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  3. They may not be the richest, but Africans remain the world’s staunchest optimists. An annual survey by Gallup International, a r

They may not be the richest, but Africans remain the world’s staunchest optimists. An annual survey by Gallup International, a r

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问题     They may not be the richest, but Africans remain the world’s staunchest optimists. An annual survey by Gallup International, a research outfit, shows that, when asked whether this year will be better than last, Africa once again comes out on top. Out of 52,000 people interviewed all over the world, under half believe that things are looking up. But in Africa the proportion is close to 60%—almost twice as much as in Europe.
    Africans have some reasons to be cheerful. The continent’s economy has been doing fairly well with South Africa, the economic powerhouse, growing steadily over the past few years. Some of Africa’s long-running conflicts, such as the war between the north and south in Sudan and the civil war in Congo, have ended. Africa even has its first elected female head of state, in Liberia.
    Yet there is no shortage of downers too. Most of Africa remains dirt poor. Crises in places like Cote d’Ivoire, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe are far from solved. And the democratic credentials of Ethiopia and Uganda, once the darlings of western donors, have taken a bad knock. AIDS killed over 2 million Africans in 2005, and will kill more this year.
    So is it all just a case of irrational exuberance? Meril James of Gallup argues that there is, in fact, usually very little relation between the survey’s optimism rankings and reality. Africans, this year led by Nigerians, are consistently the most upbeat, whether their lot gets better or not. On the other hand, Greece— hardly the worst place on earth—tops the gloom-and-doom chart, followed closely by Portugal and France.
    Ms James speculates that religion may have a lot to do with it. Nine out of ten Africans are religious, the highest proportion in the world. But cynics argue that most Africans believe that 2006 will be golden because things have been so bad that it is hard to imagine how they could possibly get worse. This may help explain why places that have suffered recent misfortunes, such as Kosovo and Afghanistan, rank among the top five optimists. Moussaka for thought for those depressed Greeks.
The statistics are employed in the first paragraph so as to indicate sort of
选项 A、disparity
B、numbness
C、conformity
D、stagnation
答案A
解析 这是一道细节题，测试考生准确识别和理解原文信息的作用与功能的能力。本题的答案信息来源在第一段，尤其是倒数第一、二句，这两句话的大意是“全世界范围涉及52 000人的调查中，不足一半的人认为情况会好起来。但是在非洲认为情况会好起来的人数比例近60％……”从此句中不难推断出本文作者想通过这两个具体数字反映一种“差异与不同”。故本题的正确选项应该是A“disparity”(不同，不一致)。考生在阅读时要注意原文作者所涉及的具体数据信息的功能和作用。
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