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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 does the word "casualty" (Last line, Para. 2) mean?
选项 A、Casualness.
B、Victim.
C、Suicidal industry.
D、Domestic market.
答案B
解析 本题是猜词题，要根据上下文来判断该词的意思，这里要重点看第二段的内容。第二段主要强调美国经济情况每况愈下，各个行业都在衰退，比如电视、汽车、纺织品、机床工业(machine. tool industry)等。casualty出现在段尾句，其所在句子和之前的句子是并列关系，都在强调美国竞争力的衰退，各个行业都不如竞争者，因此只有选项B最符合前后语境，即：半导体制造业似乎要成为(国外竞争者的)下一个受害者。选项A是利用所谓的词根一致原则，但利用词根法在阅读中有时候会推导出错误的词汇含义。选项C是主观推导，各个行业的衰退不等于要去自杀，自取灭亡。选项D不符合上下文逻辑，国内市场不能和前面境况不佳形成并列关系。
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