Entrepreneurs exhibit many different behaviors; searching for a specific personality pattern is very difficult. Some entrepreneurs are quiet, introverted, and analytical. On the other hand, some are brash, extroverted, and very emotional. Many of them share some qualities. Viewing change as the norm, entrepreneurs usually search for it, respond to it, and treat it as an opportunity. An entrepreneur such as Ray Kroc of McDonald’s is able to take resources and shift them to meet a need. Making the decision to shift resources works better if a person is creative, experienced, and confident.

　　41. According to the first paragraph, who can be regarded as an entrepreneur?

　　[A] The CEO of a big company. [B] The owner of a profitable restaurant.

　　[C] A man who started a new kind of business. [D] A successful salesman.

　　42. According to the text, the professionals .

　　[A] are quite different from entrepreneurs even now

　　[B] were considered to be enterprising and market-centered

　　[C] were price-conscious

　　[D] have to advertise themselves in nowadays

　　43. From the text, we learn that .

　　[A] an entrepreneur should be very extroverted

　　[B] an entrepreneur should be quick to seize opportunities

　　[C] change is not norm in an entrepreneur’s eyes

　　[D] the French economist J.B. Say is the first person who gave the definition of “entrepreneur”

　　44. The purpose of the author in writing the passage is to .

　　[A] complete the definition of entrepreneur

　　[B] tell the readers what is entrepreneur and the main characteristics of entrepreneurs

　　[C] show what kind of people can become entrepreneurs

　　[D] illustrate why Ray Kroc can become an entrepreneur

　　45. What will most possibly follow the text?

　　[A] An example of how an entrepreneur operates. [B] Another theory about entrepreneurship.

　　[C] The bad effects of entrepreneurs. [D] The good effects of entrepreneurs.

　　Text 2

　　St. Paul didn’t like it. Moses warned his people against it. Hesiod declared it “mischievious” and “hard to get rid of it,” but Oscar Wilder said, “Gossip is charming.”

　　“History is merely gossip,” he wrote in one of his famous plays. “But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.”

　　In times past, under Jewish law, gossipmongers might be fined or flogged. The Puritans put them in stocks or ducking stools, but no punishment seemed to have the desired effect of preventing gossip, which has continued uninterrupted across the back fences of the centuries.

　　Today, however, the much-maligned human foible is being looked at in a different light. Psychologists, sociologists, philosophers, even evolutionary biologists are concluding that gossip may not be so bad after all.

　　Gossip is “an intrinsically valuable activity,” philosophy professor Aaron Ben-Ze’ev states in a book he has edited, entitled Good Gossip. For one thing, gossip helps us acquire information that we need to know that doesn’t come through ordinary channels, such as: “What was the real reason so-and-so was fired from the office?” Gossip also is a form of social bonding, Dr. Ben-Ze’ev says. It is “a kind of sharing” that also “satisfies the tribal need—namely, the need to belong to and be accepted by a unique group.” What’s more, the professor notes, “Gossip is enjoyable.”

　　Another gossip groupie, Dr. Ronald De Sousa, a professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, describes gossip basically as a form of indiscretion and a “saintly virtue”, by which he means that the knowledge spread by gossip will usually end up being slightly beneficial. “It seems likely that a world in which all information were universally available would be preferable to a world where immense power resides in the control of secrets,” he writes.

　　Still, everybody knows that gossip can have its ill effects, especially on the poor wretch being gossiped about. And people should refrain from certain kinds of gossip that might be harmful, even though the ducking stool is long out of fashion.