基础英语综合课期末样卷

深圳大学期末考试试卷
开/闭卷 闭卷
A/B 卷 A 课程编号
课程名称
研究生公共英语（普通班）
学分 3
命题人(签字) 审题人(签字) 年 月 日 Shenzhen University Graduate English Examination (Jan. 8，2011)
Listening Comprehension (35 points)
特别说明：听力部分共包括4个passages, 前3个听力题库中选取的内容，1个passage 是题库之外的)
In this section you will hear a passage twice. During the first reading, you should
listen carefully for a general idea of the whole passage. During the second reading, you should fill in the blanks with the exact words you hear to make the sentences complete. Be sure to write your answers on the Answer Sheet .
VOA Special English Economics Report. Women are on their way to holding more than half of all American jobs. The latest government report shows that their share of nonfarm jobs nearly reached fifty percent in September. Not only have more and more women entered the labor market over the years, but the ______ on men. In October the unemployment rate for men was almost eleven percent, compared to eight percent for women.
manufacturing and building lost more jobs last month.
But health care and ______ have had job growth. Both of those industries employ high percentages of women.
Thirty years ago, women earned sixty-two cents for every dollar that men earned. Now, for those who usually work full time, women earn about eighty percent of what men earn. And women hold fifty-one percent of good-paying ______ jobs.
Yet a study released Thursday said men still hold about nine out of every ten top positions at the four hundred largest companies in California. The results have ______ in five years of studies from the University of California, Davis.
earners in their family. Rebecca Meisenbach at the University of Missouri in Columbia interviewed fifteen women. She found they all ______ and many enjoyed having the power of control, though not all wanted it.
are not the main earners may feel threatened.
9. The job market continues to suffer the effects of last year's financial crash. Now, a judgment has been reached in the first case involving ______on Wall Street.
10. Last week, the government lost its case against two managers at Bear Stearns, the first investment bank to
fail last year. A jury found Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin not ______ to investors. The hedge funds they supervised lost their value in two thousand seven. But jurors said there was no clear evidence that they meant to mislead investors. The Justice Department continues to investigate other companies.
Section B
Directions:In this section you will hear a passage twice. Then you should give brief answers to the questions printed on the examination paper. Be sure to write your answers on
the Answer Sheet.(contemporary topic 选取)
11. What is the SETI project looking for?
12. Why do some scientists think there is intelligent life on other planets?
13. How many other galaxies are there in the universe?
14. How does the SETI project look for life in other galaxies?
15. Why is locating other intelligent life so exciting according to the teacher?
16. Why does the SETI project look for radio signals?
17. How fast do radio signals travel?
18. How long is needed for a radio signal to travel from the nearest galaxy to earth?
19. How fast does the fastest rocket travel?
20. Why doesn‟t the SETI project use rockets to look for intelligent life?
Section C
Directions: In this section you will hear two passages. Each passage will be read twice. After each passage there will be some questions or unfinished statements. For each of
them there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. You should decide on the best
choice and mark the corresponding letter on the Answer Sheet.
Questions for Passage One of Section C （VOA special 题库中选取）
21. Which of the following statements is TRUE about Danny?
A. He suffers from insomnia.
B. He doesn‟t get enough sleep.
C. He hates school.
D. He often listens to classical music far into the night.
22. According to sleep experts, kids like Danny __________.
A. are extremely lazy
B. need to see the doctor
C. are not lazy kids
D. are learning disabled
23. Teenagers‟ biological rhythms __________.
A. prefer later wake-up times
B. prefer earlier bedtimes
C. favor earlier wake-up times
D. favor the school hours
24. According to Breus, insufficient sleep __________.
A. will not affect a driver with a tremendous amount of experience
B. is caused by a form of depression
C. can ensure good academic performance
D. can affect a kid‟s athletic performance
25. Some research studies show that children‟s grades rise __________.
A. because they go to bed earlier than before
B. because of later school start time
C. because they adapt themselves to the class schedules
D. because they have good teachers
26. Headmaster Peterson changed his school‟s start time to __________ on a trial basis.
A. 8:00
B. 9:00
C. 8:30
D. 7:30
27. Headmaster Peterson __________ the results.
A. was disappointed at
B. was dissatisfied with
C. was regretful about
D. was surprised by
28. The benefits of the new class schedule include the following EXCEPT _________.
A. the students were less sleepy during the day
B. the students were more alert
C. only 50% of the students felt tired during the day
D. fewer students were late for the first period in the morning
Questions for Passage Two of Section C （VOA special 课外选取）
29. __________ is the leading cause of disability in older people according to the World Health Organization.
