05级高级英语试题A

滨州学院2007－2008学年第一学期期末考试
英语专业（本）2005级《高级英语》试卷（A）
（答案一律写在答题纸上，在本试卷上做答无效）
I．Multiple choice:(30%)
Section 1: Choose the word or phrase that is closest in meaning to the underlined part (20%).
1. There is a divergence of opinions among the committee members on the issue of promotion.
A similarity
B agreement
C differentiation
D resemblance
2. She had a firm conviction that her view could hold water.
A supposition
B belief
C convulsion
D assumption
3. The community hospital enlisted the support of the local residents to keep it going.
A obtained
B lacked
C rejected
D yielded
4. He won the election by an overwhelming majority of votes.
A slim
B scarce
C large
D sparse
5. The noise of the explosion penetrated the wall of the room.
A collapsed
B cracked
C bypassed
D pierced
6. People in the area still practice the customs of their fathers.
A formulator
B advocate
C ancestors
D plagiarizer
7. The remarks by leaders of the Taiwan authority met with scathing criticism from all sides
A bitter
B static
C dynamic
D gentle
8. She was extremely nervous at the prospect of her turn to make the presentation.
A on word of
B upon hearing of
C at the request of
D at the thought of
9. The committee is awaiting the chairman to give his assent to the proposal.
A rejection
B view
C approval
D veto
10. No one knew what the army was doing; there was a veil of secrecy over their activities.
A cover
B sign
C indication
D bit
11. Tony became disdainful of his friends when he succeeded in the attempt.
A scornful
B proud
C thankful
D grateful
12. Violence erupted due to the loss of the home team.
A burst
B exploded
C blasted
D occurred
13. The wild and rampant spread of AIDS forced a vigorous war against the disease.
A powerful
B lengthy
C prolonged
D pretentious
14. His conscience impelled him to admit his part in the affair.
A compelled
B discouraged
C exhausted
D exhilarated
15 The stalled Middle Eastern situation has arrested world attention.
A caught
B seized
C occupied
D empowered
16. The High Court demanded that he interpret his involvement in the bribery scandal.
A verify
B present
C account
D acknowledge
17. Mr. Johnson is to preside over this Asian-European ministerial meeting.
A declare
B prepare
C host
D supervise
18. Artificial diamond is indistinguishable from genuine one, but much cheaper.
A differential in
B indifferent to
C differentiable from
D identical to
19. On many of the previous occasions the US trade negotiators would revert to the issue of
China‟s human rights problems.
A restated
B reiterate
C reconsider
D reverse
20. It is just conceivable that he‟ll win, but it‟s very unlikely really.
A expected
B imaginable
C supposed
D presumed
Section 2 Choose the most appropriate answer to fill in each of the blanks.(10%)
21. The shop-keepers speak in slow, measured tones, and the buyers ______.
A follow suit
B take suit
C follow suits
D take suits
22. I treaded cautiously______ the tatami matting.
A on
B in
C down
D out
23. He plays tennis to the ____ of all other sports.
A eradication
B exclusion
C extension
D inclusion
24. She answered with an ____ “No” to the request that she attend the public hearing.
A eloquent
B effective
C emotional
D emphatic
25. The Duchess of Croydon kept firm, tight rein______ her racing mind.
A in
B inside
C to
D on
26. He has made a declaration to the ________ that all fighting must cease at once.
A following
B fact
C point
D effect
27. Winant said the same would be true ______the U.S.A.
A with
B of
C for
D to
28. But later my hair began to fall_______, and my belly turned to water.
A down
B out
C through
D away
29. Every here and there, a doorway gives a of a sunlit courtyard, perhaps before a mosque or a caravanserai, …
A glance
B glimpse
C peek
D peep
30. His gaze moved on to sweep the spacious, well-appointed room, the Duke who
faced them uncertainly, his back to a window.
A surrounding
B adjoining
C encompassing
D bordering
II. Reading comprehension. (20%)
Read the following passage and answer the questions by choosing the most appropriate choice. Put your answers on the ANSWER SHEET.
Passage 1
INK-STAINED RICHES:
Mencken, the Daddy of Bad-Boy Punditry
In his essay on H.L. Mencken entitled “Saving a Whale,” journalist Murray Kempton points out that “whales are the only mammals that the museums have never managed to stuff and mount in their original skins.” To Kempton, Mencken is a very great wh ale who, almost 40 years after his death, still defies critical taxonomy. That is putting it politely. Mencken in death provokes as much vitriol as he did while living. He has been called a racist, a humanitarian, an arch conservative and a great liberal, and the thorny fact is, he was all those things. Nobody knows what to make of a man who turned his diary into a manure pile of anti-Semitism at the same time he was working diligently to get Jews out of Hitler‟s Germany.
Biographers have been struggling t o take Mencken‟s measure since the 1920s. Fred Hobson‟s Mencken...is the latest and best attempt. Hobson is the first of Mencken‟s biographers to use all the posthumously published diaries, where the “Sage of Baltimore” vented his most odious bigotries and where he most clearly revealed the alienation and loneliness at the heart of his personality. Hobson does not try to resolve the contradictions in Mencken‟s personality. Instead, he wisely uses this new material to portray Mencken as a man forever in conflict with himself, the carefree cutup coexisting with the control freak, the comic with the tragedian. Eventually—at least a decade before the 1948 stroke that robbed him of the ability to read or write—Mencken‟s darker angels took charge of his soul. In 1942, he wrote, “I have spent all of my 62 years here, but I still find it impossible to fit myself into the accepted patterns of American life and thought. After all these years, I remain a foreigner.”
