convincing as it sounds

［B］ Time Warner’s management of licenses is a bit over commercialised

［C］ other firms may produce goods using Harry Potter images at will

［D］ what Ms Rowling got in return for her offering to Warner is a real bargain

39. Paragraph 4 intends mainly to show Warner’s .

［A］ determination to promote Potter

［B］ consistence in conducting busines

［C］ high regard for Ms Rowling’s request

［D］ careful restrictions on licensing to Coco-Cola

40. It can be concluded from the last paragraph that .

［A］ products of Potter films have brought enormous profits to Warner

［B］ current Hollywood’s marketing of Potter may damage its potential

［C］ readers could get tired of Ms Rowling’s writings sooner or later

［D］ Warner will maintain the same strategy with Potter in future

Part B

Sample 1

Directions:

In the following article, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 41-45, choose the most suitable one from the list A-G to fit into each of the numbered blank. There are two extra choices, which do not fit in any of the gaps. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1. (10 points)．

Large, multinational corporations may be the companies whose ups and downs seize headlines. (41) Small businesses, defined as those with fewer than 100 workers, now employ 60 percent of the workforce and expected to generate half of all new jobs between now and the year 2,000.(42)

Too many of these pioneers, however, will blaze ahead unprepared. Idealists will overestimate the clamor for their products or fail to factor in the competition. (43). Midcareer executives, forced by a takeover or a restructuring to quit the corporation and find another way to support themselves, may save the idea of being their own boss but may forget that entrepreneurs must also. at least for a while, be bookkeepers and receptionists, too.(44) By 1995, more than 60 of those 100 start瞮ps, 77 percent of the companies surveyed were still alive. Most credited their success in large part to having picked a business they already were comfortable in Eighty percent had worked with the same product or service in their last jobs.

Thinking through an enterprise before the launch is obviously critical.(45) you must tenderly monitor its pulse, in their zeal, to expand. Small business owners often ignore early warning signs of a stagnant market or of decaying profitability. They hopefully four more and more into the enterprise, preferring not to acknowledge eroding profit margins that means the market for their ingenious service or product has evaporated, or that they must cut the payroll or vacate their lavish offices.

To snatch opportunity, you must spot the signals that it is time to conquer the new markets, add products or perhaps franchise your hot ideas.

［A］Only when the financial well runs dry do they see the seriousness of the illness, and by then the patient is usually too far gone to save.

［B］But many entrepreneurs forget that a firm’s health in its infancy may be little indication of how well it will age .

［C］Frequent checks of your firm’s vital signs will also guide you to a sensible rate of growth.

［D］Some 1.2 million small forms have opened their doors over the past 6 years of economic growth, and 1989 will see an additional 200,000 entrepreneurs striking off on their own.

［E］According to small Business Administration data, 24 of every 100 businesses starting out today are likely to disappear in two years, and 27 more will have shut their doors four years from now.

［F］But to a far greater extent than most Americans realize, the economy’s vitality depends on the fortunes of tiny shops and restaurants, neighborhood services and are factories.

［G］Nearly everyone will underestimate, often fatally, the capital that success requires

Sample 2

Directions:

The following paragraphs are given in a wrong order.For questions 41-45, you are required to reorganize these paragraphs into a coherent article by choosing from the list A-G to fill in each numbered box. The first and the last paragrphs have been placed for you in Boxes. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1. (10 points)

［A］Chaste women are often proud and froward, as presuming upon the merit of their chastity. It is one of the best bonds, both of chastity and obedience, in the wife, if she think her husband wise; which she will never do, if she find him jealous.

［B］He that has wife and children has given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men; which both in affection and means, have married and endowed the public. Yet it were great reason that those that have children, should have greatest care of future times; unto which they know they must transmit their dearest pledges.

［C］Certainly wife and children are a kind of discipline of humanity; and single men, though they may be many times more charitable, because their means are less exhaust, yet, on the other side, they are more cruel and hardhearted (good to make severe inquisitors), because their tenderness is not so oft called upon. Grave natures, led by custom, and therefore constant, are commonly loving husbands, as was said of Ulysses。

［D］But the most ordinary cause of a single life, is liberty, especially in certain self-pleasing and humorous minds, which are so sensible of every restraint, as they will go near to think their girdles and garters, to be bonds and shackles. Unmarried men are best friends, best masters, best servants; but not always best subjects; for they are light to run away; and almost all fugitives, are of that condition.

［E］Some there are, who though they lead a single life, yet their thoughts do end with themselves, and account future times impertinences. There are some other, that account wife and children, but as bills of charges. There are some foolish rich covetous men, that take a pride, in having no children, because they may be thought so much the richer. For perhaps they have heard some talk, Such an one is a great rich man, and another except to it, Yea, but he has a great charge of children; as if it were an abatement to his riches.

［F］Wives are young men’s mistresses; companions for middle age; and old men’s nurses. So as a man may have a quarrel to marry, when he will. But yet he was reputed one of the wise men, that made answer to the question, when a man should marry, —A young man not yet, an elder man not at all. It is often seen that bad husbands, have very good wives; whether it be, that it raiseth the price of their husband’s kindness, when it comes; or that the wives take a pride in their patience. But this never fails, if the bad husbands were of their own choosing, against their friends consent; for then they will be sure to make good their own folly.

［G］A single life doth well with churchmen; for charity will hardly water the ground, where it must first fill a pool. It is indifferent for judges and magistrates; for if they be facile and corrupt, you shall have a servant, five times worse than a wife. For soldiers, I find the generals commonly in their hortatives, put men in mind of their wives and children; and I think the despising of marriage amongst the Turks, maketh the vulgar soldier more base.