A. Dementia(痴呆症)
B. Loss of memory
C. Blindness
D. Hearing problem
30. People with dementia may show the following symptoms EXCEPT__________.
A. becoming far-sighted
B. forgetting family members
C. intellectual deterioration
D. becoming furious
31. Renata Sousa and other researchers studied the causes of disability __________.
A. among 50,000 old people
B. in some developed countries
C. among people who are 65 or younger
D. in seven developing countries
32. According to the new study, dementia was the largest cause of disability in the elderly in __________.
A. London
B. Mexico
C. Venezuela
D. rural India
33. The researchers suggest that more attention should be given to __________.
A. chronic diseases of aging people
B. heart disease and cancer
C. chronic diseases of the brain and mind
D. aging problem
34. Which of the following is NOT TRUE about a separate study of children?
A. Children in the study were from eighteen low and middle income countries.
B. The researchers were all from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the U.S..
C. It‟s about the causes of disability in children.
D. It also appeared in the Lancet medical journal.
35. Children who __________ were more likely to be disabled.
A. attended school at a very early age
B. lacked vitamin D supplements
C. were overweight
D. were bottle-fed
Part II Reading Comprehension (20 points )
（特别说明：阅读部分都是课外的，是负责出题的老师原创的阅读考题。

文章选自近期的较权威的英语报刊杂志。

）
Directions:In this part you are required to read three passages. Each passage is followed by some questions. For each question there are four choices marked A, B, C and D.
You should decide on the best choice and mark the corresponding letter on the
Answer Sheet.
Passage One
It is becoming increasingly clear that the comfort of a good fit between man and machine is largely absent from the technology of the information age. Consider the humble wristwatch, which has been transformed into a kind of wrist-mounted personal computer, with a digital display and a calculator pad whose buttons are too small to be pressed by a human fingertip. In fact, the very usefulness of the digitization of time is open to question. People generally care less about knowing the time to the nanosecond than about seeing how long they‟ve got until lunch. With digital watches that requires a little figuring (the purpose of the calculator pad, perhaps), whereas with the old analog watches, the ones with hands, it‟s clear at a glance. Worse, by replacing the watch‟s conventional stem-winding mechanism with a puzzling arrangement of tiny buttons, the manufacturers created a watch that was very hard to reset. One leading manufacturer was upset to discover that a line of its particularly advanced digitals was being returned as defective by the thousands, even though the watches actually worked perfectly well. Further investigation revealed that they were coming back soon after purchase and afterwards in two large batches—in the spring and the fall, when the time changed.
Charles Mauro, a consultant in New York City, is a prominent member of a branch of engineering generally known as ergonomics, or human-factors—the only field specifically addressing the question of product usability. Mauro who has won many awards for industrial design and human-factors research, was brought in to provide some help to the watch manufacturer, which was experiencing what Mauro calls “the complexity problem.”With “complexity”defined as “a fundamental mismatch between the demands of a technology and the capabilities of its user”, the term nicely captures the essence of our current technological difficulty. That mismatch might be measured by the increasing length of the instruction manuals required to work so many of the new gadgets. About the digital-watch manufacturer Mauro asks, “Can you believe that the company actually expected you to carry around a thirty-page manual in your wallet?”
The complexity problem is everywhere, but it is most apparent around the house. Americans‟ deficiencies in programming the VCR are so well known that they have become a laughing stock. According to one consumer survey, a third of all VCR owners have given up trying to program their machines for time-delayed viewing. It is a measure of Americans‟ desperation that a multi-million-dollar industry has sprung up to sell other technology, involving reference numbers, to provide assistance. And our troubles are not confined to the VCR. According to a survey by the marketing specialist Laurence Feldman, 50% of Americans can‟t work other programmable equipment either, and, thanks to the availability of the computer chip everywhere, that now includes almost everything: telephones, fax machines, thermostats, even coffee makers. Soon we may add the house itself to the list, as plans proceed to link up these various unworkable components into a single unworkable whole, the “smart house”, in which occupants will run everything—security system, coffee pot, kitchen stove—from a single remote-control unit at their fingertips.
