IV. Reading Comprehension: Choose the best answer for each question. (20%)
Passage A
No, Steve Jobs declared. Apple wouldn‟t put a store in Brazil, with its “crazy” and “super-high”
taxation. This was 2010, and Jobs was writing, bluntly, to an official in Rio de Janeiro. Four years later,
Jobs‟s successor had a different message for Brazilians.
“ „Obrigado‟ to everyone who visited our new store,” CEO Tim Cook tweeted in February, after 1,700
people packed into a Rio mall for the opening of the first Apple store in Latin America. “We are Brazilians,
with lots of pride and lots of love,” his blue-shirted employees sang, adapting a tune heard in stadiums and
bars when the national soccer team plays. Apple is one of many foreign brands feeling the love for Brazil —
even if Brazilians, mired in an economic slump, aren‟t. As the country hosts this year‟s World Cup and
prepares for the Olympic Games in 2016, the optimism that led it to bid for the planet‟s two most famous
sporting events has all but evaporated.
Inflation and flagging growth are squeezing Brazil‟s new middle class, whose anger is so intense and
encompassing that its targets include the World Cup itself — an amazing thing in a country that is the
definition of soccer mad. Protesters have jeered the national team, the World Cup trophy and the country‟s
president, Dilma Rousseff, whom Brazilians blame for spending extravagantly on stadiums while neglecting
basic public services. In May, Sao Paulo bus drivers snarled 162 miles of traffic when they threw away their
keys in a strike, a fitting image for a country that is stalled after years of rapid economic growth.
The foreign investors still come, drawn by something even high taxes can‟t take away: young,
increasingly educated and affluent consumers. Companies as diverse as Forever 21, known for trendy
fashions, and luxury automaker Bayerische Motoren Werke are putting down stakes this year. “Brazil has
changed,” says Arturo Pineiro, head of BMW Brazil Group, which is investing $276 million in a plant
scheduled to open later this year in Araquari, in the country‟s south. “It has some problems, but, with the
right focus, they can be solved.”
It can be hard to find ordinary Brazilians who agree with him, amid reports of protesters pelting police
with rocks — or, at one clash in May, shooting them with arrows — and widespread griping about public
corruption.
When the country was awarded the two sporting events last decade, then-President Luiz Inacio Lula da
Silva — just Lula to Brazilians — was hailed as a miracle worker. The former union leader guided an epic
boom during eight years in office, from 2003 to 2010, with the benchmark Ibovespa stock index growing
sixfold and annual economic growth reaching as much as 7.5 percent. This allowed Lula to plow cash into
his ambitious Bolsa Familia, a program that gives low-income Brazilians a monthly stipend in exchange for
sending their children to school and has helped cut the poverty rate in half. 第 7 頁，共 10 頁
Brazilians long for those days now. Economic growth has slowed to just over 2 percent annually, and
the stock market has declined by more than 20 percent in three years under Rousseff, Lula‟s former chief of
staff.
【題組】32. What is true about the Apple store in Brazil?
(A) It was opened by Tim Cook in 2010.
(B) It is the first of its kind in South America.
(C) 1,700 employees helped pack products in the store.
(D) Brazilians are too proud to purchase the products there.
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