But as Hobson points out, the darkness was there all along, and the miracle is that out of this almost paralyzing bleakness, Mencken was once able to spin exuberant, lacerating prose that is as funny as it is essentially serious. At the peak of his powers, in the …20s and early …30s, he slaughtered every sacred cow in sight, from Prohibition to fundamentalism. But as hard as he could be on hillbillies and Klansmen, he was even harder on professors: “Of a thousand head of such dull drudges not ten, with their doctors‟ dissertations behind them, ever contribute so much as a flyspeck to the sum of human knowledge.” Coining phrases like “the Bible belt” and aphorisms like “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard,” Mencken left his indecorous fingerpri nts all over American thought and speech.
As a newspaper columnist, a magazine editor and a book writer, Mencken radically broadened the scope and raised the standards of American journalism. But most important, he proved that an
intellectual could thrive in the popular press....
Many have imitated Mencken‟s style....
But the sad fact is, Mencken‟s disciples are not Mencken. Flaws and all, he was inimitable. As Hobson says, “He was our nay-saying Whitman, and...he sounded his own barbaric yap over the ro ofs of the timid and the fearful, the contented and the smug.” With his cheap cigars and his hick‟s haircut, and with his gaudy, orotund prose, he looks and sounds like an old-fashioned vaudevillian.... As nice as it would be to stick this curmudgeonly, politically incorrect relic on a back shelf and forget about him, we need his rancor too much. Better than anyone, he still instructs us on the value of the loyal opposition. At his best, he made his readers think and he kept them honest. No journalist could want a better epitaph.
31. Kempton thinks that Mencken was
[A] a huge man. [B] beyond reproach. [C] larger than life. [D]hard to classify.
32. Hobson‟s biography is a typical of previous books about Mencken because it
[A] sues samples of Mencken‟s pr ose. [B] creates a one-sided portrait.
[C] glosses over inconsistencies. [D] uses material Mencken never published.
33. Mencken is probably best characterized as a/an
[A] optimist. [B] pessimist. [C] enthusiast. [D] defeatist.
34. According to the author of the passage, Mencken‟s prose is
[A] pedantic. [B] prosaic. [C] pungent. [D] poetic.
35. The reviewer believes that Mencken‟s work should be appreciated because
[A] it has historic value.
[B] it reminds Americans of the importance of dissent.
[C] Mencken was an excellent reporter.
[D] Mencken cannot be copied.
Passage 2
THE DEATH OF A SPOUSE
For much of the world, the death of Richard Nixon was the end of a complex public life. But researchers who study bereavement wondered if it didn‟t also signify the end of a private grief. Had the former president merely run his allotted fourscore and one, or had he fallen victim to a pattern that seems to afflict longtime married couples: one spouse quickly following the other to the grave?
Pat, Nix on‟s wife of 53 years, died last June after a long illness. No one knows for sure whether her death contributed to his. After all, he was elderly and had a history of serious heart disease. Researchers have long observed that the death of a spouse particularly a wife is sometimes followed by the untimely death of the grieving survivor. Historian Will Durant died 13 days after his wife and collaborator, Ariel; Bickminster Fuller and his wife died just 36 hours apart. Is this
more than coincidence?
“Part of the story, I suspect, is that we men are so used to ladies feeding us and taking care of us,” says Knud Helsing, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, “that when we lose a wife we go to pieces. We don‟t know how to take care of ourselves.” In one of several studies Helsing has conducted on bereavement, he found that widowed men had higher mortality rates than married men in every age group. But, he found that widowers who remarried enjoyed the same lower mortality rate as men who‟d never been widowed.
Women‟s health and resilience may also suffer after the loss of a spouse. In a 1987 study of widows, researchers form the University of California, Los Angeles, and UC, San Diego, found that they had a dramatic decline in levels of important immune-system cells that fight off disease. Earlier studies showed reduced immunity in widowers.
For both men and women, the stress of losing a spouse can have a profound effect. “All sorts of potentially harmful medical problems can be worsened,”says Gerald Davison, professor of psychology at the University of Southern California. People with high blood pressure, for example, may see it rise. In Nixon‟s case, Davison speculates, “the stroke, although not caused directly by the stress, was probabl y hastened by it.” Depression can affect the surviving spouse‟s will to live; suicide rates are elevated in the bereaved, along with accidents not involving cars.