When facing some puzzling piece of high-tech gadgetry, consumers naturally feel that there is something wrong with them if they can‟t figure it out. In truth it is usually not their fault. Mauro attributes the confusion to the fact that most products are “technology-driven”, their nature determined not by consumers and their needs and desires but by engineers who are too often fascinated by the countless capabilities of the microprocessors that lie at the devices‟hearts. The main effect of the extra capabilities is in a great many cases to badly confuse the essential functions.
Donald Norman, a cognitive scientist at a leading computer manufacturer, believes that the fundamental confusion is due to the essentially inscrutable nature of the technology. “I n the mechanical systems of the old days, you could wiggle a switch or move a knob or a lever and see something happen,” he says, “T oday‟s technology concerns information that is invisible and abstract, so the designers have to give a sense of control by different means.”
All too often those means are dense instruction manuals, which Mauro regards as the clearest sign of design failure. The best-designed products require no instructions at all: their appearance tells you what to do as surely as a coffee mug‟s handle says “Hold here.” This idea is reinforced by product-liability laws, which first consider the product‟s physical design, then its labeling, and finally its instructions. In the minds of most engineers that list is reversed.
36.What is the writer‟s opinion about keeping time digitally?
A.He likes it because it helps keep him on time better.
B.He prefers it because it is easier to understand.
C.He believes it has caused simple devices to become more complex.
D.He does not think it is really necessary for everyday life.
37.What does the writer of this text seem to think about the stem-winding mechanism on a wristwatch?
A.It is an easy device to use for setting the time on a watch.
B.It needed to be replaced by a more delicate mechanism.
C.It cannot be used to set the time on a watch accurately enough.
D.It is even worse than a mystifying set of buttons.
38.Why does the writer tell us that fewer than half of all owners of machines like VCRs and fax machines
know how to program them?
A.To explain why the complexity problem exists.
B.To illustrate the seriousness of the complexity problem.
C.To show us examples of successful technology.
D.To help us appreciate manufactures‟ problems.
39.What is the key difference between older mechanical systems and newer, more advanced technology?
A.Older systems were simpler but less reliable than the newer technology.
B.Modern technology appeals primarily to the younger generation.
C.The connection between form and function was clearer in older mechanical systems.
D.Newer systems lose their usefulness more quickly than older mechanical systems.
40.What does the writer seem to suggest is the cause of the complexty problem?
A.The complexity of modern life promotes technological complexity.
B.People enjoy products which challenge their ability to use them.
C.The right questions are not asked before developing new products.
panies can make better profits on more advanced products.
41.What does the writer think about people who are unable to use new technology the way it was intended
by the manufacturer?
A.They ought to return the product to the manufacturer.
B.They have no choice but to read the manual more thoroughly.
C.They must accept responsibility for their own failures.
D.They often feel inadequate even though they shouldn‟t.
42.What does the writer think a company should do once it has the ability to develop a technologically more
advanced product?
A.Build it quickly to beat the competition.
cate consumers about the complexity of the new product.
C.Find ways to make its instruction manual easier to read.
D.Consider how easy the new product will be to use.
43.From a technological point of view, which of the following device would the writer probably be most
happy to use himself?
A.A high-tech VCR.
B.A manual typewriter.
C.A programmable coffee maker.
D.A multiple-function telephone and fax machine.
Passage Two
Water is one of the elements every country takes for granted. However, global will soon find the bereft water supply a priority. In countries such as Europe and the United States, there is an especially evident apathetic concern for the water supply, since people only need to turn on the tap and find water at their disposal. The water shortage around the world may also soon find these countries. Credible scientists say the lack of available clean water may be one of the biggest issues facing the world in the twenty-first century.
There are many culprits for the concurrent water shortage. First, people are using far more water than they have previously. Secondly, there are many more people than ever before. Finally, many valuable and available sources of water are becoming far too polluted to be consumable. These reasons are inevitably going to cause a severe lack of our most valuable resource. With repercussions inevitably looming, innovative methodologies will have to be construed prior to the ulterior effects taking hold. Stating that water-intensive agricultural activities are unsustainable, the HRD minister said there is need for new technology to encourage farming with the use of less water. "We have to realize that we cannot afford to continue producing agricultural commodities the way we have been over the years," he said, giving the example of how rice and whea t crops guzzle a lot of water. What, then, is the solution? “Obviously, we have to cross and conquer new frontiers of science," he said, adding that we will need to produce seeds that will exhaust less water and spawn new technology to increase productivity.
China, with 1.26 billion people, is the one area worrying most people most of the time, says the author of a recently published water article. Authors of such articles are coincidentally found in the drier areas of Northern China. In one article, a scientist stated that the water table is dropping one meter per year due to depletion, and the Chinese admit that 300 cities are running short currently. They are diverting water from agriculture workers and local denizens are still facing a potentially catastrophic outcome. Scientists state that some Chinese rivers are so polluted with heavy metals that they can no longer be used for irrigation at all, which will cause a complete debacle in commercial farming occupations.
In the United States, many more people are beginning to drill wells to provide personal sources of drinking water. Water is abundant in enormous quantities in underground lakes called aquifers. Until recently, scientists thought that this underground water supply was unadulterated and safe from pollution. But in the 1980s, people in the United States began to find illnesses in their families. Upon closer inspection, scientists realized that these chemicals were from well water. In one example, people found that previous military locations had dangerous chemicals on the ground that had slowly seeped into aquifers.
In India, home to 1.002 billion people, key aquifers are being disseminated, and the soil is growing saltier through contamination with irrigation water. Irrigation was a key to increasing food production in India during the green revolution, and as the population surges toward a projected 1.363 billion in 2025, its crops
will continue to depend on clean water and clean soil. Israel, with a population of 6.2 million, has invented many water-conserving technologies, but water withdrawals still exceed resupply. Depletion of aquifers along the coast is allowing seawater to pollute drinking water. Like neighboring Jordan, Israel is largely dependent on the Jordan River for fresh water.
Water found in aquifers is not renewable, like that found in rivers or streams. Once chemicals reach the aquifer, the water is no longer drinkable. It is also very expensive and nearly impossible to completely remove chemicals from aquifers. Military sites are only one cause of contamination. Many others, including farming methods and waste, are prevalent around the world. With thousands of these polluting locations in each country, the amount of water that may be consumed in the future will be severely inhibited, at the very same time it is becoming more and more critical to the world population.
The situation is indeed serious. Some aquifers are large and fortunately many have not been severely damaged yet. If the world does not want to see a critical shortage in the near future, we must find a way to limit the contaminants and change the attitude toward water. Only then can we deter the amount of pollution that affects our underground water supply. Real changes must be made to our prevention techniques, or we will be forced to change in other, not so preferable ways.
44.If the passage were extended, it would be mainly about ______.
A. types of water pollution in foreign countries.
B. how to drill wells to provide alternative water supplies.
C. water pollution and methods of prevention.
D. pollution in underground aquifers.
45.Scientists have expressed the inevitable consequence that ______.
A. clean water is no longer available in much of America and Europe
B. drought is causing a shortage of water in America and Europe
C. many people will soon be without clean water due to pollution
D. well water problems will exist in the twentieth century
46.One reason for water pollution is ______.
A. Israel, the United States, and China consume too much water
B. people have not refilled aquifers as desired by government experts
C. there are not enough underground aquifers
D. aquifers are being polluted with military waste
47.Recently, scientists have discovered reasons to conclude that ______.
A. new aquifers with renewable rain water
B. the greatest problems of the previous century was lack of drinking water
C. damage to military bases hurts underground water
D. we have more waste and garbage than we did in the last century
48.In can be inferred that people can prevent water shortages by ______.
A. conserving water in every household
B. educating each other about the need for conservation and reducing pollution
C. demanding fellow citizens and governments take the problem seriously
D. All of the above
49.“The amount of consumable wate r will be severely inhibited.” What does the author mean by this?
A. Most of the damage comes from aquifers, which is the most deleterious to water resources.
B. Pollution could cause water shortage around the world, leading to unenviable consequences.
C. People are slow to change which limits the ability to change water prevention methods.
D. Military bases will never be able to be cleaned up entirely so new ideas will need to be construed
expeditiously.
50.Well water is becoming polluted by military bases. What is the best method to prevent this?
A. Removing military bases from countries with aquifers.
B. Creating penalties that secure tax dollars for the inevitable cleanup.
C. Identifying aquifers and finding ways to stop people from drilling wells into them.
D. Creating awareness of the sensitivity of underground water supplies to pollution.
Passage Three
Are women in leadership roles judged more harshly than men because people are just harder on women? Or is it because women are simply worse at leadership than men? Or could it be that people come under more scrutiny when they take jobs that are usually held by the opposite sex? A new paper out of Yale University's School of Management suggests it may be the last one.