Involvement in life helps prolong it. Mortality, says Duke University psychiatrist Daniel Balzer, is higher in older people without a good social-support system, who don‟t feel they‟re part of a group or a family, that they “fit in” somewhere. And that‟s a common problem for men, who tend not to have as many close friendships as women. The sudden absence of routines can also be a health hazard, says Blazer. “A person who loses a spouse shows deterioration in normal habits like sleeping and eating,” he says. “They don‟t have that other person to orient them, like when do you go to bed, when do you wake up, when do you eat, when do you take your medication, when do you go out to take a walk? Your pattern is no longer locked into someone else‟s pattern, so it deteriorates.”
While earlier studies suggested that the first six months to a year—or even the first week—were times of higher mortality for the bereaved, some newer studies find no special vulnerability in this initial period. Most men and women, of course do not die as a result of the loss of a spouse. And there are ways to improve the odds. A strong sense of separate identity and lack of over-dependency during the marriage are helpful. Adult sons and daughters, siblings and friends need to pay special attention to a newly widowed parent. They can make sure that he or she is socializing, getting proper nutrition and medical care, expressing emotion and, above all, feeling needed and appreciated.
36. According to researchers, Richard Nixon‟s death was
[A] caused by his heart problems. [B] indirectly linked to his wife‟s death.
[C] the inevitable result of old age. [D] an unexplainable accident.
37. The research reviewed in the passage suggests that
[A] remarried men live healthier lives.
[B] unmarried men have the longest life spans.
[C] widowers have the shortest life spans.
[D] widow s are unaffected by their mates‟ death.
38. One of the results of grief mentioned in the article is
[A] loss of friendships. [B] diminished socializing.
[C] vulnerability to disease. [D] loss of appetite.
39. The passage states that while married couples can prepare for grieving by
[A] being self-reliant. [B] evading intimacy.
[C] developing habits. [D] avoiding independence.
40. Helsing speculates that husbands suffer from the death of a spouse because they are
[A] unprepared for independence. [B] incapable of cooking.
[C] unwilling to talk. [D] dissatisfied with themselves.
III．Cloze Test（10%）
Directions: Read the following text. Write out best word or phrase for each numbered blank on the answer sheet.
The Middle Eastern bazaar takes you back hundreds-even thousands-of years. The one I am thinking of particularly is 41 a Gothic-arched gateway of aged brick and stone. You pass from the heat and 42 of a big, open square into a cool, dark cavern which extends as far as the eye can see, losing itself in the 43 distance. Little donkeys with harmoniously tinkling bells 44 their way among the throngs of people entering and leaving the bazaar. The roadway is about twelve feet wide, but it is narrowed every few yards by little stalls where goods of every 45 kind are sold. The din of the stall-holders crying their wares, of donkey-boys and porters clearing a way for themselves by shouting vigorously, and of would-be purchasers arguing and bargaining is continuous and makes you 46.
Then as you 47 deeper into the bazaar, the noise of the entrance 48 away, and you come to the muted cloth-market. The earthen floor, beaten hard by countless feet, 49 the sound of footsteps, and the vaulted mud-brick walls and roof have hardly any sounds to echo. The shop-keepers speak in slow, 50 tones, and the buyers, overwhelmed by the sepulchral atmosphere, follow suit.
IV．Paraphrase the following sentences (10%)
51. Then as you penetrate deeper into the bazaar, the noise of the entrance fades away, and you
come to the muted cloth-market.
52. After three days in Japan, the spinal column becomes extraordinarily flexible.
53. We are ripping matter from its place in the earth in such volume as to upset the balance
between daylight and darkness.
54. Like good looks and money, quickness passed her by.
55. “That‟s more like it,” Ogilvie said. He lit the fresh cigar, “Now we‟re getting somewhere.”V．Translation（10%）
56. 现代化的电子计算机除了数据处理以外，还有做出决定和选择的能力。

57. 我们俩谁也不善于计算数字。

58. 只要你为人正直，不怕失去什么，那你对任何人都不会畏惧。

59. 他陷入沉思之中，没有理会同伴们在谈些什么。

60. 新出土的铜花瓶造型优美，刻有精细、复杂的传统图案。

VI．Writing （20%）
Write on the answer sheet a composition of about 200 words on the following topic: With the rapid economic development, the average living standard of our country had greatly increased. Meanwhile, we are faced with a glaring social problem, the widest gap between the rich and the poor. What do you think of the gap in our country? Any solutions and suggestions? State your opinion with appropriate supporting details. Write a composition of more than 200 words on the following topic:
Widening Gap Between the Rich and the Poor
You are to write three parts.
In the first part, state specifically what your idea is.
In the second part, provide one or more reasons to support your idea OR describe your idea.
In the last part, bring what you have written a natural conclusion or a summary.
Marks will be awarded for content, organization, grammar and appropriateness.
Failure to follow the instructions may result in a loss of marks.。