Victoria Brescoll, assistant professor of organizational behavior, specializes in studying the effect that stereotypes have on the perception of a person's role within an organization or corporation. "There was so much talk about race and gender barriers being broken," she said, that she wanted to see how well people who broke the barriers did once they got to the other side. And often it's, well, not so well.
The difficult position in which glass ceiling crackers often find themselves is poised at the edge of a glass cliff, an idea conjured up by two British professors in 2004. It suggests that after women break through the glass ceiling, they are left stranded at an invisible precipice—in a high-risk position. One wrong step and they plummet into the abyss of professional failure.
Recently, with women running successful election campaigns and dominating higher education, it would seem that stereotypes are toppling like fruit carts in an old movie car chase. But that doesn't mean they don't still exercise some influence over people's expectations. And it is those stereotypical expectations that may lead people to judge women holding traditional men's jobs (or men holding traditional women's jobs) more harshly when they fumble. "Stereotyping thrives on ambiguity," says Brescoll in the study, published in the journal Psychological Science. "Mistakes create ambiguity and call the leader's competence into question, which, in turn, leads to a loss of status."
To test her thesis, Brescoll and two co-authors Erica Dawson and Eric Luis Uhlmann first made a list of all the high-status professions that were primarily associated with one gender over the other. Not surprisingly it was vastly easier to think up male-dominated prestigious jobs than female-dominated ones.
Then they devised scenarios in which people of equal merit held jobs typically dominated by the other gender (such as a female police chief or a male head of a women's college) and handled a crisis badly. The scenarios described the police chief or college president failing to send enough police officers or campus security officers to respond to a protest. (In some scenarios, however, following tradition, the police chief was male and the women's college president was female.)
The researchers asked 200 people read the scenarios. When asked to judge the leader who made the not terribly significant mistake, the study volunteers said worse things about the person who was the non-typical
gender: the male women's college president and female police chief. They were judged more harshly than people who made the same mistakes, but who were the usual gender for the job.
This gender-based difference held up when the jobs involved aerospace company CEOs or judges too. We tend to magnify the mistakes of people we think don't know how to do the job.
Brescoll's study was of individuals in high-status jobs, but a similar phenomenon may be in play at lower-status occupations too. A recent story in the New York Times Motherlode blog detailed how young male babysitters often find themselves at a disadvantage, partly because everybody wonders why a young male would ever want to babysit, and then fears the worst.
On one hand, it's a bit of a relief to know that bias is not just directed at women, but "driven by reactions to individuals in roles inconsistent with their gender," as the study puts it.
On the other, it's not all good news. "Though women and minorities have made progress in reaching high-status positions," say the authors, "the present research draws attention to an unsettling bias that may readily undermine these achievements."
In other words, as far as things have come, they have a way to go.
51. In paragraph one, the new paper out of Yale University suggests that women leaders are judged more
harshly because ______.
A. women are innately poor leaders
B. people are gender-biased
C. women leaders take the roles traditionally dominated by men
D. women are less committed than men
52. According to paragraph two, Victoria Brescoll ______.
A. doesn‟t believe stereotypes have effect on the perception of a person‟s role within an organization
B. doesn‟t believe the removal of race and gender barriers really pushes us forward
C. doesn‟t think the removal of race and gender barriers helps women to win equality
D. thinks the removal of race and gender barriers may result in new prejudice
53. According to the passage, the “glass cliff” refers to ______.
A. a promotion opportunity for well-educated women
B. a professional failure women may face after they break through the glass ceiling
C. a pay raise after women leaders establish themselves in the work place
D. gender discrimination women leaders have to combat in their companies
54. The underlined word “fumble” in paragraph four means ______.
A. handle their job clumsily
B. handle their job ingeniously
C. abuse their power
D. take over the leadership
55. According to Brescoll‟s study, which of the following statements is NOT TRUE?
A. Stereotypes still have some impact on people‟s expectations
B. Gender bias only exists in high-status positions.
C. Gender bias reveals when people take the job which is not consistent with their gender.
D. a non-typical gender for a job is judged more harshly than a usual gender.
Part III Translation (25 points )。